You know it's important to onboard employees. You've heard it from HR, you've heard it from your manager, and you remember reading about it on the internet. But what about when an employee leaves?
You may be wondering what this process is all about and whether there is anything you should do to help employees transition from the company. That's why we've put together the importance of employee turnover and shared a comprehensive turnoff checklist in this article.
Employee turnover is the process of managing employee exit. This refers to situations where an employee takes a leave of absence and terminates an employee's employment. It includes the following tasks:
End all tasks and projects for employees.
Ensure that all of the employee's responsibilities are transferred to another employee.
Conduct exit interviews.
Recovery of any company assets
Make sure they leave on good terms.
This can be a difficult process for you and your former employees, so it's important to have a solid plan in place to ensure this transition is handled seamlessly and respectfully.
We often talk about onboarding new employees and how companies can create a seamless onboarding experience, but ensuring a smooth transition when employees decide to leave the company is also an important aspect of HR and management.
Since this is the last step in an employee's tenure with the company, it's crucial to make sure everything goes smoothly. Here are some of the reasons:
Strengthen your employer brand
Protect the company from legal action.
Prevent employees from sharing confidential information with competitors
Give employees a positive final impression of your company.
Open the door for top employees to return, or refer you as an employer
Ensure that employees maintain a good relationship when they leave the company.
There are many benefits to getting employees off the job right. On the one hand, it can help boost the employer's brand by maintaining a good reputation among candidates, but it can also support compliance by ensuring that all legal obligations are met and that no documents or information are left behind.
In addition to this, a constructive and thoughtful employee offboarding process can also reduce costs by ensuring that relevant information and knowledge does not leave with the departing employee, but remains within the company for use by a replacement employee. This will help reduce onboarding time and increase productivity and efficiency.
Of course, there are a number of different approaches you can take to the offboarding process, but there are some best practices to keep in mind when structuring your offboarding approach – and these are best compiled in your offboarding checklist.
The employee exit checklist should be a document that can be used by HR, managers, and employees to ensure that all necessary tasks are completed. It should be a dynamic document that is regularly reviewed and updated. It's important for everyone involved in the process to have an up-to-date version of the separation checklist so that there are no surprises later when finalizing employee information or submitting documents to the agency.
So, when you're preparing your exit documents, keep the following points in mind.
Communicate personnel changes to the rest of the team. There's nothing worse than rumors about if and why an employee is leaving, so make sure you're up to date and in charge of the onboarding process.
This includes clearly communicating the changes in the team to everyone and making sure they understand the impact this may have on their work. Additionally, ensuring that your employees are able to communicate directly if they have any questions or concerns about impending changes can also help put everyone at ease.
Management is an important part of managing a team, and this also includes employee turnover. Depending on your company's policies and procedures, you may need to prepare some** for departing employees.
These can include:
NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement).
Receipts for the return of company property, such as laptops and cell phones.
Proof of employment. If you don't find a replacement when an employee leaves, create a plan for how your team will handle their responsibilities. This may mean that you will ask other employees or contractors to take on tasks temporarily until a new person is found.
You should also make sure that everyone understands what tasks they are responsible for and when they need to be done.
Knowledge transfer is an extremely important part of exit management. If you don't ensure that the knowledge and experience gained by your existing employees is properly passed on to the rest of your team, you risk losing valuable company information – not to mention that employee productivity can also suffer if a new employee has to do so from scratch and potentially run into issues that could have been addressed with a proper handover.
To ensure that employees transfer their knowledge, you can prompt them to write a handover document with any information and knowledge required for the position, or organize training sessions – best case scenario, including a replacement employee.
Another important part of leaving is conducting an exit interview. Not only will this allow you to provide feedback to outgoing candidates about the time they've spent with the company, but it will also allow you to receive constructive criticism and why they're leaving.
These insights are highly valuable and can create a better employee experience for the rest of the team and stay ahead of any other team member who may be leaving for the same reason.
To prepare for the exit interview, be sure to create a questionnaire for employees to fill out and ask for feedback on how your organization can improve.
One of the final steps in the employee offboarding process is to gather company assets, such as laptops and other hardware. You should also revoke any access to internal documents and company software provided to employees.
Finally, say goodbye!It's a great feeling to see off employees by organizing an exit party or giving a team gift to commemorate the time spent together and the time spent working together.
At the very least, make sure to write a nice email or say a few words on their last day.
With all the benefits and best practices we've outlined, it's clear that employee turnover is a critical part of a team's success. This checklist will help you ensure that your employees are prepared for the next step in their lives and help your company succeed after your employees leave.