4 Ways BambooHR Helps You Crack Offboarding

Whether an employee has decided to leave your organization or you’re letting people go, offboarding triggers a long to-do list for HR. So long, it can feel like a mission: impossible. There’s announcing the departure, collecting company equipment, finding, hiring, and training the replacement, conducting the exit interview, and more.

Depending on the size of your organization, HR might have to do it all. But just like every super-spy has gadgets up their sleeves, you have offboarding in BambooHR. Here are our top four solutions to help you crack the code to a smooth offboarding process, save time, and create a better experience for your departing employees.

Code Cracking Solution #1: Sending Important Documents

Departing employees have a lot on their minds—arranging a move to a different city or state, looking forward to their next job, or maybe trying to find another job, among other things. Signing HR documents isn’t going to be at the top of their list.

Setting up offboarding in BambooHR helps you take care of important documents without having to resend them over and over again, and it’ll help answer some of the questions employees have surrounding their departure.

For example, offboarding in BambooHR allows you to:

• Send non-compete or non-disclosure agreements for the departing employee to e-sign.
• Provide final health benefit information, like information about COBRA benefits, 401(k) transfers, HSA transfers, etc.
• Collect a formal letter of resignation from the departing employee.
• Provide a formal letter of termination to the employee, including any severance pay information.

All you have to do is create a task for the necessary documents in your offboarding checklist, and the employee will automatically get a task assignment alert.

Relevant Help Articles

• An Overview of Onboarding and Offboarding
• Setting Up Onboarding and Offboarding
• Onboarding and Offboarding Email Notifications
• E-signature in BambooHR

Code Cracking Solution #2: Setting Up Timely, Effective Exit Interviews

Exit interviews are mission critical—employees feel heard, which makes it more likely that they’ll have a positive exit experience, and employers get insight into what is and isn’t working in the organization.

But it’s tricky to get exit interviews right, so incorporating them in your offboarding checklist helps you:

• Get the timing right. Research published in Harvard Business Review (HBR) suggests that halfway between an employee’s notice and their last day is “the most productive moment” for the interview—it gives everyone a chance to settle their emotions, but the employee hasn’t mentally checked out yet.
• Find the right interviewer. It’s better to find someone other than the employee’s direct manager to conduct the exit interview because an employee might very well be leaving because of that manager. The same HBR article recommends having someone directly above the manager (e.g., the manager’s manager or director) interview the employee since they’ll “typically receive more honest feedback precisely because they’re one step removed from the employee.” Additionally, if the interviewing manager has more authority, they’re in a better position to follow up immediately and effectively.
• Add more details to your turnover report. You can already filter the turnover report in BambooHR by many different categories (e.g., termination reason, manager, gender, length of service, and more), but exit interviews tell you the human story behind the numbers. For example, while your turnover report might reveal you’re losing some of your best people, exit interviews can tell you which competitors are poaching them and what makes them more attractive.

Relevant Help Articles

• An Overview of the Employee Turnover Report
• Terminating an Employee
• Activating the Offboarding Process

Code Cracking Solution #3: Tightening Your Security

Whether you’re a one-person team or your offboarding process relies on several different teams, assigning tasks ahead of time will help close any potential security gaps.

The offboarding checklist will help you remember to:

• Terminate the employee record, which turns off employee access to BambooHR.
• Turn off employee access to other company systems.
• Collect valuable equipment, like laptops and company smart phones, that may contain proprietary or sensitive information.
• Collect or turn off physical access to your building, e.g., ID cards and passcodes.

Relevant Help Articles

• Onboarding and Offboarding Email Notifications
• Adding Email Alerts for Tasks
• Terminating an Employee

Code Cracking Solution #4: Making the Final Paycheck Painless

On an employee’s last day, coworkers often participate in small rituals of parting—signing the farewell card, eating a slice of “We’ll Miss You!” cake, and inheriting desk plants. For the employee, there’s saying goodbye to friends, checking off the last few things on their to-do list, and turning in their badge or equipment. But the most important last item on their list is collecting their last paycheck.

This isn’t something that’s immediately visible to employees, but they’ll definitely notice if it’s not done properly. Adding this task in your offboarding checklist helps keep your payroll running smoothly and employees get their last paycheck without having added stress or annoyance.

And here’s a bonus: if you run payroll with BambooHR, it’s as easy as adding a Final Pay Date when you terminate the employee.

Relevant Help Articles

• Onboarding and Offboarding Email Notifications
• Adding Email Alerts for Tasks
• Terminating an Employee

Operation Fonder Farewell Is a Go!

A good last impression is a lasting impression, but so is a bad one. According to Gallup, less than half of employees are satisfied with how their organization handled their exit process—and that sour note can have lasting repercussions on your employer brand and workplace culture:

• Candidates actively look at former employees’ experiences. A 2021 report by Glassdoor found that 86 percent of job seekers look at a company’s reviews and rating before deciding to apply, and half said they wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation—even for a pay increase.
• A good exit experience turns former employees into ambassadors. Giving employees a positive exit experience makes them three times more likely to recommend working at the organization (compared to employees with neutral or negative experiences).
• People who leave talk to employees who stay. Gallup found people most often share their intentions to leave with their coworkers, making it all the more important to give departing employees a good offboarding experience and act on feedback gathered from exit interviews. People who stay will not only hear about the exit experience but they’ll also hear about problems in the workplace or what other companies have to offer.