A Guide to Implementing an Offboarding Process in Your Company
Employee turnover rate: A significant figure that says a lot about a company. Many factors affect turnover rates: working conditions, the existence or lack of benefits, leadership, and salary structure, to name a few.
Interestingly, the country’s total annual turnover rate has been increasing in the last five years, from 38.1 percent in 2013 to 43 percent in 2017. Is your company experiencing the same thing, too? If your answer is yes, it would be a good idea to review your offboarding program — or establish one if you don’t have it yet.
Why an Offboarding Program?
An offboarding program includes an exit interview where the resigning employee can talk about his or her reasons for leaving. The interview is also a golden opportunity for the company as it can unveil facts about the organization that the upper management might be unaware of. Insights from exit interviews, when applied wisely, can help management achieve the following:
- Improve work environment
- Improve recruitment process
- Heighten employee satisfaction
- Avoid incidents that lead to litigation
- Reduce turnover rate
Getting Started
It will be unwise not to take advantage of a proper offboarding program. Below is a brief guide on how you can develop an exit interview process for your company.
- Management Buy-In – An offboarding program needs to have the blessing and full support of the upper management. Those in leadership positions should also be open to feedback.
- Consultation with HR Professionals – Consider hiring human resources professionals on a project basis if your company doesn’t employ an experienced HR manager. You’ll need their input on creating a process that works for your company and industry. They can help you decide on the following:
- Type of exit interview – Resigning employees might be more comfortable answering forms or questionnaire-based interviews. Face-to-face interviews, however, are conversational and could garner the most information
- Questions to ask – It’s difficult to verify the truthfulness of questionnaire answers, but you can encourage honesty among resigning employees by asking the right questions. An experienced HR professional with a background in psychology will be able to help you craft those questions.
- Who to appoint – Given the sensitive nature of resignations, HR experts recommend that indirect superiors should conduct exit interviews of resigning employees, not their direct supervisors.
- Roll Out – Announce the implementation of the exit interview process to your entire organization.
Post-Exit Interview SOPs
Offboarding programs don’t end with the exit interview. You need to put the information you gathered to good use to achieve the benefits mentioned above.
Collate the feedback from each exit interview. Assess the information, take note of commonalities, and look out for red flags. As exit interviews often contain inputs on the leadership and management, show the responses and findings to the employees’ immediate supervisors. Finally, ask your HR department to recommend solutions for the issues that the exit interviews revealed.
An exit interview process can help your company grow and become the organization employees want to be part of. Employee turnovers will slow down, and your company can focus on improving productivity and meeting other goals.
Create an offboarding program or polish your existing system. BDeWees Consulting can guide you through this process. Contact us to schedule a consultation.