Most managers recognise onboarding as essential to enhancing productivity and retention. Conversely, offboarding is often ignored or viewed as an inconvenient task! While this is understandable, since offboarding can be time-consuming and typically occurs when understaffed, it can result in missed opportunities.

The Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) defines offboarding as completing the employee lifecycle in a structured way, aiming for a stress-free exit. Transactional components to offboarding, such as communication, handover, and final payments, are commonplace. Extending offboarding beyond the transactional can provide opportunities to develop employees, cement relationships, and improve as a team, leader and business. While this is not always possible, a different approach can yield better outcomes for an organisation, including continuing knowledge transfer, new business and word-of-mouth promotion of their employer brand.

So why, then, is offboarding often transactional in organisations? The most common reasons are organisational culture and management workload. As a result, HR has a significant role to play in shifting how organisations approach offboarding. Here, we discuss six reasons why effective offboarding should matter and be resourced.

1. Understanding critical compliance issues

Most companies have systems in place to ensure critical offboarding elements are covered, such as:

• Retrieval of company assets.
• Payment of entitlements: leave, superannuation and long service leave or bonuses (if relevant).
• Removal of access to technology.
• Handover documentation or meeting handovers.
• Exit interviews.

Other elements to consider include communication with team members and/or broader staff and customers. Where an employee’s role involves networking or customer interaction, this may include an email or social media announcement to provide transition information. It is also essential that organisations have systems in place for casuals. For example, if a casual receives regular shifts and these dry up, what mechanisms are triggered to assess the potential for future shifts? Leaving casuals in limbo can have negative consequences for both parties. Furthermore, confirming in writing that a casual’s employment arrangement has ceased is necessary to avoid any potential claim of ongoing employment.

2. Sharing institutional knowledge

For long term employees, it is common to lose knowledge when they leave. Creating a handover checklist, training schedule and documentation can help prioritise tasks for exiting employees. While it is often too late at this point for managers to change operational and task related silos, it is certainly worth reflecting on. Listed below are a few ways to build a culture of knowledge sharing:

• Peer learning or resource groups where employees share their knowledge and skills and connect. This can be achieved through microlearning sessions or collaborative group discussions.
• Creating knowledge-sharing spaces (think Microsoft Teams, intranets, databases or other technology platforms) to house valuable information.
• Establishing mentoring programs where learning goals are documented and discussed.
• Implementing an onboarding buddy program for an employee’s first 3, 6 or 12 months.

3. Learning opportunities

An organisation can look very different from the perspective of an employee leaving. They are likely to reflect on their time in the business, often in the context of the new organisation they are about to join. Exiting employees may look at the business more objectively on their way out and provide constructive feedback to help their colleagues. Some will also feel more comfortable expressing their frustrations during an exit interview, providing specific information for improvement or highlighting potential leadership, structural or process issues. A manager may also ask an exiting employee if they feel comfortable sharing anything about how they can improve as a manager or how the organisation can improve as an employer. However, due to the confidential nature of this feedback, it doesn’t always result in changes.

4. Enhancing relationships with customers

A resignation can put customer relationships at risk, particularly if a client has a long-standing relationship with a specific employee. Yet, this can also provide the opportunity for honest and robust conversations about what is working and what can be improved. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a critical component of offboarding, but it is common for organisations to have only informal processes when a customer-facing employee resigns. However, it is important to have processes in place so it is not left to chance. Often, the things we assume to be a focus in offboarding can create gaps!

5. Demonstrating how you live your organisational values

How a person is treated as they exit an organisation can have a lasting impact and should reflect organisational values. Have you seen disappointed managers or team members change their relationships with exiting colleagues or even be dismissed because they are leaving the team?  If an employee has given time to the organisation and made significant contributions, it is important to acknowledge this and make the effort to celebrate their time in the business. This will go a long way to building the company’s reputation as an employer of choice. It also sends a clear message of loyalty to existing employees, indicating you will be valued at every stage of your journey with the company.

6. Leaving the door open for future relationships

Keeping the door open for key talent requires a focus on all the above, along with an explicit reminder that they are welcome to discuss a return at any time is an important element of offboarding, especially for those employees early in their career. Bayside Group has had experience with key employees leaving to expand their experience and returning with new knowledge and skills, so perhaps we are a little biased on this point. Ultimately, providing a well-considered and executed offboarding program can reap rewards well into the future.

If you are struggling with the complexities of managing your workforce, contact Bayside Group today. We can help you develop tailored solutions to  optimise your workforce to meet your organisational goals. Learn more about our workforce management services here.