Onboarding and Offboarding

Onboarding and offboarding are critical processes in employee management that encompass the entire lifecycle of an employee's association with a company. Onboarding involves the systematic integration of new hires into an organization, utilizing automated systems to introduce them to company culture, expectations, and operational protocols. This process aims to enhance productivity and assist new employees in adapting quickly to their roles. However, concerns arise regarding the impersonal nature of automated onboarding, which may overlook the nuances of individual employee backgrounds and contribute to feelings of overwhelm or isolation.

On the other hand, offboarding refers to the structured approach taken when employees depart from a company, whether through resignation, retirement, or termination. This process aims to ensure that exits are handled professionally and efficiently, minimizing potential conflicts and maintaining the organization's integrity. While automation can streamline offboarding procedures, critics argue that the lack of personal touch can lead to negative experiences for departing employees. Together, effective onboarding and offboarding practices are essential for organizations to manage talent dynamics, ensuring smooth transitions that are beneficial for both the company and its workforce.

Published in: 2023

By: Dewey, Joseph

Subject Terms

Onboarding and Offboarding

Abstract

Onboarding refers to a variety of strategies networks undertake to smooth the introduction of new talent into a workplace by providing an array of automated services, modules, and work simulation sessions. The process of moving workers out of a network has become increasingly more complicated, and many companies have moved to codify the process by which employees are terminated. That process, called offboarding, seeks to use available software to make a potentially acrimonious process professional and efficient.

Overview

An employee's career trajectory in any network follows a basic evolution or life cycle. Like the plot of any story, that association has a beginning and an ending, whether retirement or reassignment within a network or temporary layoffs, resignation, or termination for any reason by the company. This is largely the work of identity management, how to define a worker within a network from the first to last day. Companies have begun to invest considerable time and talent into managing employee identity, that is, how to bring new talent into a workplace—introducing the new hire's records into the company's existing database and introducing them to the workings, organization, and expectations of the network—and, when that association is no longer of value to the company, how to break ties with that employee cleanly, efficiently, and professionally.

Given the sophistication of the contemporary digital workplace, the conventional methods of hiring and termination have become unsatisfactory. An automated system avoids many manual procedural errors (Rouse, 2013). The processes of employee management, left to the execution of even the most competent human resource personnel, are prone to error, inconsistent protocols, mismanaged records, and even lost data. Employees with access to a network's computer systems must be carefully introduced into those systems, and once the employment has been terminated, their presence within that system must be equally carefully removed.

An identity and management access system seeks to help integrate new workers into a network system of operations and to remove terminated workers from that same network. In coordinating the full range of employee benefits, these computer software systems provide companies with an efficient and consistent system for getting new workers into place. The same system smooths over work termination decisions, which, depending on the circumstances, can turn acrimonious if handled inappropriately or insensitively. In creating computer systems and software programs to cover both ends of the employee's life cycle and network identity, onboarding and offboarding practices maintain efficient and economical strategies for managing an ever-changing workforce. It is in the company's best interest economically to maximize productivity by providing an efficient system for new employees to learn the ropes and to provide a consistent process for employees to move out of the company.

Applications

Onboarding. On its face, onboarding seems like a simple solution to a long-established problem—how to get new employees acclimated to a network culture quickly and efficiently so a company can begin to take advantage of the skill set the new employee brings to the company. Historically, the process could be problematic—new hires were put under the tutelage of long-established company employees, and whatever training was conducted would inevitably bear the impression of the biases and shortcomings of the mentor. Additionally, the range of employee benefits and company policies were not always consistently or accurately presented. New hires were expected to learn from observation and by asking questions, sometimes relying on anecdotal information, advice, and warnings.

A company interested in productivity must allow a generous learning curve as new hires inevitably work through initial uncertainties. Successful integration into a corporate culture—that is, learning company protocols and finding a place within the company's social culture—may take up to eighteen months (Thalheimer, 2014), during which time, negative first impressions of the network may have formed. Contradictory information can result in a trial-and-error approach to clarifying a new employee's role within a network. That process can leave new employees uncertain over company policies, which can lead to decreasing productivity and even a decision to leave the company. Employee error attributable to confusion over company policies and processes results in millions, or even billions, of dollars in losses for American companies each year.

Many modern companies use systems for introducing new talent—bringing them "on board"—through intensive meetings, PowerPoint lectures, online self-teaching modules, company videos, printed materials, and orientation sessions. Software applications facilitate the process and provide avenues of integration for new hires. Aware that new employees often form impressions of a company's professionalism and organizational structure in the first thirty days of employment, companies have provided orientation processes to provide overviews of company operations and critical information about benefits, insurance, pay schedules, and general company policies on everything from vacation time to parking.

Onboarding seeks to present network information systematically for new hires to review either individually or in groups, depending on the number of incoming employees. By assuring incoming employees of the integrity of the company's protocols, onboarding seeks to create a positive first impression of the company and, in turn, foster long-term company health by encouraging new employees to develop greater allegiance to the company.

Offboarding. According to a 2022 Gallup survey, only around 12 percent of organizations had a proper onboarding process, and fewer had proper offboarding processes in place (Understanding employee onboarding, 2023). Many terminations are viewed by departing employees as positive career changes—to take a better job elsewhere, for example, or retirement. Disciplinary firings and layoffs, however, often result in resentment. In all cases, the severing of ties with employees risks misunderstandings and the loss of critical materials and information. Offboarding procedures attempt to protect informational systems and their physical facilities from potentially disgruntled former employees. Companies can be vulnerable to actionable risks in the eleventh-hour scrambling that may accompany termination decisions. Poorly handled terminations can damage a company's reputation, giving the impression that it does not respect its personnel. As human resource advocates point out, providing a consistent and transparent platform for the termination transaction protects the company and eases the transition for the departing employee. By providing a public record of all documents pertaining to the job action, a high-quality offboarding system treats departing employees efficiently and consistently and seeks to minimize opportunities for acrimony.

With the omniscient reach of social media, companies recognize that former employees quickly become de facto ambassadors for their former company. Postings can broadcast positive responses from those employees whose departures were handled professionally and efficiently and vitriolic responses from those who believe their terminations were mishandled. In automating much of the process, offboarding brings to the process a degree of objectivity that, in turn, can make an unpleasant situation considerably more amicable. The premise behind offboarding is that a departing employee is valuable and that parting company with the network does not diminish that value. As with onboarding, the processes of offboarding seek to provide a support process for the employee. After all, the departing employee was hired by that same company and as such even departing employees bear the company brand.

Offboarding seeks to codify the process and minimize the potential for retaliation or distressing exits. In many ways, offboarding seeks to make termination just another process in a network organization's operations. Indeed, much of the material covered by offboarding concerns the details not of the actual termination but the specifics of severing the ties to the company. Benefits have to be discontinued; credit accounts have to be deactivated; identity clearances have to be canceled; materials relating to company functions have to be accounted for; ongoing work assignments have to be reallocated; and identification cards and keys have to be retrieved. The "de-provisioning" process can be tracked by software to ensure all materials have been accounted for and all benefits have been stopped.

Additionally to minimizing losses of physical property, information, and knowledge, offboarding attempts to provide a dignified departure and to facilitate a quicker and easier replacement hire. Offboarding includes a system for specifying the reasons for the termination and the dates of the process. Offboarding bundles all the information, providing a public database that includes material germane to a particular termination (including legally mandated exit interview materials) and a catalog of all company-specific forms related to the decision that protect the company from potential litigation.

Ideally, the process becomes less acrimonious and bitter split than an amicable and mutually beneficial professional interaction. The theory of offboarding cites a company's genuine interest in learning from its departing employees—even those that have been involuntarily terminated—to improve company productivity and its public profile (Does, 2014).

Viewpoints

Providing new employees with a helpful system for understanding their place in a new network as well as critical insights into how that network achieves its productivity goals might seem to be a commonsense application of computer technology to human resources management, but onboarding itself has been approached cautiously by companies. Some are wary of its one-size-fits-all approach to talent management. Depending on the size of a network's incoming hires, onboarding, in its effort to be all things to all employees, can give employees information they will not actually use in the workplace.

In addition, the intensive nature of onboarding can leave new hires feeling overwhelmed, confused, and anxious about company operations. New employees, wary of missteps that would negatively impact their own position within the network, may become hesitant and second-guess the very instincts and talent that made them attractive as job candidates in the first place. The process can be perceived as impersonal, and the uniform approach of onboarding automation can leave new employees feeling depersonalized. The more effective onboarding interactive protocols are intended to encourage new hires to immediately begin contributing (Cable 2013).

Because companies often rely on computer-mediated orientation programs, new employees lose the benefits of the human element of more conventional mentoring systems. More problematic, onboarding cannot take into consideration an individual employee's work history, for example, whether the employee is new to the workforce or comes with extensive experience.

Perhaps the most contested area of onboarding is its assumption that standardized orientation procedures will help in what is termed organizational socialization, that is, how an individual employee comes to fit into a network. Socialization is measured two ways: individually—how a new employee works with others, how they socialize informally in and about the office space, lunchrooms, break rooms, even elevators and parking lots; and collectively—how a new employee works with others on projects, during meetings, in conferences, and in the give and take dynamic of the workplace itself. Onboarding assumes that providing information will assist in both areas. But friendships and network camaraderie cannot be assured by orientation meetings and policy brochures. Genuine socialization depends on personal chemistry and the unpredictable elements of personality and context.

Critics have argued that onboarding separates new hires from their colleagues. Unlike more conventional systems of learning the ropes, onboarding stigmatizes new employees and takes time away from potentially productive endeavors to artificially create a "welcoming" environment. Companies often use the onboarding protocols to create a picture of the network that does not necessarily match the day-to-day operations of the network. As propaganda, onboarding orientations can create frustration as new hires try to operate within the guidelines of the out-of-step onboarding information.

Because the software developed to assist companies in onboarding is still in its first generation, little hard data is available yet on its impact on retaining employees or in positively impacting productivity, although initial studies have shown that onboarding for executives is far more beneficial than attempting the same level of integration for lower-echelon hires. Incoming executives can use the resources of onboarding to learn the company's culture and, in turn, to hit the ground running, to engage employees effectively, and inspire their cooperation and confidence in a time of transition, benefiting from the so-called fuzzy front end.

There are problems with offloading. Automation avoids errors and inconsistencies, but critics of offboarding point out that automation applied to a process that is fraught with potential unpleasantness, whether the employee is part-time or full-time, male or female, short-term or long-term, naturally creates a feeling of impersonality and network insensitivity, that departures from a network, for whatever reason, demands a personal touch and personal involvement. Departing employees are reluctant to find computer applications open to their responses and questions concerning the company's actions. In addition, because the network controls the computer systems that conduct offboarding processes, reliability of the information is questionable, as is the dimension and depth of public access to that data.

From promising graduates right out of college, their network skills untested, to experienced mid-life executives ready for or positioned by circumstances to change their employment profile, companies have moved by necessity to create a more organized and more efficient process for handling talent. In an era of increasing competition for talent and the increasing competition to ensure long-term commitment from talent brought into a company, onboarding and offboarding practices are increasingly seen as central to managing talent effectively. Codifying the hiring and the termination processes provides companies with the opportunity to maintain productivity despite the inevitable comings and goings associated with employee mobility.

Terms & Concepts

All spectrum platform: The software application specific to a network that includes the entire range of onboarding forms, including insurance forms, banking applications, network security agreements, permission slips for the company to retain background check information, as well as agreements pertaining to potential termination issues

Brand ambassadors: A theory of human resources management that has gained momentum with the reach of social media that current and former employees with access to Internet communications systems can act as information sources about a network's workplace conditions, operations, and productivity expectations

De-provisioning process: The term applied to the rigorous process of disengaging employees from a network because of termination, retirement, layoff, or reassignment, including deactivating security clearances, accounting for work materials and building access materials, as well as deactivating the full range of financial benefits

Fuzzy front end: The opportunity afforded incoming executives to achieve a smooth transition into power by calculated strategies to engage current staff and thus to maximize productivity and minimize confusion during the so-called honeymoon period, the first six months of the executive's placement

Human resources: The department specifically charged with managing and directing operations among and between employees and between employees and supervisors. Including hiring and terminating employees efficiently, consistently, and legally

Identity and access management system: The term given to the full range of a human resources department's processes and protocols for adding new employees, reassigning current employees, or terminating former employees

Organizational socialization: The process by which a network facilitates a new employee's initial work experience by provisioning monitored and structured association with co-workers as a way to introduce the new worker to the network culture and to minimize the potential for entry stress

Bibliography

Cable, D. W., Gino, F., & Staats, B. R. (2013). Reinventing employee onboarding. Sloan Review. Retrieved December 25, 2014, from http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/reinventing-employee-onboarding

Does a formal offboarding process help achieve HR goals? (2013). Careers Curves. Retrieved December 25, 2014, from http://www.careercurve.com/blog/2014/06/does-aformal-offboarding-process-help-achieve-hr-goals

Offboarding: leaving a lasting impression. (2013). Retrieved April 1, 2015, from http://aberdeen.com/research/8494/aioffboarding-talent-management/content.aspx

Reese, D. (2015). There’s no such thing as an ex-employee. Fortune. Retrieved December 28, 2016, from EBSCO online database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=100775986&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Rouse, M. (2013). What is onboarding and offboarding. Retrieved April 1, 2015, from http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/onboarding-and-offboarding

Take the "bored" out of employee onboarding with interactive training materials. (2014). Retrieved April 1, 2015, from http://discover.inkling.com/employee-onboarding%5FOALIDSC.html

Thalheimer, W. (2014). Five biggest mistakes in onboarding. Retrieved April 1, 2015, from http://www.willatworklearning.com/2013/11/five-biggest-mistakes-in-onboardingwhat-the-research-says.html

Understanding employee onboarding. SHRM. (2023, April 3). Retrieved May 1, 2023, from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/understanding-employee-onboarding.aspx

Onboarding and Offboarding

On this Page

Subject Terms

Onboarding and Offboarding

Abstract

Overview

Applications

Viewpoints

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

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