Attracting the right talent in a candidate-driven market is an achievement to celebrate. You had to work hard to make your organization worth choosing. That said, the challenges of introducing a new employee to your place of work don’t end there.

In this article, we’ll discuss the two bookends of the employee lifecycle: onboarding and offboarding.

Why are onboarding and offboarding important?

Onboarding and offboarding are processes to be taken very seriously. Both play an essential role in protecting your organisation from security breaches and other threats.

Security aside, the onboarding process is one of the first impressions that your new employees get of your organisation. By the end of the process, do they feel comfortable, safe, informed, and ready to do their job? If not, employee satisfaction and retention become far less likely, and it might be time to fine-tune this process.

While it often receives less attention than onboarding, the offboarding process is equally essential. This is your opportunity to right any wrongs with a departing employee, ensure the safety of all organisational assets, and prepare your organization for a role transition.

Next, we’ll discuss a few best practices as you work to improve your own onboarding and offboarding processes.

Onboarding Best Practices

Onboarding is an extensive and ongoing process. Employees aren’t finished with it until they are operating at a comparable efficiency and level of confidence to the rest of their co-workers. Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you get started:

• Prepare materials in advance. Remember, the onboarding process begins before the employee has started their first day at their new job. You’ll want to make sure that all necessary materials (computers, monitors, etc.) are in stock and ready to be shipped to your new hire.

• Set up first-day training sessions. You can’t expect your new hire to hit the ground running without any training. Training sessions should cover not only the employee’s day-to-day tasks but also important security practices like password hygiene and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

• Check-in every day. Beginning work with a new company can feel intimidating and overwhelming. Consistently ask your new hires how they’re feeling and what you can do to support them. This will help them feel cared for and safe in their new workplace. When people think about employee onboarding they think about HR, employee handbooks, compliance and orientation, however, onboarding should be more of a journey than a short experience. Short and long-term employees should be regularly surveyed so you can improve their experience.

Offboarding Best Practices

Whether an employee gets fired or leaves willingly to pursue retirement or another career path, you should never just let them walk out the door. To conduct an effective and secure offboarding process, be mindful of the following tips:

• Deprovision the departing employee. After leaving the organisation, the departing employee should no longer have access to company data. Be sure to close out their accounts, wipe company data from their devices, and investigate any potential security loopholes.

• Host an exit interview. Exit interviews are your opportunity to confirm that the departing employee isn’t a threat to your organization and learn how your organisation can improve moving forward. Approach this process with caution and empathy — especially if the departing employee has been fired. You may be able to diffuse an otherwise volatile employee.

• Have a replacement game plan. Once an employee departs, they leave behind an open role. Before they’re gone, remember to collect the knowledge required for their role, hire their replacement, and transfer that knowledge to the successor.

If you enjoyed the advice above and are looking for resources to improve your own onboarding and offboarding processes, print out the onboarding and offboarding checklists below, courtesy of Secureframe.