Mastering Offboarding for Network Success

The moment of saying goodbye to an employee is a pivotal point in managing their transition into an alumnus - but should it really be a ‘goodbye’? Join us and guest speakers Alyssa Dominioni, Global Alumni Relations Lead at L.E.K. Consulting, and Steve Cadigan, trailblazer of global talent strategy and company culture, and author of Workquake. Together, we explore the importance of delivering the right message to departing employees at the right time, delve into the why’s and how’s of adopting a company-wide strategy to "retain the relationship", and think in terms of building a sustainable model for the future.

Five Things We Learned About Mastering Offboarding for Network Success 

Alumni can give you instant feedback …

“Do a survey. Would you recommend us as a place of employment? Would you continue to recommend us? If the score is low, I'd want to talk to some people to say, “Why is that? What about the experience here that makes you feel like that's something that you wouldn't want to engage in or you wouldn't want to keep in touch?” Then I know I've got some work to do …”

Offboarding starts on day one …

“Offboarding is actually the first day of the employee. You want to set them up for success and hope they'll stay in touch. When they are still at the firm we have much more leverage to get the right messages across ...”
Alyssa Dominioni

Skilled employees are in demand employees …

“The biggest challenge for leaders today is that they can't find people with the skills they need as fast as they want. When they do, they can't keep them. Offboarding is a reframe of the relationship between employers and employees where we care about an employee beyond just when they work for us ...
Steve Cadigan

Alumni networks can be a nice goodbye …

“When people leave, HR is often going to be say: give me your laptop, give me your pass, here's the bonus calculation, but we might disagree on that. Alumni network are a nice service to give HR a nice message to end their checklist …”
Alyssa Dominioni

Employees deserve respect …

“Every organization I've ever worked for says, “We really care about our people, but we're going to put you on a 90 day probation, and hopefully you'll make it. We're probably doing to do a criminal background check on you and watch you logging on your keys from home.” If you're not already treating people with dignity, respect and trust, don't bother with alumni …”
Steve Cadigan

Q&A

What are we talking about when we use the term offboarding?

Alyssa: Offboarding is actually the first day of the employee. You want to set them up for success and hope they'll stay in touch. As an alumni team, we were only reaching our alumni on their last day. I now realize there is a time when they are still at the firm and willing to receive information where we have much more leverage to get the right messages across.

Steve: The biggest challenge for leaders today is that they can't find people with the skills they need as fast as they want. When they do, they can't keep them. Offboarding is a reframe of the relationship between employers and employees where we care about an employee beyond just when they work for us. The relationship doesn't end at the end of employment, it begins a new phase.

How would you characterize the current stage of offboarding in most companies?

Steve: It's haphazard. There's no strategy or objective. It's the result of an enlightened leader who cares about staff having a relationship with people who leave. It's not necessarily sponsored by the company. It results when you have a mature leader who really thinks broadly and cares. We all have leaders from our past that we still keep in touch with. But very rarely do I see an organization really put a lot of thought behind it.

How has offboarding evolved for you?

Alyssa: When I approach alumni, I look at ROE. We get our return on engagement through reach organized programming and empowering. How do we increase the number of alumni we're in contact with so they're aware of what we offer, whether it's events, inspirational talk, career support, knowledge sharing and empowering? How do we empower alumni to get involved? And how do we empower champions inside the company to help us with word of mouth. 65% of our new alumni connect to our portal. But we were doing it individual by individual. My question then became: how do I think about it more strategically and is there a critical touch point in the employee journey? That led me to partnering with our HR teams.

What should the exiting employee be getting from offboarding?

Alyssa: Clarity on the next steps, what services are available to them, how can they come back. And confidence around recognizing employees can go a long way. “Thank you for your contribution,” is something that was not in our exit emails, for example. I've added that at the top of our offboarding templates.

What can be the difficulties?

Alyssa: Finding the right tone is difficult. You can't be too friendly. You can't be too formal. Collecting, analyzing and acting upon data. One of our HR teams say that 70% of team members said they were willing to come back as boomerangs, meaning we save on recruitment and training costs. Knowing that is gold for me. Collecting and acting upon the data is a really big one for me.

Steve: Some typical mistakes that I see – and I'm coming to you from the United States, one of the most litigious countries in the world – is it's always about what the lawyer thinks, and this is where a lot of organizations get it wrong. I see organizations repeatedly following the legal advice and ending the relationship on legally safe terms versus good human terms. A great story of an organization that got it right and was Airbnb. When the pandemic happened, no one was using Airbnb, so they had to let a lot of people go. They did it in such an incredible way that people became more loyal because of how well they were treated. The company turned the entire recruiting team into an outplacement firm, matching every departing employee to every job that was open on the planet. That was the number one objective of the company, to give a soft landing to all the departing people, in defiance to what the lawyers might say. The biggest mistake I see is people trying to take the safe legal path versus recognizing the beginning of something that could be a new revenue or new joint venture or a returning boomerang employee.

What role does communications play in this?

Alyssa: HR needs to be involved because they're a neutral force. Direct managers play a big part. I have heard people say they were disappointed if they hadn't heard from a manager. If they've spent 10, 15, 20 years at the firm and they're only in touch with HR, they don't feel like that's enough. One of our offices does thank you lunches and celebrates people when they leave, which is a great idea. In terms of communication, consistency is key. Word of mouth is a massive risk. I've spoken to people who heard this person had reached out to them or they had heard from this person, but their experience wasn't the same.

Steve: I wouldn't start by framing who should be involved in building an alumni network if I didn't already feel that we had a good relationship with our employees. Every organization I've ever worked for says, “We really care about our people, but we're going to put you on a 90-day probation, and hopefully you'll make it. We're probably doing to do a criminal background check on you and watch you logging on your keys from home.” If you're not already treating people with dignity, respect and trust, don't bother with alumni. If you can build that advocacy, then you can expand.

People are going to be here shorter, so that means we're going have more alumni than ever. Should we go Tony Soprano on them and tell them when you quit, you're dead to us? Or should we say we want a long-term relationship? If the answer is yes, then you go tell every department. And that's everyone: communications, public relations, the people who are doing new hire orientation. The people who touch the employee experience the most are the frontline managers. They’re the ones that start building that alumni network in the recruiting process. You’ve got to start building that alumni network when you're recruiting people, not when you're letting them go.

Technology is poking a hole in the belief that for us to have a successful operation, people have to stay here a long time. Microsoft, less than three years tenure, Google, less than three year tenure. Apple, less than four years tenure. Some of the most valuable companies in the world are not thriving because they have so many people who've been there 30, 40 years. The development cycle, particularly in technology, is a lot shorter than 7, 8, 9 years. We have a lot of leaders that were all trained that loyalty is the key to a successful operation. And that means people have to stay a long time. People today are loyal to learning, not necessarily to a company. So let's make them better even when they're gone. Success doesn't mean you're here five years, then we will listen to you. If I know you're probably only going to be here four or five months, I'm going to train you really, really quickly and find a way to make the job satisfying as fast as I can. And then keep in touch with you and maybe you'll come back.

What suggestions do you have for HR and hiring managers along into the alumni value proposition?

Steve: Generally speaking, HR is underfunded, overburdened, putting out fires constantly and not really respected. That puts you at a disadvantage where it’s like: unless this is going to solve an immediate problem that I have right now, I do not have time for this. So I would say: don't wait for HR to figure it out. If you really believe in it, start something on your own and then show HR the value for them.

75% of companies across the globe continue to experience a global talent shortage. Is alumni an important source of boomerang hires?

Alyssa: Yes. When I presented our offboarding recommendation, boomerang hires impacted culture safe cost. I volunteered to do more career support for HR team. I was taking one burden off them by speaking to people who had not yet decided they were going to leave, but were exploring other career options. By supporting the HR teams, it allowed me to know what leavers wanted. It was giving me data and feedback while supporting HR. My recommendation is based on four pillars: guidance for leavers, team efficiency, piloting programs for nurtured communities and branding. The other thing is also we're giving them a nice message. When people leave, HR is often going to be say: give me your laptop, give me your pass, here's the bonus calculation, but we might disagree on that. Alumni network are a nice service to give HR a nice message to end their checklist.

Companies spend millions on sourcing people, hiring, nurturing, recruiting, onboarding them, making them happy, upskilling them, and retaining them. Then it’s “thanks, bye” and they get thrown in the trash. Alumni are your employees that aren't currently working for you.

Steve: Because of the high cost of healthcare, there’s a strong effort in most companies to draw a line between an employee and a temporary or an independent contractor. I see these people as part of your community, but in the US, you can't invite them to the holiday party because that could see blurring the lines. Then if we blur the lines, we're going to have to pay for their healthcare. I look at all the companies that we employ, whether it's DoorDash, Instacart, Uber, Lyft. We have so many businesses that are providing a service and those aren't employees. How do you perceive them as a business? What investments are you making in them? Don't just think about employees, think about the whole community people adding value in your organization. I would consider those people alumni. The two largest sources of hires in most companies are employee referral and temp contractor conversion to full-time hire. How you treat those communities are really valuable.

I think we are learning now, especially because of the shortage of skills, that we really need to know more about our people, their skills, their interests. Understanding where someone wants to go at the beginning of an employment relationship is a great way to committing to help them get to wherever they want to go. If it also serves the best interest of the organization: you do this for me, I'm going do this for you, and we're both going to hopefully wind up the better for it. A technology system that can help maintain contact after we launch our employees out there into the world, is super valuable.

What advice would you give for people who want to create a standardized offboard process?

Alyssa: I'm only at the beginning of this offboarding journey, but what I've realized is once you've spoken to people and put back the human element at the center, people need to hear from you. Having really good human conversations and saying thank you will go a long way. Whether it's you or HR or alumni services, it’s important to be able to categorize your leavers and send triggered messages, for example send people who had said yes to boomerangs, a boomerang story at the right time for them to be inspired. We definitely need a lot of different channels for alumni to pay attention to us.

Is there a feedback mechanism that can be used to evaluate and improve offboarding strategies?

Steve: Are you retaining the information of your departing employees? That’s number one. A lot of times when people are let go, they don't keep the information. And number two, do a survey. Would you recommend us as a place of employment? Would you continue to recommend us? Have that as an alumni net promoter score. If the score is low, I'd want to talk to some people say, “Why is that? What about the experience here that makes you feel like that's something that you wouldn't want to engage in or you wouldn't want to keep in touch?” Then I know I've got some work to do.

Alyssa: I'd say increase in engagement via the percentage of consent from leavers to receive communication. We only send newsletters and event invites to people who have said, “Yes, I want to be part of your alumni network, and I want to hear from you.” I'm hoping that's an increase in the coming months.

How can companies ensure a smooth transition for the remaining team members after people leave?

Steve: To recognize whether or not you have a culture where you can talk about the pros and cons of someone leaving. Having a culture where those conversations can take place is really important because hiring and retaining talent is so hard today. You can talk about the hearts and messy stuff because you’ve got to find ways of improving and becoming a place where great people want to be. If you create the culture where great people want to go, it relieves the pressure of having to hunt people.

Alyssa: People will feel warm if they see other people are happier and cared about. So making sure we look after that person leaving, making them a brand ambassador will make people feel more comfortable.

Presenters:
Alyssa Dominioni, Global Alumni Relations Lead at LEK Consulting
Steve Cadigan, Global Talent Strategy and Company Culture Expert and author of Workquake
Emma Sinclair, CEO, EnterpriseAlumni