How To Take Automatic Offboarding Back To Its Humane Roots

Offboarding is essential to the employee work life cycle. Whether an employee is laid off or leaves on their accord, offboarding is something that a company needs to run and keep track of.

However, since much of the process is done through automation, it’s still far from perfect. Sometimes, automation can be prone to making mistakes during its run. Plus, consider mechanical errors blending into human errors made by team members  – that would be detrimental to your company’s offboarding efforts.

The good news is, automation and humanity can work hand-in-hand in offboarding so that all employees depart their company without any strings attached. In this quick guide, we’ll explore automatic offboarding in terms of bringing humanity back to the process. Read on!

Why It’s Important To Make Automatic Offboarding More Human

“While automatically offboarding an employee is an essential task to take when letting them go, it’s still important for real-life people to monitor this process,” says Laura Springs, a career writer at Draft Beyond. “Knowing what your employee had access to, and taking away that access, are things that someone in your Human Resources department needs to see firsthand so that nothing is left to chance. Without human monitoring, the door will be left open for potential fraudsters to come in and infiltrate company data.”

Here are a few reasons why automatic offboarding still needs a touch of humanity:

• Former Employees Turn Into Future Ones

While people leave companies for reasons, it’s still important to view ex-employees as future employees. While they might not work for you anymore, you can still see them as colleagues and, perhaps, catch up with them sometime after they get settled into their new job or environment. Or, they may come back to you eventually. You never know!

• Former Employees Become Your Ambassadors

In addition, if an employee leaves on good terms, then they might recommend your business to other job seekers. If he or she had great times working with you and your company, they’ll most likely bring it up to their friends and family. 

This goes to go that, like first impressions, positive memories help prove your case in why people should work for you. In that case, formal employees can turn into ambassadors for your company, vouching for you as much as possible.

• Former Employees Are Also Your Customers

Also, former employees might still shop from you, if you’re, say, a shopping mall or a brick-and-mortar store. This shows that they’re willing to support your business furthermore by buying from you. You can even ask for their testimonials as a means to promote your products and services, thus acting as a global public service to the community.

• Security Reasons

No technology is without flaws. Companies cannot afford to make mistakes, especially in offboarding. Making mistakes can cost severe security risks and threats. That’s why it’s important to revoke access to your company’s systems, once an employee leaves. In this way, nothing is left exposed, and nothing can be shared outside the company.

• To Ensure Compliance

Of course, every company should have a set of rules and regulations. The offboarding process (automatic, in this case) should be run in accordance with said rules and regulations – that’s called compliance. 

Automatic Offboarding In 9 Steps

Surprisingly, automatic offboarding doesn’t take much to implement in your company, regardless if you’re mid-sized, or made up of private companies. In fact, here are 9 steps in implementing automatic offboarding, while you keep the humane element in it:

1. Thank (And Congratulate) Departing Employee

First and foremost, congratulate your employee for finding another job and or leaving their job to seek another opportunity. Instead of making them feel guilty about leaving, show your support for those looking for a new job or opportunity. Also, be sure to say “thank you” for their services to you and the company. You’ll need to make their departure a positive experience for them. 

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2. Talk About It

While the departure may make you speechless at first, you can’t hold off what needs to be said to your employee before they leave. Instead, have a heart-to-heart chat with your employee. Listen to them, and don’t make fun of them for leaving. Remember: Everyone has their own reasons for departing. Also, don’t wait to say something, and don’t overtalk the departing employee.

3. Keep Employee’s Knowledge In The Company

Once an employee leaves, they also relieve their right to accessing data from your company. In other words, what’s in the company stays in the company. Even if that employee has been with the company for more than 20 years, all knowledge in the company stays there. 

Such data includes: 

• Daily routines

• Prioritized tasks

• System access

• System files

• The people in the company 

• Interior staff

• Exterior staff

• Training procedures, etc.

However, should you need your former employee’s knowledge of something from the company, they can tell you at your discretion. 

4. Recover Assets Left By Employee

Assets from your former employee may include the following:

• Company badges

• Uniforms

• Phones, laptops, and other devices

• Company car

• Credit cards, etc.

Don’t forget to ask these back from the former employee, so that the transition is not left open-ended. 

5. Revoke Access To Company Systems

As mentioned, what goes on at the company stays in the company. Not only should former employees turn in their assets, but also relieve their access to company systems. This is so that there’s no chance of a lone wolf or group infiltrating the systems without your permission.

6. Exit Interviews

Exit interviews are ideal, especially when seeing a great employee leave. Regardless of position and performance, consider giving your departing employees exit interviews. 

When conducting exit interviews, ask your departing employees questions regarding their feedback. With that said, keep questions like these in mind: 

• What are the things that you’ve admired about the company?

• What wasn’t fun about working here?

• How can the company improve?

• What was your experience when you first joined the company?

• Would you recommend the company to other job seekers? Why or why not?

7. Update Organizational Charts

Organizational charts and directories are essential parts of your company. That’s why, when an employee leaves, you’ll need to update said charts and directories so that there are no discrepancies in employee data. This prevents any future confusion when evaluating and paying your current employees. 

8. Take Employee Off Of Payroll

The last thing you want is to pay an employee that’s no longer with the company. In that case, you’ll need to take former employees off of payroll, so that they don’t end up with money that they don’t deserve. 

Even though payroll systems can be automated like virtually anything else in your company, you should still have someone or a group of people in your company oversee how payroll is being handled. When doing so, have them look at the following factors:

• End date

• Notice period

• Possible holidays waiting for payout, etc.

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9. Keep In Touch With Departing Employee

“When an employee leaves, be sure to stay in touch with them,” says Teddy Collins, an HR expert at Research papers UK and Writinity. “Treat them as you would an old friend. Maybe hang out with them every once in a while, for lunch or coffee. You can also write them a letter of recommendation for their next employment opportunity.”

Conclusion

Offboarding is, and will always be, part of a company. While it may be sad to see an employee go, that’s part of life in general – people come and go.

But ultimately, offboarding will still need humans to monitor the process, despite being automated in your company. As you can see, consistency is key to running such a process, since it involves a wide range of steps and considerations that your company must take, in order for things to go smoothly. That means making sure that both automation and humanity must work hand-in-hand to have successful offboarding in your company.

We hope that this guide has helped you to understand offboarding, and how automation needs human help despite its technological advances over the years. And, we hope that all of your employees leave on good terms, should they seek other job opportunities.

About Author: Alex Dubinski is a writer and editor at Research paper writing services and Gum essays. He is also a contributing writer for Last-minute writing. As an online marketing strategist, he has five years of experience of working in the marketing industry.