Few moments in a professional career are as emotionally charged for employees as joining or leaving a company – even though the emotions involved can differ greatly between the two scenarios. To manage both entry and exit in a structured way, more and more organizations are turning to thoughtful planning.
A well-structured onboarding plan is already standard practice in many companies. New employees are guided step by step into their roles to help them become productive quickly. However, the final stage of an employee's journey often receives far less attention. Yet this phase is just as critical as the beginning. A well-executed offboarding process brings the employee life cycle full circle, helping to preserve institutional knowledge, maintain team resilience, and shape the company’s employer brand.
But how can organizations ensure that the offboarding process is smooth and sustainable? What benefits does this bring, both for the company and the departing employee? And how can a project management tool like Stackfield support this process? These and other questions are explored in the following article.
What is Offboarding?
Offboarding encompasses all the organizational, legal, and interpersonal steps involved when an employee leaves a company. It makes no difference whether the employee resigns voluntarily, is terminated, or departs for other reasons.
Importantly, offboarding does not begin on the employee’s last working day but starts with the resignation. Some companies even go a step further by proactively gauging employee sentiment before departures occur, using tools like "stay interviews".
Regardless of when it begins, a successful offboarding process ensures a smooth transition for everyone involved. It protects critical knowledge, relieves pressure on teams, secures company data, and ensures a professional end to the working relationship.
How does an offboarding process work?
An ideal offboarding process is structured, transparent, and respectful – regardless of the reason behind the departure. It should begin immediately after the resignation to ensure a professional transition for the departing employee while preserving and reinforcing the company’s values.
Typical steps in the offboarding process include:
Creating or activating the offboarding plan
A central overview of upcoming tasks, deadlines, handovers and conversations creates accountability and helps ensure that nothing is forgotten or lost. The plan also defines responsibilities and structures the timeline. If an offboarding plan already exists, it can now be activated. If not, it is high time to organize the departure.
Early communication
After the resignation, all relevant internal parties should be informed. This includes, of course, colleagues and managers, but also the HR and IT departments as well as – depending on the employee’s area of responsibility – external partners and / or clients. Clear and timely communication helps to avoid uncertainty.
Handover of tasks, knowledge and projects
One of the most important, yet often underestimated aspects of offboarding is the timely transfer of projects, processes and information. Tools such as knowledge bases or kanban boards, like those in Stackfield, help make implicit knowledge visible and preserve it within the organization, even before a resignation occurs.
Exit interview and farewell
A confidential conversation with a manager, HR or the executive team offers space for reflection and honest feedback. Often, topics related to leadership, processes or company culture are addressed openly for the first time. A thoughtful farewell, for example through a team event or personal gift, leaves a lasting positive impression and strengthens the employee’s memory of the company.
Follow-up and internal adjustments
Insights gained from the offboarding process should be analyzed and followed up on. They offer valuable input for onboarding improvements, employee retention and leadership culture.
What are the benefits of offboarding?
A well-planned offboarding process offers organizations a range of benefits:
- Knowledge retention: Structured handovers, documentation and targeted transfer discussions ensure essential know-how remains within the company. Documented processes support continuity.
- Legal compliance: Access rights, work equipment and sensitive data are removed or transferred fully and verifiably. This helps ensure data protection and minimizes liability risks.
- Employer branding: Former employees can act as ambassadors. A respectful offboarding process enhances the employer image and signals openness to potential returnees.
- Feedback collection: Exit interviews provide honest insights into internal workflows, leadership and company culture. This feedback enables targeted improvements.
- Team stability: A transparent process reduces uncertainty and prevents rumors. Team members know what is happening and what is expected of them. Roles, tasks and responsibilities can be reassigned early on.
What are common mistakes and how can they be avoided?
Lack of planning or delayed preparation:
If offboarding only begins on the employee’s last working day, it is already too late. Handovers are rushed or do not happen at all, and important questions remain unanswered.
Solution: Activate offboarding processes early on, ideally with clearly defined responsibilities and an accessible, coordinated task overview.
No or incomplete knowledge transfer:
Projects stall, client relationships break off or valuable knowledge disappears into inboxes or leaves with the employee.
Solution: Handover meetings, written documentation and tools for structured information storage help organizations consolidate and retain essential knowledge.
Lack of standardization:
Each departure becomes a new internal process where all structures, responsibilities and workflows have to be rebuilt from scratch.
Solution: Define a standardized process, document it and use templates, for example in a project management tool like Stackfield.
No feedback loop or feedback culture:
The opportunity for honest feedback is missed because exit interviews remain superficial or do not take place at all.
Solution: Enable confidential conversations, actively seek feedback, analyze it systematically and store the results in a central and accessible location. Anonymous surveys can also be helpful.
Three practical tips for mapping offboarding processes in Stackfield
Use offboarding templates across modules
In Stackfield, content, tasks or even entire rooms can be saved and reused as templates, which is especially helpful when it comes to offboarding. A dedicated room created specifically for offboarding can include all relevant content for an employee's departure, from open tasks in the task module to essential documents in the pages or files module. This room can then be reused for every offboarding process and ensures that each one follows the same optimized structure.
Internal knowledge base for information storage
Capturing an organization’s internal knowledge in a central location is useful not only during offboarding. In Stackfield, this can be done via the pages or files module. Both modules can serve as knowledge bases where employees store key documents, notes and other information for easy access at any time. In an offboarding context, this ensures you’re well-prepared and that no valuable knowledge is lost.
Quick task overview and reassignment
When an employee leaves the company, the question arises: what happens to their open tasks and projects? What’s still pending, what has already been worked on, and where are deadlines approaching? In Stackfield, you can find the answers at a glance. All tasks remain in place even after the user has been deactivated, and they can be reassigned to new owners with just a few clicks. Linked tasks help ensure that conversation guides, feedback questions or confidential notes stay together in one place.
Conclusion: Turning farewells into future investments
A structured offboarding process combines operational efficiency with appreciation. When tasks, knowledge and responsibilities are clearly defined, everyone benefits: teams remain capable of action, sensitive data stays protected and former employees remember their time at the company positively.
With flexible templates, centralized knowledge bases and clear task overviews, Stackfield provides the ideal framework to make offboarding a manageable and transparent process. In this way, farewells become a sustainable investment in the future, rather than being a risk factor.