The Offboarding Finalisation Workshop is a collaborative, facilitator-led session that helps your team step back from day-to-day offboarding activity and align on a clear, repeatable offboarding approach.
Together, we will:
Understand how offboarding works today (in practice, not just on paper)
Identify what’s working well and where friction, inconsistency, or risk exists
Agree on what “good” looks like for your organisation
Design a future offboarding journey that is scalable and operationally realistic
Confirm the practical next steps required to move forward (forms, configuration, ownership)
Who should attend
To get the best outcomes, we recommend inviting a cross-functional group, such as:
HR / People team representatives (process owners)
People leaders / supervisors (primary initiators)
A project sponsor or decision-maker (to help confirm priorities and approve the future process)
Optional: Payroll, Operations, and/or IT stakeholders (where offboarding connects to final pay, rosters, access removal, asset recovery)
Recommended group size (6–8 participants)
To keep the session focused and productive, we recommend a maximum of 6–8 attendees. If you’re inviting participants outside of HR/People (e.g., Payroll or IT), ensure each attendee is a strong representative for their function—someone who understands the current process and can speak to requirements and decisions on behalf of that area.
Duration and format
Recommended duration: 2 hours
Format: typically remote, using a collaborative whiteboard for journey mapping and activities.
A typical session runs as follows:
Welcome & context (5 mins)
Design thinking & offboarding context (10 mins)
Setting the scene — map the current offboarding process (20 mins)
Rose, Buds & Thorns reflection (15–20 mins)
Defining success (10 mins)
Journey mapping — future state offboarding process (25–30 mins)
Launch planning (10–15 mins)
Next steps, forms + setup tasks, ownership (15–20 mins)
What you’ll walk away with
By the end of the workshop, you will have:
A current-state offboarding journey map
A clear set of Roses, Buds and Thorns:
Roses: what’s working well today
Thorns: pain points, inefficiencies, risks
Buds: opportunities for improvement
Agreed success criteria for offboarding (what outcomes matter most)
A future-state offboarding journey map (who does what, and when)
A practical next-steps list, including:
Forms that need to be created (and what each one is for)
Other setup/configuration tasks (approvals, notifications, permissions, enablement)
Owners, timelines, and dependencies
Why this workshop matters
Offboarding processes often struggle when they’re unclear, inconsistent, too manual, or spread across too many handoffs. This can lead to:
Delays and errors in final pay
Missed steps and compliance gaps
Former employees retaining system access longer than intended
Lost organisational insight (exit feedback not captured)
High-effort admin work and rework across HR, payroll, leaders, and IT
A well-designed offboarding process creates a consistent rhythm of notify → coordinate → finalise → transition → close out, helping ensure people leave well, risks are controlled, and internal teams can trust the process. This workshop creates shared understanding and alignment before configuration begins, so decisions are clear and implementation is smoother.
How to prepare
Optional pre-work (recommended)
Ahead of the session, you may be asked to complete a short questionnaire covering:
How offboarding currently works
Known pain points or challenges
Variations by role, location, entity, or region
Which teams are involved (HR, payroll, IT, operations)
This helps your facilitator tailor the workshop but is not mandatory.
What to bring to the workshop
If available, it helps to have:
Any offboarding documentation currently in use (policies, checklists, exit templates)
A view of who is involved today (employee, supervisor, HR, payroll, IT)
Key governance rules (payroll cut-offs, approvals, access/security requirements)
A sense of what outcomes matter most (accuracy, compliance, speed, security, employee experience)
What happens during the workshop
Your facilitator will guide the session using a lightweight design-thinking approach focused on clarity and alignment.
1) Map the current offboarding process
We’ll document how offboarding works today across key roles (e.g., employee, supervisor, HR, payroll, IT), including manual steps, workarounds, and where things slow down or break down.
2) Identify Roses, Buds and Thorns
We’ll reflect on the current process to clearly separate:
what’s working
what’s painful or risky
where the biggest improvement opportunities are
3) Define success
Before designing the future state, we’ll align on success criteria such as:
what “good” offboarding looks like in your context
what a compliant, secure process requires
what would cause failure (unclear ownership, timing vs payroll cut-offs, lack of enablement)
4) Design the future offboarding journey
Using your success criteria as a guide, we’ll design a realistic, scalable future state—focusing on:
clear ownership across HR/leaders/payroll/IT
timing aligned to payroll and operational needs
consistent notifications and handoffs
appropriate governance (approvals, auditability)
a better employee experience at exit (handover, comms, feedback)
5) Confirm next steps and ownership
We’ll finish by agreeing:
immediate next steps
owners and timelines
dependencies, approvals, and risks
a draft list of forms to create and supporting setup/configuration tasks
After the workshop
Following the session, you’ll receive a summary capturing:
the finalised current-state and future-state journey maps
your agreed offboarding definition/scope and success criteria
a list of forms to be created and key setup/configuration tasks
confirmed owners, next steps, and indicative timelines