The implementation of an offboarding policy, systematizing and maintaining good practices, allows the manager and his team to gain in productivity in a sustainable way. The Manager frees himself “from the mental load” and the whole thing gains in productivity.
The company has different employee segments. There are those on permanent contracts, fixed-term contracts, interns or work-study students and even freelancers, whose share in the company is growing year by year. Of course, each segment has a profile and typical behaviors and offboarding must be adapted accordingly.
What can differentiate them? For example their short/medium/long term projection or their openness to the use of digital tools for example. Whether you are an HR or operational manager, it is essential to fully understand these differences.
The implementation of a new corporate policy always raises the question of its scope: offboarding is no exception!
The principle that”Interns are cheap, so we don't invest in them“is still alive in organizations. However, it is with this population that we must begin to address “a new way to say goodbye” to company employees.
The cycles of internships and apprenticeships follow one another and are similar. At each arrival, the new employee must be trained, before explaining to him 6 months later how he should “tidy up his room” before leaving the company (for example sorting Google Drive, writing documentation with past/current projects or even writing an exit email to customers/suppliers).
When it comes to offboarding, there is little literature and managers most often lack the method, as well as the motivation, to prepare for the departure of an employee. In each cycle, the manager wastes a considerable amount of time offboarding the outgoing employee, then onboarding the incoming employee..
The implementation of an offboarding policy, systematizing and maintaining good practices, allows the manager and his team to gain productivity in a sustainable way. The Manager frees himself “from the mental load” and the whole thing gains in productivity.
This is a good reason to implement an offboarding policy starting with a pilot on students!
When you are a Manager, you may know that your average turnover rate is 12%, but you don't know when employees will actually leave the company. For example, the date of a resignation is not predictable, or at least not precisely.
For interns and work-study students, it is easy to Plan offboarding tasks 4 to 6 weeks before the employee leaves (prepare a tender, communicate internally or externally your upcoming departure, prepare the list of accesses to the tools to be deleted on D-day...). Another good point to address offboarding in priority with interns and work-study students!
Generation Z is a generation of enterprising collaborators. As they are in their personal lives, they are in the business.
Their relationship to work and authority has radically evolved compared to that of generations X and Y. This is reflected in a desire to be involved in the manager's decision-making or to understand the meaning of the actions taken, but also to be recognized for their work and the results obtained.
Offboarding, and in particular creating a knowledge transfer facilitated by a method or a tool, is an excellent way to value a “future-ex-trainee/work-study student”. Several marks of recognition may be granted to him: that the company finances part of an event (type “departure party”), that the manager recommends the employee on Linkedin or that a letter of recommendation can be offered to him.
Of course, the recognition expressed within the team and in person is also essential, but this mark of recognition “does not pass the walls of the company”.
Sometimes, a resignee may not want to “share his expertise” with his successor or with his future ex-employer. It is sometimes the consequence of a relationship that deteriorates over time. On the other hand, the student is more likely to go in the direction of the manager, in particular so that he/she is favorable to him in his internship/work-study relationship, not to mention their potential desire to be recruited by the company. Again, +1 point for offboarding students.
In 2020, while good practices in terms of onboarding are commonplace in startups as well as in large companies, offboarding is still poorly addressed because only 8% of companies say they support the departure of their employees according to a Hays Group study in 2018. However, 70% of the employees interviewed in this study indicate that they would be ready to reintegrate the company if they were satisfied with their departure. That's what we call the Boomerang recruitment, which marks the return of former collaborators, who thought the grass was greener elsewhere.
It is a safe bet that this figure of 8% would be even lower if the question asked concerned the support of interns.
As Generation Z is highly connected and communicative, providing an intern or an apprentice with support during offboarding would probably be followed by tweets, WhatsApp messages or even snaps to their favorite contacts.
In this case, it is the Corporate Employer Brand who is the big winner of this offboarding policy, with better reputation and attractiveness.
Since 2019, Komin.io has been supporting startups and large companies in their reflections to de-dramatize the departure of employees and make these departures, which are inevitable in the life of a company, a performance driver. If we have to manage to break the paradigm according to which”Interns are cheap, so we don't invest in them“, we must do the same with “he chose to resign, this traitor”.
“With Komin, we documented our operating procedures 10x faster than with paper”
- J. Cerruti (Methods & Industrialization Manager)
