Employee Offboarding Checklist
This checklist outlines the process for offboarding a departing employee. A structured offboarding is essential for security and for a smooth transition of responsibilities. This process is managed by the employee’s manager in coordination with HR and System Administrators.
Immediately Upon Notification of Departure
- Acknowledge and Plan: The manager acknowledges the resignation and works with the employee to create a transition plan for their remaining time.
- Internal Communication: The manager informs HR and the leadership team of the departure. An announcement to the wider team will be planned for the employee’s last week.
Week of Departure
- Knowledge Transfer:
- Ensure the departing employee has documented their key responsibilities and the status of their current projects.
- Schedule knowledge transfer sessions with the team members who will be taking over their work.
- Reassign Responsibilities: The manager formally reassigns ownership of projects, codebases, or other responsibilities.
Last Day of Employment
This is the most critical phase for security. Access must be revoked in a coordinated manner.
Account Deprovisioning (Responsibility of System Administrator)
The following actions should be completed by the end of the employee’s last day:
- Suspend Primary Account: The employee’s Google Workspace / company email account is suspended. This will immediately cut off access to many other services that use Google for SSO.
- Revoke GitHub Access: The employee is removed from the company’s GitHub organization.
- Revoke Cloudflare Access: The employee’s user account is deleted from Cloudflare.
- Revoke Password Manager Access: The employee is removed from the company password manager.
- Revoke Slack Access: The employee’s Slack account is deactivated.
- Revoke Project Management Tool Access: The employee’s account in Jira/Asana is deactivated.
- Revoke Access to any other SaaS tools.
Asset Recovery (Responsibility of Manager)
- Collect Company Hardware:
- Laptop and charger.
- Monitor.
- Keyboard, mouse, and any other peripherals.
- Company credit card.
- Any other company property.
- HR will provide instructions for returning the equipment.
Final Housekeeping
- Final Communication: The manager posts a farewell message in the team Slack channel, thanking the employee for their contributions.
- HR Exit Interview: HR will conduct an exit interview to gather feedback about the employee’s experience at the company.
- Final Paycheck: HR ensures that the final paycheck is processed correctly.
After Departure
- Rotate Secrets: As a security precaution, a System Administrator should review the secrets and credentials that the departing employee had access to and schedule them for rotation, prioritizing the most critical ones according to our Secrets Management Policy.
- Email Forwarding: The manager can request that the departed employee’s email address be temporarily forwarded to them to ensure no important external communications are missed.
A thorough offboarding process is not just about security; it’s also about treating the departing employee with respect and ensuring a smooth transition for the rest of the team.