Offboarding is the process that leads to the formal separation between an employee and a company through resignation, termination, or retirement. It encompasses all the decisions and processes that take place when an employee leaves. This may include:


  • Transferring that employee’s job responsibilities
  • Deactivating access rights and passwords
  • Turning in equipment
  • Conducting exit interviews to gather feedback


Essentially, offboarding ensures there are no loose ends when an employee leaves the company, so you don’t find yourself emailing a former employee two weeks later asking for his or her ID badge, for example. The process is also useful for learning what you might be able to improve for your current and future employees.

What Is the Difference Between Onboarding and Offboarding?

While onboarding and offboarding are two very different parts of an employee’s journey, they need to be similarly executed. It’s never as simple as a “you’re hired” or “you’re fired.” Both of those statements come with a myriad of strings attached. The step-by-step process of each should be planned from start to finish, and all the paperwork should be carefully organized.

Both onboarding and offboarding can have elements of uncertainty and risk for employees and organizations alike. Without careful communication, both sides may question the motivation of the other. During onboarding, this often manifests in nervous excitement as the new hire and the organization test the fit of the new employee.

During offboarding, however, the uncertainty is tied to the decisions that led to the employee leaving. In the case of employee resignation, the employer may wonder if there is any way they could have convinced the departing employee to stay. And when employees are terminated or laid off, they may question their employer’s true motivations for letting them go.

Like other companies, our company also abide by a certain flow of events that will eventually lead to the employers wishing their past employees well for their future endeavors.

The offboarding process in the company adhere to certain processes with each process to be completed before moving on to the next process.

The process of offboarding in the company is as follows:

1. The Clearance Form


  • Upon receiving the resignation letter or the resignation notice from the employee, the offboarding officer immediately creates a clearance form for all the departments involved with the employee to sign.


  • A clearance form is a great way of ensuring that the employee who has opted to leave the company has no longer access to certain information or data that is deemed confidential and for employment purposes strictly only for the people employed in the company.


  • The clearance form will usually prevent employees from leaking information to the public or to the media. Employee are required to have clearance forms because of the need of security.


  • For the company, the exit clearance form goes through different departments, each doing their roles efficiently and accurately because an exit clearance form is as important as any other forms existing in the company.


The company’s exit clearance form involves different departments/people; each have different functions in the completion of the said form. The flow of the exit clearance form is as follows:

Each has certain tasks to finish before signing the form.

  • CHROD (Human Resources I/Offboarding) – example of task is if the actual last day of work is determined.
  • IT Department – example of task is if all the computer equipment has been returned.
  • Training Department – example of task is to remove the employee from the active training record.
  • Finance Department – example of task is to deduct the exact amount from the government loans of the employee.
  • Payroll and Timekeeping – example of task is to compute the last salary pay of the employee.
  • Department head/Team Leader – example of task is to determine the agreed last day of work of the employee.
  • CEO – example of task is for the final approval of the exit clearance form.
  • Employee – example of task is to sign the exit clearance form and the quit claim waiver.
  • CHROD (Human Resources II/Offboarding) – example of task is to send the quit claim waiver to the employee for the employee’s signature.


Refer to this link for the whole breakdown of what the exit clearance form consists of:


  • Like what was previously being said, the company’s exit clearance form involves different departments; each have different tasks and functions to do.


  • For the sending of the clearance form to the departments involved, HelloSign is being used. HelloSign is a third party application in which users can sign automatically without any hassle or problems occurring while signing. The signatures are automated and auto-saved, you just have to log in to your account and you can sign things needed to be signed by you directly.


  • The offboarding officer inputs the signatories for the exit clearance form through HelloSign in order to start the signature process of the exit clearance form. The signature flow of the exit clearance form is as follows:
  • CHROD (Human Resources I/Offboarding)
  • IT Department
  • Training Department
  • Finance Department
  • Payroll and Timekeeping
  • Department head/Team Leader
  • CEO
  • Employee
  • CHROD (Human Resources II/Offboarding)
  • If the signatories and the blanks to be filled up are full, the offboarding officer then sends the form to be signed. The first person to sign the form is the offboarding officer. After he/she signs the form or if he/she is on the verge of signing, the second signatory will be sent a notice that there is a document that is needed to be signed by them. As well as the other signatories awaiting to affix their signatures on the form. However, the next signatories can’t view the document unless it is their turn to sign.


  • Every day, the offboarding officer checks if each signatory has signed their part of the exit clearance form. If not signed, the offboarding officer sends reminders to the signatories personally for them to be aware that they have a document needed to be signed. Subsequently, HelloSign sends reminders every 2nd and 6th day from the start of the signature process as a reminder.


  • 7 days are allotted per clearance form and the start of the counting of the days is the day the employee has sent in their resignation letter/notice.

 

2. The Offboarding Tracker


  • Like recruitment and onboarding, the company also has an offboarding tracker to track who has send their resignation and to be sent clearance forms and quit claims.


  • The offboarding Tracker is a spreadsheet specialized to track the offboarding process and for easier and more orderly following of the said process.


  • The offboarding tracker features mostly of important dates like when the employee has sent their resignation, when the clearance form is signed by each department/person involved, when is the actual last day of the employee, and such.


  • The parts of the offboarding tracker is as follows:
  • HR received resignation – the date HR department has received the resignation notice from the employee.
  • Clearance form completed by HR (1) – the date the offboarding officer has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Clearance form completed by IT – the date the IT department has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Clearance form completed by Training – the date the training department has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Clearance form completed by Finance – the date the finance department has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Clearance form Payroll and Timekeeping – the date the HR in-charge of payroll and timekeeping has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Clearance form completed by TL/Department head – the date the team leader/department head has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Clearance form completed by CEO – the date the CEO has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Clearance form completed by the Employee – the date the employee has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Clearance form completed by HR (2) – the date the offboarding officer has signed and completed his/her assigned tasks in the exit clearance form.
  • Actual last work day – the actual last day of work of the employee (if they have rendered 30 days or more or if it is an immediate resignation).
  • DOLE target offboarding complete date – the target offboarding complete date as per DOLE or the department of labor and employment.
  • Offboarding complete date – the date the offboarding process has been completed.
  • HOIT target offboarding days – the number of days it takes to complete the offboarding process.
  • Update central employee list excel – the date the central employee list excel has been updated.


  • How this works is that the offboarding officer updates the tracker every time the HR receives a resignation notice because it is used as basis for the clearance form to be sent to the different departments and people involved in clearing the employee to be able to leave the company without any hitches.


  • For every signatory who has completely signed their part of the clearance form, the offboarding officer updates the date it has been accomplished in the offboarding tracker.

 

3. Pay Slip and Full Breakdown of the Employee’s Last Salary


  • A salary slip or pay slip is a document containing a detailed list about the various components of your salary along with specific details of employment. It is issued every month by an employer either in the form of a printed hard copy or an electronic copy. Ideally a pay slip must contain a company logo along with company name and address.


  • The pay slip is important for an employee leaving for without it, they cannot receive their last salary to be paid by the employer. This only applies to employees who have rendered 30 or more days after sending their resignation notices. Employees who have opted for an immediate resignation cannot apply to receive their last salary pay as it will be used in lieu of them not rendering 30 days before leaving the company. Their salary loan will be used as compensation for the damages (if there are) and such things or the final settlement of the financial assistance/separation pay, overtime pay, salary, wage, commutable sick and vacation leaves, gratuities or any kind of compensation or emoluments.


4. Quit Claim


  • The offboarding officer refers to the pay slip for the exact amount to be given to the employee rather than the amount written on the exit clearance (there is a part of the exit clearance where the HR in-charge of payroll is asked to input the last pay computed of the employee) for the amount written on the exit clearance form can have discrepancies. The offboarding officer sees to it that both the pay slip and the amount written in the clearance form is the same to avoid any confusion.


  • The amount written on the quit claim waiver is the exact amount written on the pay slip of the employee given by the HR in-charge of payroll and not the amount written on the exit clearance form for the pay slip has the full breakdown of the payments given to the employee.


  • The quit claim is needed to be approved to be CEO before sending it to be signed by the employee. The offboarding officer sends it to the CEO for approval of the usage of Xero for the last salary payment of the employee.


  • The offboarding officer sends the quit claim waiver to the employee to be read and signed via HelloSign in which the employee is the first signatory and the second one is the offboarding. Once completed, the offboarding officer downloads the quit claim waiver to be used for Xero.


  • The employee needs to sign the quit claim first before receiving their last salary pay. The quit claim serves as an acknowledgement from the employee that he/she understands the terms and conditions that comes with the issuance of their last salary payments.

 

5. Sent to Xero for Funds


  • After the offboarding officer receives and signs the quit claim waiver, he/she then sends it to Xero for the giving of the funds to be used for the last salary pay of the employee.


  • Xero is an application for the finance department where its usage is to request funds. The people who have access to this are the managers, the HR department most especially the recruiter for job postings, employee relations, offboarding for last pay, basically people who need funds can have access to Xero.


The offboarding officer then sends sa debit memo from BPI as proof of transaction.


After the usage of Xero and the employee has receivedhis/her last salary, the offboarding process ends.