Developing an SOP: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Employee Offboarding Process

The Importance of Employee Resignation Management

Employee turnover management is an extremely sensitive process.

One negative comment about company culture can affect a company’s reputation. While HR departments put a lot of effort into creating a pleasant onboarding experience, the offboarding process often gets less attention. When it’s time to part ways with an employee, a thoughtful offboarding process is essential. This ensures a smooth transition for both parties and transfers the employee’s knowledge and experience to team members.

In this post, we’ll cover basic employee offboarding SOPs, how to build a comprehensive offboarding checklist, and share best practices for success.

Why is the resignation process SOP so important?

No company wants to be on the "blacklist" of former employees. Therefore, the offboarding process SOP should be smooth, safe and professional. Here are the key reasons why the offboarding process is so important:

1. Former employees are the company’s “ambassadors”

Some employees form close family-like relationships within the company, and often leave with an emotional heart. They will talk about the company in their new work environment and may become word-of-mouth communicators for the company. 75% of job seekers pay attention to the brand image of the employer before applying for a job. Therefore, resignation management is directly related to the brand image of the company and lays a good foundation for subsequent recruitment.

2. Leave a "door of return" for former employees

A good exit SOP can make employees feel satisfied when they leave, so they may consider returning in the future. Moreover, returning former employees often means that they are a good fit for the company culture, reducing training costs and improving productivity.

3. Ensure smooth knowledge transfer

A complete resignation SOP can ensure a smooth handover of knowledge and responsibilities, reduce operational disruptions caused by employee resignation, and ensure business continuity. Using knowledge sharing tools such as HelpLook AI knowledge base can help employees share knowledge internally, collaborate easily, and build a knowledge base for subsequent reference and use.

4. Protect sensitive information

An effective off-boarding process protects the sensitive information of the enterprise, ensures that access rights to all company data and systems are revoked, and company property is recovered, thereby reducing the risk of data leakage and misuse of confidential information. According to statistics, 76% of IT leaders said that "off-boarding is a major security threat." In order to deal with the risks brought by off-boarding, it is necessary to establish effective protocols to extract relevant information about application availability and take action.

Tip: You can use automated processes to reduce human errors, such as closing SaaS accounts, revoking passwords, updating system permissions, and other tasks to improve the efficiency and security of the resignation process.

 

Steps to Develop an Employee Resignation SOP

The first step in developing an exit process is to stay calm. After all, leaving is not easy for both employees and employers. Here are some key points to start with when you begin your exit documentation.

1. Identify key stakeholders

First, ensure that all stakeholders involved in the offboarding process are on the same page and understand the steps required for an employee to leave. Clearly communicate the roles and information needs of each person involved to facilitate the smooth processing of the employee’s offboarding. For example, if a departing employee has an emergency loan, the finance department needs to calculate and prepare the final settlement amount to ensure that the salary is paid accurately.

These key stakeholders include HR, IT personnel, department managers and other relevant departments. Ensuring that everyone is clear about their roles and responsibilities can facilitate a smooth and efficient resignation process.

2. Make a resignation checklist

Create an exit checklist in a centralized document so you can quickly access and execute it each time an employee leaves. If information is scattered, it’s easy to miss steps, which can affect employee satisfaction and team collaboration.

3. Make it clear what the expectations are for leaving the company

When an employee resigns, HR should notify the employee via email of the specific timeline, required steps, and responsibilities of IT and payroll. This transparency reduces confusion and ensures a smooth transition. At the same time, managers should inform their team, department, and HR of the employee's departure as soon as possible.

4. Prepare an exit interview form

This is one of the few opportunities for companies to understand their employees’ on-the-job experience. The feedback collected during the exit interview can help companies improve the experience of future employees. However, the most important thing is to set the right questions in the form to get valuable answers. You can refer to the following questions:

- What is the reason for leaving?
- How is your experience working with your superiors?
- Recommended replacements and required skills?
- What is your favorite part of your job?
- What part of the company culture do you want to change?
- What is your favorite thing about the company culture?
- Did you receive pre-job training to help with the transition?

These questions can help companies gain a deeper understanding of their employees’ experiences, thoughts, and feelings as a basis for future improvements.

5. Establish a knowledge transfer program

A former employee’s knowledge can still be useful a year later, so make sure it’s preserved within your company. Keep records of their daily activities, priorities, file access permissions, system documentation, and handover details (especially if it involves freelancers or contractors).

Consider creating a separate document or video detailing best practices for their specific tasks, which will allow successors to quickly get up to speed.

Knowledge transfer documents should include ongoing projects, key node dates, etc. Create operation manuals and guides for key tasks to ensure a smooth transition during the handover process without affecting operational efficiency. Using online document tools such as HelpLook AI knowledge base will make the knowledge transfer process easier and more convenient for the team to access.

6. Ensure privacy and confidentiality

Security is the primary consideration when employees leave the company, and any negligence may cause huge losses. According to the Biscom report, 87% of employees who leave the company take away company data, of which 28% take away data created by others, 87% of data leaks include company reports and strategic documents, 31% involve customer lists, and 25% involve intellectual property. This type of data leakage will bring huge risks to the company.

It is recommended to take strict security control measures to avoid similar incidents. The following measures can be taken to strengthen privacy protection:

- Disable the SSO account of former employees to ensure the security of critical systems.
- Closing former employees’ SaaS accounts not only helps improve security and compliance, but also saves costs.

Three best practices for the resignation process

Make sure every team member is involved when an employee leaves. Make sure the employee feels respected, not ignored. Make their departure as thoughtful as when they were welcomed into the company, so they have great memories of their last day at the company.

1. Regularly update the resignation process checklist

Every company should adjust its resignation checklist in a timely manner based on updates to policies and procedures to ensure that the resignation process meets the latest standards.

2. Document Retention and Archiving

As a member of the HR department, you can retrieve documents such as exit interview records, final settlement forms, and knowledge transfer records at any time. Keeping these important documents in a centralized location for easy access at any time ensures efficient and orderly information management.

3. Revocation of technical access rights

49% of companies lose at least 5% of their company assets when an employee leaves. This shows that companies need to strengthen the protection of their IT environment. With the increase in technology applications, especially the popularity of SaaS and cloud services, companies need to revoke access to their cloud infrastructure and networks when employees leave. This can be achieved through SSO management tools or by revoking permissions directly from applications to ensure the security of corporate data.

Summarize

With the help of knowledge base software, establish employee resignation documents, including resignation policies, training and handover plans, legal compliance checklists, etc. This will improve HR's work efficiency and help smooth the transition.

HelpLook AI knowledge base promotes employee communication, guides departure steps and realizes automated workflow. If you want to improve employee experience and document management, you might as well use this tool to explore cutting-edge areas such as file management , content management , AI conversation and process guidance , so that enterprises can provide employees with a better working experience while improving operational performance.

Click here to explore the HelpLook AI knowledge base for free