Offboarding is a process used by employers to smoothly transition employees out of an organisation. While many employers utilise onboarding processes to familiarise new hires with company culture, offboarding practices are often overlooked. While it may be sad to see employees leave, employers can make the best of a bad situation by leveraging departures to gain valuable insight into company failings, thereby enabling workplace improvements.

Consider the following benefits of offboarding:

• Seamless productivity—When employees leave, they take with them role-specific knowledge that could be lost. As such, offboarding facilitates discussions with departing employees to determine how responsibilities and ongoing projects will be disseminated to the wider team. Consequently, operations can continue as normal and workforce productivity losses can be kept to a minimum.

• Bolstered security—A sound offboarding process can help ensure adherence to data security regulations—which are vital considering that 20% of organisations reported experiencing data breaches caused by former employers, according to software company OneLogin. As such, offboarding practices allow employers to implement steps—such as disabling accounts and changing passwords—to avoid potential security problems.

• Valuable insight—Exit interviews are part and parcel of solid offboarding processes. By asking departing employees for their honest feedback, organisations can identify weak areas and take steps to remedy them.

• Enhanced company brand—If outgoing employees have a smooth and friendly offboarding, they may be less likely to post negative comments about the company on social media and more likely to recommend the organisation to others. Additionally, employees may be more inclined to return in the future, which could be beneficial in the current labour market where skill shortages are plentiful. Unfortunately, 71% of businesses may be failing to fill skill gaps due to limited successful offboarding processes, according to research by analysis company Wiley Edge. As such, it would be prudent for organisations to review their current offboarding practices to avoid suffering the same fate.

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