Employee Offboarding Best Practices

There are different best practices at play depending on the nature of the employee offboarding.

Best Practices When the Employee Resigns

If you already have good relations with current employees, keeping a positive attitude if they
decide to part becomes much easier.

In any case, don’t take the decision of the employee leaving personally.

It goes without saying you should be courteous, respectful, and fair when parting. Keep it
professional and kind.

Leaving is the employee’s personal decision and is not meant to hurt or reflect upon you or your
abilities (unless the employee explicitly says so).

Try to stay in touch with them after they part through your company’s alumni network group
and encourage them to remain supporters of the company.

Here’s the kicker:

You never know what sort of feedback you might receive or what the future holds. What’s
important is the offboarding process is positive and doesn’t add unneeded stress. It’s better to
have a friend than a foe.

Best Practices When the Employee Retires

All the tips we gave you when the employee resigns also apply when the employee retires.

But there are also four additional best practices to make the departure of a retiring employee as
pleasant as possible:

First, double-check the employee passion schemes rules to make sure you are in compliance
with everything.

Second, calculate the final retirement payment for your employee with the help of the
accounting and HR team to see what he/she is entitled to.

Third, provide a helping hand by gradually, over the course of two weeks (or more, depending
on the notice) reduce the working hours for the employee until his/her retirement day.
And last but not least:

Don’t forget to throw them a retirement party and give them a retirement gift.

They’ve probably been with you for a long ride and deserve to be honored and recognized.

Once, my boss at a large company wasn’t able to attend an employee’s retirement party because
he had an important meeting to go to.

An hour later, she was tagging him in hateful paragraphs on Facebook about “not being
appreciated” while dragging the company’s name through the mud.

Yikes!

So when we say the retirement party is important, we mean it!

Best Practices When Firing Employees

Obviously, you have heard all about how to fire an employee before:

Be kind and understanding, do it behind closed doors, don’t humiliate them, be gentle, have a
witness, have tissues at hand…

But here comes the twist:

The best practice when firing employees is to never have hired them in the first place.

If you end up firing plenty of employees because of poor performance, there’s something wrong
with the recruitment process.

In all cases, set clear expectations and go over job descriptions before they start working.

And, never, ever, do it as a surprise magic trick, or rush it.

If an employee is underperforming, give them notice beforehand.

Give them constructive criticism and a second chance at improving.

If they’re not a good fit or are dragging you down, you sadly have to part.