Learning to say goodbye, or how to quit your job without getting angry

Not many people stay loyal to a single employer for their whole lives. But how do you quit without getting angry? Dorothée Decrop (M21), Growth Manager at Thank you and Welcome, tells us about the benefits of offboarding, a process that any company would be wise to put in place to facilitate handovers and support departing staff.

In lots of companies, the employer/employee relationship ends as soon as the employee hands in their notice. A strange atmosphere then settles in, a no man’s land where feelings of loss, the fear of disruption to the teams in place, and the satisfaction of supporting an employee as they head off to face new challenges all intermingle. 

In practice, while these fears are legitimate, it is the lack of an offboarding process, or a poor one, that causes lasting damage to an organisation. 

What is offboarding?

Going hand in hand with the induction process known as onboarding, offboarding describes the process of organising the tasks that support an employee’s departure.

Just as we don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression, the last impression of workplace relations should not be underestimated, because it counts! Indeed, knowing how to say thank you and goodbye is just as important in your personal life as it is in your working life.

Why are these rituals essential to keeping a company running smoothly?

Like in a family, company rituals are important. They bring us together and help to form the collective memory.

Knowing how to say goodbye to an employee brings the following benefits:

- It helps those leaving to turn a page without feeling that things were left unfinished, by enabling them to share their knowledge and experience, with the feeling of a job well done

- It reassures those who stay, by enabling them to both benefit from the experience of those who are leaving, and making them believe that one day they will leave their own impression

- In strengthens the company culture while by ensuring that the rituals last

- It keeps engaging the employee experience, until their very last day

- It guarantees an efficient and effective collective that will contribute to the overall value of the company

Knowing how to say thank you and goodbye thereby consolidates the investment and sense of belonging among those who are staying, while making ambassadors of those who are leaving.

Smooth departures to streamline the future

Organising offboarding for each employee departure is a sign of a good organisation, and of staff relations that remain important right up until the last day of their contract.

The energy and costs committed to recruitment, onboarding, and offboarding are unbalanced by nature, to the point that some human resources professionals acknowledge that time and resources are allocated on a 70/30/0 or 90/9/1 basis.

What becomes all too apparent is that the final moments of a working relationship are often sorely neglected... Just as the induction process became key, a structured and positive departure boosts the company’s employer brand and brings staff together.

Developing an offboarding process is, therefore, a sign of mature HR processes that may be beneficial for both the employee who is leaving the organisation, as well as to those who are staying. Indeed, anyone who leaves a company has the potential to keep making a contribution after they have left, either by recommending the brand or the company, or through a boomerang hire, with minimal risks and costs for the company.

Often a stressful experience, offboarding is challenging the accepted way of doing things: it’s the HR process that reveals poorly structured internal systems. 

While stages involving handing back company equipment, removing access to IT systems and issuing administrative and legal documentation are all clearly identified, the sharing of in-house knowledge, planning, and the transfer of responsibilities so that work can progress smoothly are more difficult to put in place. 

Everyone’s a loser!

The solitary process of leaving a company is now colliding with a world of work where everything is “co-” (cooperation, coopetition, co-development, collaboration). According to Hay Group, just 8% of employees say that their employer has a specific offboarding process.

The development of new technologies has combined communication and broadcasting, giving the illusion of unlimited access to the information needed to do a job properly. And yet… How many times have you realised that Michael, Claire, or James left without knowing how or being able to pass on their professional knowledge and good practices? 

The work we do can never be summed up in the job description. And who is better placed to provide information, guidance, and input into new responsibilities than the last person who did that job? Not to mention the company’s history, its culture, employee relationships, implicit knowledge, etc. All of these fonts of professional science, in return for simply letting employees have their say, are also sources of innovation.

Welcome to offboarding 2.0

The pandemic that has struck the world since 2020 has seen many HR processes go digital. While initially, business continuity remained the primary motivation, it seems that today a consensus is forming to create a new organisational structure based on a sustainable hybrid model.

Faced with environmental pressures, HR departments must adapt their processes to sustainably maintain and refresh the competitivity of their organisations.

Digitalising the offboarding process is now a viable option to be free from time and geographical restrictions, to save the time and energy in finding information, and to offer a circular approach to internal knowledge for the benefit of as many employees as possible. 

If we are attentive to the way we say goodbye, the future will thank us!

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