Keeping a foot in the door: a positive off-boarding process

Off-boarding and its benefits

An off-boarding process is an important part of the employee lifecycle and should be used to ensure an employee leaves your company on good terms and under the best possible circumstances.

Where a company’s off-boarding policy ensures this, an ex-employee is more likely to recommend your company to friends and family and the possibility of re-joining the company in the future is maximised. The benefits associated with re-employment include lower costs and a reduction in the time taken for the person to become productive, compared to a person with no previous experience of your company.

Devolution of tasks

Employees now expect to be able to access their self-service portal for practical reasons such as downloading their payslips and printing off their P45’s, as well of the more usual tasks of booking holiday and training. This is an additional way of saving your HR department time and your business money in allowing employees to deal with their own personal administration tasks, freeing up your HR team for other jobs that require their specialised skills. This gives employees the opportunity to be self-sufficient, which suits the more independent work forces of today while saving your business time and money.

Optimising self-service

Off-boarding is not a process that should end once a person leaves, the employment cycle of a member of staff can be extended and their overall experience can be improved upon by allowing them extended access to self-service.

Giving employees access to their self-service once they have left has multiple benefits. Making essential documents available can encourage leavers to login, and as a result be exposed to messages that  re-advertise the business and notify them of any changes that have occurred in their absence. In addition, there is the opportunity to link back into your business’s careers page to advertise what jobs are available.

It’s well publicised that replacing an employee can cost up to £30,000 when costs like recruitment fees and advertising are taking into account. Re-employment saves costs to your business and adds the benefit of an employee with prior knowledge of your company’s practices and processes as well as prior insight into the sector. Returning staff members would be given access to the same self-service portal that they used throughout their previous period of employment as well as in their absence from the company, bringing their employment life cycle full circle. It would retain information on their employment history as well as qualifications and personal details saved within it. Not only does this allow them to become productive faster, it increases that member of staff’s employee engagement and overall experience with the company, welcoming them back to the business and making the re-employment process much quicker and easier.

The uses of self-service can be further extended to include it to be used as a more efficient and effective tool for resignations. Resigning through self-service is beneficial for remote workers and all staff would have a cooling off period, giving ample opportunity for them to retract their decision. It allows you to streamline the process for all involved so that the letter (that would previously have gone from the employee, to their manager and then onto HR) is already available in the system and accessible to all necessary parties from the beginning of the resignation process.

This should be used in conjunction with talent check-ins so managers would already be aware of how their staff are feeling about their job prior to a resignation. The use of self-service as a resignation tool would be to begin the electronic process. Eliminating the possibility for human error while triggering relevant background processes such as exit check-ins - all within the same portal.

There are exponential uses and benefits to fully utilising your self-service as an off-boarding tool. Our employees are coming to expect a level of autonomy with their interactions with HR and it is not without reason for this to continue to grow past simply their payslips and P45’s and onto performing actions such as resigning through the system. As an employer there is much to gain from embracing this change and saving our HR departments and the wider business time and money in the long run. 

Here at MHR we offer tools that cover the whole employee lifecycle – including on-boarding, learning and development, performance management, workforce management and succession planning find out more here. If you’re already a customer of MHR please speak to your Business Development Manager, email BDM@MHR.co.uk or give us a call on 0115 945 7713 to discuss more.