Parting is such sweet sorrow, but when it’s time to bid farewell to employees, a well-crafted employee offboarding policy can make the whole process more secure, efficient, and humane. And hey, who doesn’t want that? Whether it’s a voluntary or involuntary separation, let’s explore how to build a robust employee offboarding policy that keeps everyone smiling.
Wait, What’s An Employee Offboarding Policy Anyway?
Great question! An employee offboarding policy is a set of agreed-upon principles, processes, and guidelines that aim to provide a consistent, compliant, and effective methodology for safely and securely transitioning employees out of your organization.
But Offboarding Policies Are Just HR Stuff. Why Do I Need To Get Involved?
Now, here’s the thing. Offboarding is everyone’s business, not just HR. The comings and goings of people in your organization have an impact on various aspects like accounts, recruitment, facilities, performance management, and of course, good old IT. Just as you equip new hires with the necessary tech and services, it’s equally important to effectively manage the departure of employees. If you don’t, you might encounter some not-so-fun consequences:
- Increased risk of data breaches lurking around the corner.
- Unnecessary expenditure of precious resources.
- An unpleasant disruption in your IT asset lifecycle policy.
- Embarrassingly non-compliant encounters with data security regulations.
Building An Employee Offboarding Policy: Where to Begin
So, while offboarding policies involve multiple dimensions, let’s focus on the IT side since we’re an IT company—makes sense, right? But hey, we don’t want IT operating in a bubble. For a robust policy, you need good communication, which means becoming besties with HR.
By laying down solid foundations, you’ll be on your way to an offboarding policy that leaves everyone feeling positively nostalgic. However, if you find yourself staring blankly at your screen (wait, is that a smudge of ketchup?), unsure where to start, here are the essential elements you need:
Think On These:
- Scope: Who should be covered by your offboarding policy? Does it include temporary staff, seasonal staff, consultants, freelancers, and employees? Consider those who have access to your organization’s data or systems. Identify the types of individuals that should be included in your comprehensive offboarding policy.
- Communication: To ensure a proper IT offboarding process, what information do you need? Where does it come from? For example, HR can provide details about who’s leaving and when. Your office team can inform you when spare devices have been received. Use this information to develop a communication plan. And how do you know if someone has been offboarded securely? Well, you’ll create a shared Let’s Offboard These People!™ spreadsheet where you can check off tasks as you go. It’s marvelous!
- Compliance: Take a moment to review data security laws and any accreditations your organization holds, like SOC 2 or HIPAA. Identify the requirements and align your offboarding policy with them. For instance, SOC 2 may have controls that govern data access management, including revoking access.
- Roles & Responsibilities: It’s as easy as pie — determine who does what. For example, your HR manager notifies your IT lead about departing employees while your IT lead kicks off the IT offboarding process. Your IT junior handles account closures and license retrieval, and your IT lead confirms the completion of offboarding.
- Timing: When do things happen? How much notice do you need? Should sudden leavers become a priority? Consider the timing aspects of your offboarding process to ensure a smooth transition.
- Review: Who will review the policy and when? If things aren’t working as expected, who should be notified?
It’s all about common sense, really. From here, you can build your very own “Big Juicy Checklist Of IT Stuff To Do When People Leave.”
Must-Have Components of Your IT Offboarding To-Do List
Important considerations, my friends. From an IT perspective, you aim to keep data and systems safe, business operational and continuous, and offboard people safely, promptly, and with respect. Oh, and to automate everything that can’t run away.
Here are just five things for your checklist straightaway:
| Employee Offboarding Policy IT Checklist | |
| Task | IT Stuff To Do |
| Revoke Access and Close Accounts | Revoke employee access to their corporate email, files, and cloud services such as Slack. It’s important to remember to close cloud accounts, not just for data security reasons but because some cloud services will keep charging you for open accounts, even if they’re not used. If you have a BYOD policy, use mobile application management to transfer back corporate data and remove corporate applications on personal devices. |
| Collect Corporate Device | Arrange for collection, cleaning, maintenance, de-provisioning, and storage of ex-employee devices. This stunning example of IT asset management reduces risk, keeps you compliant, and makes you look good when someone needs a spare. |
| Backup Data | Ensure all ex-employee data and work are backed up according to the data retention chunk of your IT strategy (you got one, right?). |
| Change/Delete Passwords | Do you still have that common password that everyone uses for that database bulging with secret info? Oh, the shame! Delete/change that password and use an ID authentication system instead. |
| Review and Confirm | This is where your policy’s section on Roles and Responsibilities wasn’t a complete waste of time. Your IT Onboarding Lead (yes, you have one now) will review the offboarding to ensure it’s been done properly, and, heck, maybe they’ll even do a little random test audit to make sure those pesky accounts really, really are closed. |
The real fun begins when you put your offboarding policy into action. Consider conducting a few practice runs with simulated ex-employees. This way, you’ll uncover any overlooked details or issues that may arise in real-life scenarios. But fear not, my friends, because policy reviews are part of your IT strategy. You’ll assess what worked and what didn’t, continuously improving your policy as you go along.
Crafting a Benevolent Employee Offboarding Policy: Do It Right
Policies have a magical way of making everything better. So, if you find yourself in need of a solid grip on securely offboarding your valued staff, we’ve developed an astonishingly detailed and highly effective offboarding checklist. It’s designed to accommodate even the quirkiest of requirements. If you kindly ask our boss, Noam, he might just share the secrets with you—because, let’s face it, that’s his thing. Sad but true. Give him a call.
Ignition is Silicon Valley’s best (and friendliest) IT security, compliance, and support team. Contact us now – chatting about IT support and cybersecurity is our favorite thing to do!