3 Reasons your Offboarding Strategy is Critical for Employee Retention

Employee turnover is inevitable. Almost half of all people employed leave a company in less than a year. Employees resign for a variety of reasons, including stagnant career growth, lack of connection among colleagues, and issues with the company culture.

A proactive offboarding journey can not only result in a brand ambassador and potentially a boomerang employee, but it also has a positive impact on your existing workforce.

What exactly is Employee Offboarding?

Employee offboarding is the opposite of employee onboarding, the former involves disassociating an employee from a company. When an employed person leaves an organisation, that process is known as offboarding.

The human resource (HR) department completes the job of guiding the employee through the transition, which may differ based on the circumstances of the exit. This could include a procedure for imparting information to other employees. This procedure is a joint responsibility of the manager and the HR team. The HR team must walk the offboarding employee through all the legal processes and documentation they will need to prepare to leave the company.

Offboarding takes place when an employee leaves voluntarily or involuntarily, but the measures taken by HR may differ based on whether the employee is stepping down on his own, nearing retirement, or being terminated.

What is employee retention, and why is it so crucial?

Employee retention refers to an organisation's ability to keep its employees and ensure their long-term suitability. It includes the strategies used by employers to keep employees on their payroll.

Employee retention stands to benefit your company's performance and progress. Appointing and training new staff takes time, stress, and money, and turnover may have a negative influence on your company's outcomes. High employee turnover causes a variety of issues, such as:

• Increased costs
• Information loss
• Decreased productivity

Employee retention strategies can help motivate employees to remain with the organisation for as long as possible and contribute effectively. Implementing good offboarding is one such strategy. Let’s discuss that further.

Why Your Employee Offboarding Strategies Matter

Good Word-Of-Mouth

Bad word-of-mouth recommendations may have a major impact on your brand image, affecting your retention and recruitment efforts. As the final point of contact with your company, offboarding can leave a very strong impression on your exiting employees, on how they might recall their time with you. A positive reputation, on the other hand, is equally powerful, and providing your employee with a positive last interaction can help advertise your company as a great employer. Today's consumers understand the value of good recommendations and hold those as a base for selecting a good and trustworthy organisation. Former employees who leave poor reviews on popular sites will end up turning potential candidates.

Enhances Employee Perception of Your Organisation

A seamless and professional employee exit process can have a significant impact on how employees endorse your company. Employees who leave your corporation on a positive note are more likely to spread the word about your company. This could have the opposite effect if they part ways on shaky grounds. Your employment offboarding process provides you with an opportunity to help employees leave as brand advocates. This may lead to them recommending your company, which will help you develop better brand recognition.

For Security and Compliance

Employees have a wide range of vital information. This could be company data or customer information. In any case, you must ensure that this information is carefully regulated when an employee resigns.  A proper employee exit process lowers the likelihood of a data breach. It can also help certain types of organisations maintain important security compliance.  Maintaining strict controls over data access all through offboarding will assist your company in avoiding potential security threats while increasing customer trust.

Some questions to ask your departing employees during exit interviews

An employee exit survey is a set of questions you ask employees who are about to leave your organisation. These questions give significant information to your organisation, such as why the individual is leaving, how satisfied they were with their income, perks, management, environment, and what they disliked most about working for your company.

• Do you believe you received the training necessary to succeed in your role? What would have made it better?
• What was your favourite and least favourite aspect of your career here?
• What factors prompted you to look for another job?
• Are there any changes that we could have made to persuade you to stay?
• Were there any opportunities for advancement in your career?

Conclusion

Your ex-employee could be an important asset, brand advocate or ambassador, or a boomerang employee. To increase the likelihood of this happening, you must first develop an excellent employee offboarding process to strengthen and continue improving your employer branding. It is helpful to keep good relations with them.

At Complygate, we understand the value of effective onboarding and offboarding strategies and want nothing less than the best for our clients. Our HR Software helps you with streamlining onboarding and offboarding processes to ensure a good employee experience. After all, employee experience - from the moment they start to the moment they depart - and beyond - should be the driving force behind your employee retention efforts.

Contact us today to learn how we can assist your company in developing good strategies and making better hires.