How You Treat Employees on Their Way Out the Door Matters.

How you treat employees on their way out the door matters.

Employers spend a lot of time and effort on developing lasting, positive first impressions for new hires. And, while I can’t argue that it’s important to create a good impression on a new employee’s first day, the employee’s last impression might be just as important as the first.

Offboarding is important to an organization because it impacts the retention of those who are staying with your organization. Retention isn’t just about keeping an employee, it’s about keeping them happy, even when they choose to leave.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2022 report on Employee Tenure (September 2022), employees stay on average with their employer for 4.3 years. And each person leaving a job carries with him or her a positive or negative experience about that departure that they will tell others about, regardless of whether the change is due to the employee quitting, getting fired, receiving a promotion, or retiring.

How you treat exiting employees can influence your ability to attract top candidates, the number of referrals to your organization, the likelihood the employee leaves and wants to return, and your employer brand.

So, the last time you received notice of an employee leaving:

• Did you congratulate the employee and work proactively together on a transition plan? People want to feel appreciated and needed. We should be celebrating change and supporting employees who choose to pursue other opportunities and personal initiatives. Providing people with support doesn’t cost anything, and it is one of the most important things you can do to leave a lasting positive impression.
• ?Did you host a sendoff event to say thank you for their hard work? This shows you genuinely care about acknowledging the value of their contributions to the company (and remaining team).
• Did you show the employee the door as soon as they gave their notice without giving them a chance to say goodbye to colleagues? This sends a pretty clear message about how little you valued their contributions and sends a message to current staff how quickly they will be thrown under the bus for wanting to make a change.

For many companies, offboarding an exiting employee consists of simply issuing a separation letter, final paycheck, and performing a quick exit interview. These days, it’s essential to design a more robust offboarding program that fully supports the exiting employee and the company’s broad business goals.

Exit interviews are still key to employee offboarding but don’t rush through it or skip it altogether. Exit interviews carry a negative stigma that whatever feedback provided will be shared with their former manager so many exiting employees are reluctant to provide honest, candid feedback.

To counter the exit interview stigma, many employers are conducting online exit interviews in lieu of face-to-face interviews. According to Lattice.com, employers tend to get better results when they solicit feedback online because employees don’t have to see someone else while answering questions. ?

We regularly hear companies promote that they value their employees. So, we as employers need to realize the impression, we leave employees with as they exit our organization will stay with them and stand out strongly in their memory, good or bad. Properly offboarding employees doesn’t require a lot of time or money to get it right – it just requires a bit of effort and appreciation.?