As a follow up to my last post, https://steemit.com/story/@willsling/i-m-leaving-my-job-after-6-years I am going to cover what I've learned over the past two weeks actively off boarding with my current employer.

Be respectful

Regardless of the conditions for leaving the company or client, put aside any personal feelings and take a moment to realize until it's after your last day... this is still your job. You should treat off boarding and your availability with your utmost respect and attentiveness. Not only do you want to avoid burning bridges, your reputation is still on the line.

First steps

These first steps which you should do immediately are to protect yourself from liability as soon as you send in your official notice of resignation. There is no telling when you access will be revoked.

• Download your signed agreements from any HR application.
• Download your last 6 months to a year in pay statements.
• Inform HR and IT departments, despite your official letter, not all parties in the company may have been informed.
• Prepare and make a note for yourself what your final payout should be.

First week

During the first week it's assumed you will have a lot of information to share but not enough time to speak with everyone that is necessary. In some circumstances if you can afford it and you had a lot of responsibilities it may make sense to provide a month notice instead of two weeks. If not this plan is focused on the fastest effective method to pass on everything you can so your soon-to-be employer can be successful in your absence.

• Ask your IT department or resource managers to provide you a unique fileshare folder with shared access to the management team AND a documentation space for sharing your notes.
• Pull any digital and physical files you may have private and begin sharing them with management team in your company's fileshare space. This includes resources you've accumulated during your job that you required to do your job effectively; notes, whiteboard images, images, development files (zip archived).
• In the shared documentation space, begin building a hierarchy of pages for yourself based on project or responsibilities. The upper level pages should include high-level information like resource links and contact information. As you create deeper pages include more technical information that is in your head that would be required by anyone taking over your job.
• Another note on project documentation, it's very helpful to share project details for delivery if your workstream must be picked up by someone. This might include delivery dates, links to work tasks in project management platforms, requirements and notes on the current state of your progress for all of this.

Second week

By this week you should have effectively documented everything you know, shared everything you have. Now it's time for show and tell.

• For each project or responsibility schedule time to have someone shadow you.
  • First walk them through the documentation over a live meeting.
  • Schedule additional separate time after covering documentation to have a formal QA.
  • Time and access permitting, schedule another time block to assist that person with on boarding to the project.
• Unless already communicated, begin talking with your colleagues. Inform them of your resignation and end date and give them time to ask you questions that might help them after your absence.
• Ask for feedback. Feedback can come in many forms so take it with some humbleness and consideration.
• Inform your management of all the tasks you have performed over the last two weeks and ask for confirmation.
• By the end of your second week you will notice your access slowly being shut down. Work diligently with HR and IT to return any resources/hardware/etc to the company to ensure a clean exit.

After all these steps you should have covered all bases, helped your colleagues in future success and removed yourself from any liability! Best wishes on the next chapter in your career!

Thanks for reading! If you have other tips for making a clean exit please share them in the comments.

Image source: pexels.com

Cheers, Willsling