Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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The offboarding process is an oft-neglected element of HR. Many companies have effective onboarding procedures for employees but offer little in the way of structured offboarding. But good onboarding can help minimize potential security risks, protect your credibility, and leave the door open for great former employees to return.
We’ve gathered some of the most valuable offboarding statistics available to give an overview of current trends. Read on to discover information that may be useful if you are planning to evaluate your own offboarding procedures.
Turnover happens all the time
Before tackling offboarding, it’s important to understand turnover: why it happens and what causes it.
Employees leave—it’s a fact of the workplace and an unavoidable hassle for managers and HR teams. As with most business operations, an effective process for managing turnover can mitigate the negative effects and take some of the strain from employees leaving.
Turnover can vary immensely from industry to industry, and the recent “Great Resignation” has made turnover an even greater consideration for organizations. Some sectors may need to have extra processes in place both to handle the volume of employees departing and to quickly hire new talent.
Lots of things can cause employees to leave
The reasons for any turnover, or indeed for high turnover, can vary immensely between industries and organizations. The evolution of the modern workplace has changed employees’ motivations for choosing employers and their reasons for moving on.
Understanding why employees leave is critical to maximizing employee retention and making sure any new hiring is successful.
Wrongful termination will cost you
Not all turnover is voluntary. Terminating an employee’s contract can be painful and risky. Understanding the potential impact of wrongful termination is vital for organizations, which must ensure they have the right practices in place to prevent such an eventuality.
Many companies are offboarding wrong
Offboarding processes are certainly less common than effective onboarding practices. Even when offboarding is in place, it’s often ineffective, failing to achieve the benefits it can offer.
Done right, offboarding can provide managers with vital insight into internal factors affecting their attrition rates. Offboarding can also prevent security risks, such as data theft and system breaches that can cost an organization thousands—even millions—of dollars.
Improperly offboarding employees is a data security risk
Ineffective offboarding, or in some cases a complete lack of offboarding processes, is proven to pose a significant data security risk. Some of the largest cybersecurity breaches have happened either directly or indirectly due to compromised employee system access. Though some events have been malicious on the part of employees, malicious actors will also seek to take advantage of unsuspecting employees.
The statistics show that revoking employee access to company systems during offboarding is essential for an organization’s data security.
Offboarding helps shape your employer brand
Offboarding can prevent data and cyber security breaches, which can critically impact business profitability and credibility. Customers are loath to trust a company that has been subject to a security breach.
Offboarding goes further than protecting against security breaches, however; it also allows organizations to discover internal factors that can cause employees to leave. These internal factors, which include poor management practices and work environments, can be detrimental to the overall success of a business.
Ex-employees can be a great source of referrals and customers if they leave on a positive note. The reverse can be true if an employee’s exit is a negative experience.
Boomerang employees can make great rehires
An employee leaving on a positive note can be a big win at a time when recruiting key business talent is getting more and more difficult. Statistics show that increasing numbers of employees are returning to their previous workplaces.
A boomerang employee saves an organization time and money spent on recruitment, training, and onboarding. They can be productive from the outset and already understand the company culture.
Making Your Offboarding Process More Effective
The numbers speak for themselves—having a structured offboarding process will save your company money, protect your reputation, and even help you attract and retain talent. Let’s look at some simple actions you can take to get started with offboarding.
- Understand why employees leave. There are many types of turnover. In some cases, people voluntarily leave the company in search of new opportunities. Other times, you’re the one letting someone go. Understand the different types of turnover so you can learn to prevent it when possible and handle it properly when it’s unavoidable.
- Start with the offboarding basics. Offboarding might seem overwhelming, but you can take things step by step. This HR Encyclopedia article walks through some of the most important components of offboarding.
- Learn from exit interviews and surveys. Sit down with departing employees—or send a survey—to learn why they’re leaving and what they think the company could improve. Use their feedback to make changes that create a better experience for your remaining workforce.
- Stay in touch with former employees. Keep a good relationship with former employees by inviting them to join an employee alumni network. Those who join can send new talent your way, advocate for your product, and help strengthen your brand. You might even end up rehiring some of your alumni!
Take care of your people and protect your business
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