Offboarding is defined as a formal separation between an employee and an organisation through resignation, retirement, termination, or any other reason. A comprehensively administered offboarding process assists the organisation to alleviate risks and potential losses by ensuring that during the employee’s exit phase, knowledge, processes, procedures and documentation are transferred to the new or existing employee/s.

An effective offboarding process entails the following:

Offboarding Administration

Offboarding administration includes completed documentation such as Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) documents, a certificate of service, a letter of recommendation, a letter of resignation, non-disclosure forms, medical aid forms, pension fund forms, tax documents and any other relevant information required at this stage.

Handover

The handover of work includes the transfer of knowledge, expertise, and projects to a new or existing employee/s. It requires the complete transfer of roles and responsibilities. This process must include a handover checklist, and electronic and physical files containing all information. This information should also be backed up.

Retrieval of company property

An exit checklist should be compiled. Information required for the exit checklist will include information such as:

• System Access: Delete the employee’s email address, login information, bank information and software.
• Assets: Retrieve the company vehicle, company laptop and company phone.
• Finance/Accounts: Retrieve credit card/s, outstanding debts and staff loans.
• Uniform: Retrieve the uniform where necessary, name badge and Personal Protective Equipment.
• Security: Keys must be returned, and the employee’s profile must be removed from the biomatrix system, payroll system and the company website.

Communicate with IT

The IT department needs to deactivate the profile and access permissions of the departing employee from all computers and electronic systems. This ensures that the organisation is protected from unauthorised access. In addition, the employee’s email address may be disabled and any emails that are sent to that address should be redirected to another email account.

Conduct an exit interview

An exit interview should be arranged between the human resources department or the relevant line manager and the employee exiting the organisation. The purpose of an exit interview is to assess the employee’s overall experience within the organisation and to seek opportunities to improve retention, employee engagement and morale.

Farewell 

A farewell can be arranged by the organisation. This expresses gratitude and well-wishes to the departing employee for his/her service.

Dr Prishana Datadin

Human Resources Manager

https://www.hibob.com/hr-glossary/offboarding/

https://www.bamboohr.com/blog/offboarding-why-it-matters

https://www.hracuity.com/blog/importance-of-exit-interviews