When an employee departs your organization, the offboarding process helps tie up loose ends and protect the company. While every company’s process might look slightly different, the major steps of offboarding an employee remain the same. Creating your own employee offboarding checklist helps ensure that you don’t miss any crucial steps when it’s time to say goodbye.
Here’s a general guide to creating your own custom offboarding checklist.
What to include in your offboarding checklist
Offboarding processes are a good way to ensure that your company has met all employment obligations, retrieved company property, protected sensitive data, gotten up to speed on the employee’s duties and progress, and finalized outstanding paperwork. When you conduct an exit interview at the end of the offboarding process, you can also solicit valuable feedback to ensure the company’s future success.
Typically, offboarding consists of these main areas: finalizing paperwork and giving required notice, revoking IT access and retrieving company property, ensuring that you have all the necessary information to continue the employee’s duties after departure, soliciting feedback during an exit interview, and retaining the relevant employee information.
Depending on your company type, location, and the employee’s specific duties, your offboarding checklist may vary between organizations, departments, and employment type. For instance, high-level executives may be offered severance bonuses in exchange for agreeing to sign non-disclosure and non-compete provisions, and their access to sensitive company information will need to be revoked. In contrast, an entry-level retail employee’s offboarding process will be more streamlined: they likely did not have access to confidential information, nor will they have significant company property to return.
How to customize your employee offboarding checklist
Your organization’s or department’s needs will dictate the offboarding process. Companies may choose to make one comprehensive offboarding checklist, or customized versions for different company sectors or states. Because employee duties, access, and responsibilities can vary, creating specific custom checklists can be very helpful.
The best way to customize your checklist is to sit down and consider your obligations under state and federal employment law—for instance, many states require a written separation notice and have strict rules about when final payments are due. Once you know your obligations, you’ll know which legal steps to take throughout the offboarding process.
Next, consider your company property and confidential information—and which employees have access to either. Revoking access and retrieving company property will look very different for a technology company versus a restaurant.
The next step is to check in to ensure that your team can hit the ground running after the terminated employee departs. Their specific role and duties will dictate which kind of knowledge transfer questions you need to ask, if any.
Finally, think about what you’d like to get out of the exit interview process. This is your final chance to give an employee a positive experience, as well as find out what could be improved. If you’re hoping to rehire the employee in the future, this portion of the process can be especially helpful. Consider what your specific company should know about the employee experience—whether that’s how comfortable the uniforms are to whether the employee felt valued and fairly compensated.
Employee offboarding steps
Here are the key items to include in your offboarding checklist for managers:
Paperwork
- State and federally mandated disclosures or notices
- Separation agreement (if applicable)
- Tax documents
- 401(k) documents
- Outstanding payments and reimbursements
- Record retention schedules
Property and permissions
- Return technical equipment (laptop, cell phone, cameras)
- Return company ID badge and keys
- Return parking passes
- Return uniforms
- Return vehicles and keys
- Revoke access to email, communication platforms, and other systems
- Update passwords
- Update company directory and organizational charts
- Update company website
- Set up email and call forwarding
- Remove employee from payroll
Knowledge transfer
- List job duties and describe processes
- List important contacts
- Locate important work records
- Request status report of ongoing projects
- Request list of outstanding tasks
- Transfer duties to other team members
Exit interview
- Schedule meeting with employee
- Offer exit questionnaire and review feedback
- Discuss outstanding issues and solicit feedback
- Organize insights
Support your employment processes with SixFifty
SixFifty creates employment tools to support organizations throughout the employment lifecycle. Our Employment Docs platform guides employers through every stage of the employment lifecycle, from hiring to separation. Our employment tools allow businesses to generate top-tier employment documents like termination notices and separation agreements quickly and cost-effectively. Best of all, our legal team keeps a close eye on employment legislation nationwide. Each time you generate an employment document, it’ll be compliant with all state and federal laws.
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