Offboarding, the forgotten piece of the employee lifecycle. After all, the employee is leaving why waste your time & resources, right? Wrong! There are so many reasons why offboarding SHOULDN’T be an afterthought.
Software Advice provides this offboarding checklist. The third item on the list — continues to boggle my mind; why it doesn’t happen?!
What is item number three, you ask? … Initiate the Knowledge Transfer.
We all know how costly it is to lose a skilled employee, but why is that? Every time an employee walks out your doors, they are walking away with years of skills and organizational knowledge that no one else knows.
By initiating the knowledge transfer in the offboarding process, you are doing several really important things.
- You are appreciating the exiting employee for all the hard work they’ve put in and the impact they’ve made in the organization.
- You are setting up the incoming employee for success.
- You are significantly reducing the cost of employee turnover.
Why not appreciate all the work the employee has put in while learning from them before they move on to their next adventure. It never feels good when your years of work are just thrown out. There is no guarantee after the employee leaves all their projects will be picked up by the newcomer. This way, you are giving the exiting employee a sense of accomplishment as they are reminded how much they truly accomplished in their role.
Even more importantly, you’re capturing invaluable knowledge to keep in the organization's network. By retaining this information, you reduce the loss of productivity. In turn, the new hire is brought onboard efficiently setting them up for success. Without this knowledge, the new hire often feels lost and takes a much longer time to get up to speed.
Let’s jump back to that mind-boggling concept. Why do companies not retain this knowledge from the exiting employee? Simple. They don’t have a quick way for the SME to capture all their daily tasks prior to their exit.
Good news, no more excuses! I’d like to introduce you to iorad. Just hand iorad over to your SME and let them go to town. Each day the SME can turn on iorad to capture each task as they go throughout their day. They’ll just capture a process, add in the “why”’s and then repeat for the next process. A simple process can be captured in as little as two minutes. What are you waiting for? Start initiating the knowledge transfer and stop the priceless knowledge from walking out your doors.
