Offboarding

Ask your question

Successful offboarding: That's how you do it

People are switching jobs more often. All over the world. That’s shown by figures from the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics. This is due to:

Diminishing loyalty to the employer. Since the credit crisis, people have realised that companies won’t take care of them when things go wrong.
A growing belief in self-management: happiness is a choice.
Technological developments that increase efficiency in daily life: thanks to online job applications and networking, switching jobs takes very little time.

Many companies are concerned about this. Because then your investment in recruiting and developing your people is lost. And what happens to all that accumulated knowledge and experience?

Research has shown that these concerns are unjustified. What really happens:

Learnings

People who often switch jobs are top performers.
This is because they want to quickly feel useful in an organisation.
After 3 years in the same job, people rarely learn anything new.
And so they no longer give their employer anything new.
We’re all one-time-only innovators.
So actually of value to different employers.
People who often switch jobs bring in knowledge from competitors.
People who quickly switch jobs can learn and start networking quickly.
This is because they have to keep rediscovering themselves.

Embrace jobhoppers

Joost Uitdewilligen, Creative Director at TinQwise: ‘Organisations should therefore embrace rather than fear the group of employees that often switch jobs. But it does require a new way of thinking. Instead of investing in headhunters, loyalty programmes and long-term development programmes, you’d be better off maintaining a good speed as far as the inflow and outflow of talent are concerned. So that means facilitating and investing in onboarding and offboarding. Good for your reputation and your 23rocess.’

Offboarding

Offboarding has a huge impact. On employees and employers. People are motivated to transfer knowledge because it’s their final legacy. People who often switch jobs want all of their employers to remember them fondly. People like to stay in contact for their own network. On the other hand, a bad offboarding process can ‘spoil’ a positive work experience.

Every company, however big or small, now has the capacity to organise onboarding and offboarding for the professionals of today. A number of guidelines are important here:

Getting down to it

#1 Set up a process.

Which steps are necessary? Who is responsible for what?
#2 Remember the emotion of the departing employee.
Show your appreciation.
#3 Make sure everything is clear and well organised.
It must be clear what is to be expected.
#4 Take advantage of the moment.
Ask for feedback.
#5 Do something with the feedback.
Convert it into actions and points for improvement.
6. Keep in touch.
Create space for a boomerang effect.