Offboarding: the checklist that protects the company and the person

Offboarding is everything that happens between someone resigning and their last day being genuinely finished: knowledge handed over, access removed, equipment returned, final pay correct, and the relationship ended on terms both sides can live with. It is unglamorous, it has no owner in most small companies, and the failures are quiet — an ex-employee with live credentials nine months later, a client nobody told, a laptop written off silently.

It is also almost entirely a checklist problem. The individual tasks are easy; what is missing is a list that runs the same way every time and someone who owns it.

What the checklist has to cover

• Access removal, itemised by system rather than as one line. Email, files, code, admin panels, the CRM, the billing account, the domain registrar, shared password vaults, physical entry.
• Anything the person owns as an individual: accounts registered in their name, subscriptions on their card, domains, API keys, two-factor devices for shared accounts.
• Knowledge handover — a written document plus at least one session with whoever takes over.
• Client and supplier notification, decided deliberately rather than left to word of mouth.
• Equipment: what comes back, by when, and its condition recorded.
• Final pay: notice, untaken holiday, expenses outstanding, anything owed the other way.
• Documents the person is entitled to and any that must be retained, with the retention period.
• The exit interview, scheduled early rather than on the last day.
• A confirmation step at the end — someone checks the list is genuinely complete a week later.

Access removal is the part that fails most often and matters most. Do it on a date and time agreed in advance, and check it rather than assume it — the common failure is not the obvious systems but the ones nobody remembers: a shared analytics account, a payment gateway, a supplier portal, an old VPN certificate. Run an annual audit of who actually has access; the first one is always instructive.

Running an offboarding well

1. Start the checklist the day the resignation is accepted, not in the final week.
2. Name one owner for the whole process — usually the manager — with tasks assigned to whoever performs them.
3. Get the handover document written early, while the person still has time and context, and have their successor read it and ask questions while the author is still there.
4. Agree the access-removal date and hold to it, including for people leaving on good terms.
5. Tell clients and colleagues in a planned way. People finding out from an auto-reply is avoidable and looks careless.
6. Do the exit interview a week or two after the resignation, run by someone outside the reporting line.
7. Return equipment against a list, with condition noted, and close the record.
8. Check final pay against notice, holiday and expenses before it is processed rather than after.
9. Review the checklist a week after the last day, and again in the annual access audit.

Leaving well is a hiring decision

How someone is treated in their last two weeks is described afterwards to every candidate they meet and to every former colleague they stay in touch with — and increasingly, in public review sites. A company that removes access abruptly, skips the goodbye, and gets the final payslip wrong buys itself a reputation that costs more than the process would have. The cheapest version of good treatment is competence: an organised handover, an honest reference conversation, correct money, and someone saying thank you.

Ettex Board is a practical home for the checklist: columns and cards with drag-and-drop, assignees and avatars so each task has a named owner, due dates, checklists inside cards for the per-system access list, colour labels and priority flags, and lists or swimlanes if you run several departures at once. Every move and edit is logged per card, which is the audit trail you want for access removal. The handover document itself lives in Ettex Docs, the exit interview form in Ettex Forms, the access inventory as a table in Ettex Records, and equipment against the asset register you already keep there.

Said plainly: Ettex is not an HR or IT-management system. There is no employee record, no automated deprovisioning, no single sign-on that revokes access everywhere, no device management and no payroll. The board tracks tasks that people perform by hand in each system. That works for a company of a few dozen; automated deprovisioning is a genuine reason to buy identity management as you grow.

Where offboarding fails

• Started in the last week, when the handover is rushed and the knowledge is already leaving.
• Access removed from the obvious systems only, leaving the forgotten ones live for months.
• Accounts registered in the individual's name, discovered when a renewal fails.
• Handover done verbally, so it exists only in the memory of whoever was in the room.
• Clients told by accident, or not at all.
• Final pay calculated wrong, which is the detail people remember longest.
• No owner, so tasks are split between the manager, IT and finance and fall between them.
• No completion check, so a half-finished checklist looks the same as a finished one.

Offboarding is a checklist with an owner: handover written early, access removed per system on an agreed date, equipment and final pay correct, exit interview by someone outside the line — and a completion check a week later.