In 2023, the Future of Work is far from having finished its mutation. The digitalization of the HR function is progressing, every day new tools are emerging with promises, each more revolutionary than the last. (Komin.io is no exception to this rule 😉).

These innovations are most often based on functionalities, such as automation, for example, making it possible to address very concrete operational HR/administrative objectives: reducing the cost of recruitment, facilitating the execution of payroll, improving the company's employer brand, simplifying individual assessment, etc.

For several months, and still on a daily basis, we have been interviewing HR experts and operational staff to understand their perception of the employee experience, the transfer of knowledge or the levers of their employer brand. While some objectives seem mature and come out spontaneously among our interlocutors, such as onboarding for example, Offboarding has a unique place in HR discourse.

If I summarize their feedback when we talk about offboarding, it's pretty much the following:

“The Employer Brand is essential! The Employee Experience? Of course it is a priority for us! And offboarding? Wait, I'm going under a tunnel. Hello, hello...”

Well, that's not entirely true. In almost all cases, when talking about offboarding as part of the employee experience, the first instinct is to admit that”Yes, it's a subject“, but often comes after”... but today is not prio“.

The most amazing thing comes when we dig deeper, when we ask why offboarding “is a subject” and what challenges our interlocutors could better address it:

85% * = productivity gains (= productivity = 💵)

85% of respondents with the role of “operational manager” indicate that their objective in addressing offboarding would be toimprove their personal productivity, that is to say time savings in management (of their employees).

68% ** = ↘️ the time it takes for the onboardee to improve their skills (= still productivity, so 💵 ^2)

Nearly 70% of operational managers say they aim to train newcomers more quickly. In a way, they want to act on the “dead end of the employee”, the moment when the employee at least reports what it costs the company. These managers want that at the time of offboarding, a transfer of knowledge be carried out and effectively assimilated by the onboarder afterwards.

If the consensus is so strong, it's because the Cost of turnover Today must be significant for businesses and in the minds of operational staff.

By interviewing expert populations in Human Resources, the feedback differs and the objectives focus more on the attractiveness of the company:

“Boost 🚀 our Employer Brand by offering a strong area of differentiation to employees” with an offboarding tool(so 💵 ^3)

If by better addressing offboarding, managers imagine operational performance gains, and HR the benefits in terms of Employer Brand, why do we still mostly meet people with “tunnel syndrome” when it comes to offboarding?

The offboarding ecosystem is now a No Man's Land and there is still resistance among companies to adopt a solution that facilitates offboarding. Would we all be like Thomas Aquinas, only believing what we saw? Employer Branding or onboarding have not always been in the TOP 5 HRTech buzzwords, and the solutions revolving around them have had to make their way to be now at the top of the HR priority pile!

The War for Talent continues to rage and forces companies to strengthen their arguments to appear more attractive. Komin's bet is that offboarding is an extremely strong element of the employer brand, just like onboarding. Now it's up to businesses, like Komin.io, to show concretely the results that such a solution would achieve.

Since the end of 2019, we have been supporting our customers in the implementation of an offboarding policy that creates value. Komin will be no exception, it is a safe bet that before a massive awareness of the importance of an offboading policy, it will be necessary to respect the law of diffusion of innovation (dear Everett Rogers), according to which innovations are first tested by innovators, then by early adopters, etc. (see diagram below).

And you, are you more of the innovators? Early adopters? Early majority or late majority? Custody?

*/**: source: Kio Software 2019 study with 65 managers in France

‍