In North America, we're living in a generation where leaving jobs has lost it's taboo. Whether it's getting out of something toxic, finding a new challenge or moving into a different industry, employees are no longer sticking around in environments that aren't serving them. This shift is hugely positive and with it, there's a greater expectation of businesses to be better at on-boarding new employees and building meaningful and relevant retention initiatives.
The issue is, with this focus on the beginning and middle of an employee journey, we're neglecting their final days. As businesses, when an employee resigns there's a lot of awkward feelings. Perhaps we feel resentful, or stressed, there's typically a shock factor (which is a topic for another post) and then there's the not-so-gradual alienation of someone who used to be an integral part of the team.

Businesses have separation anxiety, and that's perfectly normal. The trouble isn't that we struggle with saying goodbye to good employees, it's that we forget how great they were the moment HR gets that letter of resignation. The language we use, the narrative we tell, it typically centres around a loss and a feeling of abandonment, and lack of commitment or loyalty. We can't be proud of employees for finding their next big thing because we're so busy licking our wounds.
Thought experiment: What would happen if we got excited instead. How would our employees' situation change if rather than running scared and pouring our resources and energy into finding their replacement we instead had a functional off-boarding program.
At all the companies I've worked for, the extent of their off-boarding was an exit interview and a vacation payout calculation. Considering I was part of HR at all these organizations, mea culpa. But, it's not just my past organizations that are neglecting this process.
To be honest, I only really recognized the need for an effective off-boarding plan when I resigned from my last role and was completely rejected the moment that letter was in my CEO's hands. The feeling of going from being a highly valued employee to pond-scum in a matter of minutes sent me into a frenzy of "what the heck are we doing as HR people and managers, why aren't we doing this better??"

So how do we do it? Well, in my opinion, there are a few moving parts:
The replacement
The knowledge transfer
The recognition
The feedback cycle
The Replacement: In order to not freak out when an employee resigns, it's important to know what you're doing with their role. Every manager, on a bi-annual basis should be evaluating their team and asking themselves "if one of them left tomorrow, how would I cope?" and then meeting with HR to plan this out. Sometimes it's a matter of having a warm pool of candidates for key roles, other times it's being better at cross training to compensate while you hire. Whatever the case, knowing you have a weak spot is the first step.
The Knowledge Transfer: Every employee, no matter their role or level in the organization, has a curated knowledge base that is unique to them and imperative to keep in the business. If your employee gives you two weeks notice, that first 1-3 days should be spent documenting everything. Have meetings, listen to them, bring the rest of the team in, take notes, discuss and write it down. I put an emphasis on person-to-person transfers because a written document can often be meaningless without the personal context it was written in, but find a hybrid that's optimized for your team; how they learn and how they document things and then soak up all the goodness before it's gone forever.
The Recognition: You are where you are today because of this employee's contributions. There's no two ways about it. Not everyone can be granted stock options or given promotions as a reward for their hard work, but it takes nothing from the business to recognize publicly what they've contributed. I always see posts on LinkedIn celebrating new hires, but I don't think I've ever seen a post celebrating a team member moving on in their career and a grateful message for all they've added. Let's get better at thanking our team members for the role they played and not striking them from the record before the ink is dry.
The Feedback Cycle: As I mentioned earlier, exit interviews are a pretty common, and sometimes an only step in off-boarding an employee. The issue with these is that they can quickly become counterproductive if handled the wrong way. I would argue that most employees don't take an exit interview to heart. I've heard it first hand that the belief is the employer will take notes, store the file in the bowels of an HRIS or cloud drive and never look at it again. So my challenge to all HR people out there is: create a structure for this feedback. There should be a process of collecting information, sharing information and deciding what changes are necessary to implement. If you can demonstrate to your current employees that the feedback from those who have moved on is valued, imagine how much more active feedback you'd get from your current team. We share when we know there will be an impact, otherwise, our time is spent in better places.
So why all this focus on off-boarding, if they've already left the company, who cares? Well, wrong. What this mindset is forgetting is that every employee who leaves continues to act as a spokesperson and ambassador for your company. It's on their LinkedIn, it's in their resume, it's on their minds. They can either speak about you with pride and the feeling of being valued, or they can drag your reputation through the dirt on platforms like Glassdoor and social media platforms. When we off-board an employee respectfully, we are directly impacting our employer branding and the chances of snagging top talent when recruiting.
It may sound counterintuitive, but the priority can't be simply be on the beginning of the employee journey, the end of it counts just as much, if not more and should be given the same level of care and attention. Let's be better at saying goodbye and thank-you, it's the least we all deserve.
Looking for support in organizing your off-boarding steps? Checkout getaboard.co! Not an ad or a plug, just a platform that I truly believe in and will save you the headache of organizing all the moving parts.
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