Offboarding Checklist

What is an offboarding checklist?

Offboarding is the process by which people leave their colleagues and the company they work for in a structured way. Similar to onboarding, it is important that the offboarding process is organised and structured.

Offboarding checklists for employees serve human resources (HR) to support employees who are leaving the company either through resignation, resignation or retirement in the process. The lack of an offboarding process for employees can expose companies to legal, security and reputational risks.

This article provides information on the following topics:

1. Why offboarding is important: 3 aspects

2. A successful offboarding process in 7 steps

3. A digital solution for the offboarding process

Why offboarding is important: 3 aspects

Using offboarding checklists helps HR departments and teams with the following steps

• Maintaining a positive reputation – It is important to strive to treat all departing employees with respect, as negative reviews about working conditions are particularly damaging to reputations. Therefore, a well-organised exit interview with a checklist should give the affected employee the feeling that he/she is valued as a human being. The employee feedback during the interview is also very helpful to make some optimisations in the company.


• Avoid legal risks – Without a comprehensive documentation of the offboarding process, possible legal disputes may arise. A structured offboarding process with the help of checklists will help your HR teams to follow the correct legal steps when employees leave the company.


• Overlook IT risks – Company equipment should be handed in on time during offboarding to avoid any corporate losses and data breaches or similar. With a checklist, the handing in of the devices can be easily logged and overviewed.

A successful offboarding process in 7 steps

1. Thank your employee

Regardless of the reason your employee is leaving, thank him or her. Start the conversation by thanking him/her for the work. In case he/she starts a new job, congratulate and wish good luck in the new position.

2. Find the right communication

Although it can be tempting to wait to communicate the departure of an employee, it is smart to share the information with your staff in a timely manner. The longer you wait, the more likely it is that your team will find out the supposed details themselves. To avoid this kind of corporate gossip, managers should inform their team, the department and HR about such internal changes as soon as possible.

3. Enable a structured handover

Whether the position is being filled or not, it makes sense to ensure that the knowledge remains within the company. Here are three points you should keep in mind:

• A clear overview of the daily routine
• Access to all systems and files that have been used
• Are there systems that people need to be trained in to use?

In addition to this information, it is always good to ask people to create a handover document or video with useful tips and tricks. This simplifies the onboarding process of new employees and clarifies questions in advance.

4. Make sure company belongings are returned

Make sure that company equipment is handed in, This may include the following items:

• Company ID
• Credit card
• Uniform
• Phone, laptop
• Company car

5. Revoke access to systems

The same goes for system access. Don’t forget to revoke all of them. This includes emails and internal platforms. For example, also think about CRM systems, social media accounts, content databases and access to sales dashboards.

6. Have a closing conversation

A final exit interview can provide a great opportunity. It can give you insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation. Take all feedback seriously. the following questions can help you in an exit interview:

1. What are we not doing that we should be doing?
2. Is there anything we could have done better?
3. Did the job meet your expectations?
4. How was your relationship with your supervisor?
5. How did you find your onboarding process?

7.Update organisational content

When an employee has left the company, make sure you update your organisational charts and directories. The same goes for things like brochures and the company website. If the dates are mentioned there, this also needs to be updated.

A digital solution for the offboarding process

With a digital offboarding checklist, you can easily manage the offboarding process via tablet or smartphone – online or offline. Using the desktop version, you can create a customised offboarding list and then analyse the data collected.

By using the digital offboarding checklist, you can easily manage the offboarding process – online or offline. By using the mobile app for your offboarding process, you ensure that you don’t forget any important points and that you can say goodbye to your employee properly. Using Lumiform offers many more advantages for a standardised offboarding process.

• The flexible checklist builder from Lumiform helps you to convert any individual paper list into a digital checklist without much effort.


• In addition, we offer more than 9,000 ready-made templates to help companies get started digitally in no time.


• Using the super intuitive mobile App, you and your teammates conduct check in the field with ease and in no time.


• Reports are created automatically – this saves the complete postprocessing.