Key takeaways
- Putting greater focus on offboarding can enhance your reputation as an employer while mitigating security and knowledge-loss risks.
- Specific offboarding checklists should be followed by three key process owners: IT, HR, and the relevant manager.
- IT teams must approach voluntary (resignation) and involuntary (termination) departures differently, with accelerated timeframes for the latter.
Offboarding typically receives much less attention than onboarding or retention. However, failing to ensure a smooth exit leads to risks and missed opportunities.
This guide will explore why offboarding is so crucial and why it requires a detailed checklist to be done right. We also share comprehensive offboarding checklists for different members of your team (HR, IT, managers) along with a copy-and-paste template for you to create your own.
Why offboarding needs a checklist, not just good intentions
Offboarding covers business-critical factors including compliance and security. Let's examine the key issues at play to get a better understanding of why a methodical approach that incorporates detailed offboarding checklists is needed.
Security risks during offboarding
An employee leaving your team brings inherent security risks that must be addressed during your offboarding process, including:
- Continued access to networks and accounts. Beyond Identity surveyed over 1,000 employees and leaders and found that 83% continued to access company accounts after leaving.
- Sensitive data being transferred to personal devices, email, or storage, a process known as data exfiltration. Another Beyond Identity survey found that 91% of employees retained access to some company files after offboarding.
These issues pose a security risk as they leave your networks and infrastructure open to infiltration or attack. Almost one third of employers surveyed by Beyond Identity could trace a website hack back to poor offboarding. Sensitive company data may fall into the hands of competitors who can then gain an advantage.
Then there is data protection compliance to consider:
- ISO 27001 requires employees' access to be formally revoked and all assets returned once they have left;
- SOC 2 requires all documentation to be transferred within 24 hours of termination;
- And GDPR requires you to revoke employee access to any systems containing personal data.
Fail to execute offboarding correctly and you could fall foul of these regulations, resulting in a hefty fine.
Knowledge loss
Whenever an employee leaves, they take with them knowledge, experience, and skills that they have gained during their time with you. Knowledge loss during offboarding can include:
- Failure to properly transfer formal knowledge and documentation. 64% of IT managers said they had lost important knowledge when a team member leaves, according to a survey by Sinequa. Short notice periods increase the risk of this occurring, as does failure to accurately capture and preserve recurring workflows, which can now be effortlessly done using AI tools.
- Loss of undocumented, informal knowledge like client preferences, the reasoning behind key decisions, and workarounds that keep a system functioning.
The cost of failure to transfer knowledge effectively can be severe. Teammates that remain will have to invest extra time searching for information or researching topics. Onboarding of new hires or replacements can also take longer. Panopto has concluded that, on average, $47 million is lost annually by every large company in the US because of productivity losses caused by lost knowledge.
Then there are stakeholder relationships to consider. A key employee may have held vital knowledge on a client relationship which, once gone, means trust is eroded and the quality of product or service delivered to them goes down, directly impacting loyalty.
Lower team morale
The employee leaving your company will have built connections and friendships with many of the team that remains, so the way they leave the company can impact morale. Furthermore, your offboarding process is a reflection of how people are treated within your organization.
Employer brand and reputation
When an employee leaves your company, they don't simply drop off the face of the earth. They go on to work for other companies, and, of course, they talk to people. Your offboarding process gives you an opportunity to ensure those conversations are positive.
A comprehensive offboarding process that includes an exit interview is much more likely to ensure they speak about you in a positive, or at least neutral, manner. This can support your future hiring efforts, especially if you recruit from a relatively small pool of specialists or a limited geographical area.
Offboarding checklist by owner
There are three critical process owners in any offboarding: HR, the employee's direct manager, and IT. Each has a unique and important role to play, so to ensure every box is ticked, we've put together an offboarding checklist for each.
Manager's offboarding checklist
Managers play a crucial role in offboarding, including kicking off the entire process. Here is a checklist you can use to ensure you have followed the correct steps - this checklist applies to voluntary departures (resignations) where the manager has at least two weeks before the departure date.
| Action | Timing |
| Inform HR and IT of the departure date for your team member. | - Immediately after notice is received |
| Organize an exit interview together with HR (including gaining managerial approval if needed). Aim to capture honest feedback that can help you make improvements to the team. | - Up to 1 week prior to the departure date |
| Communicate the departure to the team. This is important for managing morale, and also addressing practical questions such as who is covering the departing employee's tasks. | - Up to 1 week prior to the departure date |
| Schedule a handover session with all relevant staff to ensure ongoing projects, client relationships, and processes are discussed and all tasks are reassigned. Discuss any tools or software the employee has admin rights to. Document what is covered during the handover. | - During the employee's final week |
How to make knowledge transfer easier
For seamless handovers, including fully recorded recurring workflows, incorporate Guideless. It's an AI tool that captures processes and turns them into video tutorials. Departing colleagues can simply click through a standard workflow or tool, and Guideless will record their screen and turn it into an easy-to-follow video that's ideal for getting other staff quickly up to speed.
HR offboarding checklist
HR needs to have an overview of the entire offboarding process and handle key administrative tasks. This offboarding checklist, relevant for voluntary departures, will help ensure you complete all the necessary tasks.
| Action | Timing |
| Double-check all of the details about the departure with the relevant manager. These include the last working day and reason for leaving. Ensure IT and payroll have been informed. | - Immediately after being informed by the manager |
| Complete and submit all final documentation, such as termination letters, references, and certificates. | - Up to 1 week prior to the departure date |
| Participate in the exit interview together with the relevant manager. Ensure any issues regarding compensation and benefits are addressed. | - Up to 1 week prior to the departure date |
| Ensure all final payments are processed, and any owed expenses, accrued leave, severance, and other benefits are settled in accordance with local employment law. | - During the employee's final week |
IT offboarding checklist
IT departments have the most complex and critical role to play in employee offboarding. So we have put together a more comprehensive checklist that covers both voluntary and involuntary departures.
| Action | Timing for voluntary departure (resignation) | Timing for involuntary departure (termination) |
| Block the employee's sign-in at the identity provider. This is essential because it prevents any further authentication by the employee. | - Last day of employment | - Within 60 minutes of employee being informed |
| Revoke any active sessions the employee has running. Otherwise, an employee can remain active for hours after blocking the account. | - Last day of employment | - Within 60 minutes of employee being informed |
| Remove admin rights and access to systems. | - Progressively during final week, completed on final day | - Within 60 minutes of employee being informed |
| Reset their account password. Use a randomly generated password that only the IT admin knows. | - Last day of employment | - Within 60 minutes of employee being informed |
| Audit their access to all SaaS tools such as marketing tools, CRMs, project management apps, and AI tools. Talk to their manager and team and review expense reports to track down any "shadow" apps they were using without IT's knowledge. Disable any local accounts you find. | - Progressively during final week, completed on final day | - As soon as possible after the employee's last day |
| Revoke any API keys, OAuth grants, and personal access tokens for developer tools like GitHub and Jira that the employee may have created. | - As soon as possible after the employee's last day | - As soon as possible after the employee's last day |
| For in-office employees, collect all company-issued hardware such as laptops, mobile phones, tablets, USB drives, external drives, and headsets. | - Before they leave the office on their final day | - Before they leave the office on their final day |
| For remote employees, conduct a remote wipe immediately and then organize retrieval of all hardware. | - Before the end of their final day | - Before the end of their final day |
| Document all serial numbers once equipment is returned, update your register of assets, and then wipe the devices. | - Within 1 week of return of hardware, and before any assets are reassigned to new employees | - Within 1 week of return of hardware, and before any assets are reassigned to new employees |
| Ensure all critical data is transferred from email accounts and workspaces before discontinuing these. Set up auto-replies and forwarding and be sure to reclaim the now unused license. | - Within 24 hours of employee's departure | - Within 24 hours of employee's departure |
| Notify all relevant stakeholders of the actions you have taken, including their direct manager and HR. | - Once all other steps are completed | - Once all other steps are completed |
Offboarding checklist template (copy and paste)
Copy and paste this simple offboarding checklist template to create your own
| Offboarding checklist template Employee name: _______________________ Role/department: _______________________ Last working day: _______________________ Reason for leaving (voluntary/involuntary): _______________________ Offboarding owner: _______________________
|
Common offboarding mistakes
These checklists should ensure your offboarding processes are watertight. Nevertheless, it's still important to be mindful of some common mistakes that are made during offboarding.
- Delaying the start of the process: Given the complexity of offboarding, the process should begin as soon as notice is given.
- Ignoring the data exfiltration risk: During the notice period, the risk of employees extracting data to their own private hardware or systems can increase significantly. To avoid this, monitor for emails to personal accounts and large data or file transfers.
- No ownership: Even if your processes are well-defined, if there is no clear owner for each task, and for the overall offboarding process, key tasks can be missed.
- Missing orphaned privileges and shared credentials: API keys, service accounts, or shared logins that are not tied to a single identity may still be accessible to staff that have exited.