By Stefanie
Have you ever had someone leave a mess behind when they left your team? Data lost, reagents expire in a hidden corner of the fridge, and valuable samples turn to mold. You typically discover this only once you urgently need this sample for a last experiment to wrap up a paper. Or you need to assemble data but can’t figure out crucial details. Meanwhile your former team member has moved on and is difficult to get a hold of. And even if there is no mess, I’ve been in a pickle a few times because a team member took their valuable expertise with them. A few months ago, we discussed how effective onboarding is done. But offboarding is just as crucial. A saying that has stayed with me and serves as a warning goes like this: “If someone takes a pen from the office, they get a warning or even fired. But if someone leaves for good and takes their invaluable knowledge with them, they receive a grand farewell party and a bouquet of flowers.”
In short, you should be just as prepared for offboarding and knowledge transfer as you are for onboarding. There are many mistakes you can make in this process–I made most of them. But you don’t have to!
Misplaced Priorities – Rushing to Finish the Project
When a team member leaves, especially on short notice, you may ask: What tasks can they complete before their exit? Which responsibilities need transitioning? What’s the fate of projects X and Y?
In these moments (of panic), the knee-jerk reaction might be to expedite as much as possible.
This translates to “You initiated project X and training a successor would be too time-consuming, so wrap it up.” This might seem like the time-saving solution in the short term and even be a decent approach in some instances. But more often than not, this is the wrong approach.
Firstly, there is a significant risk that if experiments fail or aspects of the projects (e.g. writing the publication) take longer you end up with a half-baked interim product that no one can really continue working on.
Training another team member from the start minimizes this risk. Moreover, if you go about this cleverly, you can already take care of part of the necessary handover and training for the project’s future continuation or for a project with a similar set-up.
Therefore, I pair team members up to work on projects together once someone is about one year from the finish line, ideally even earlier.
Starting Too Late – There Are Still 3 Months Left
This brings me to the next piece of advice: offboarding should start even before a resignation notice surfaces!
How can this be done if you don’t know someone is leaving? By ensuring all process and procedure documentation is up-to-date and clear enough for a third party with relevant expertise to step in. This preparation makes the sudden departure of a key knowledge holder less daunting and reduces the tasks needed between resignation and departure, as process knowledge doesn’t need to be transferred from scratch.
Pro tip (yeah, I ran into this problem too): Make sure that there are always at least two people trained in all crucial lab/team procedures. Don’t count yourself unless you are prepared to step in and do the work.
Misaligned Expectations – Would You Be Motivated If You Were Leaving?
When we work with team leaders, we often encounter disappointment because departing team members do not perform as well towards the end as they did previously. And we all may or may not remember Sheryl Sandberg’s “Don’t leave before you leave.” But honestly: How motivated would you be if you were the one leaving? Do you still attend all faculty meetings, continue your committee and service tasks, and overdeliver? Or do you do what you have to and redirect your attention to the next thing?
The truth is that you can’t realistically expect people to overdeliver when they are halfway out of the door (at least mentally). But you can expect something. After all, the employment relationship, which includes salary, education, training, experience, and promotion in exchange for labor and contribution to research, persists until the end. On the other hand, you shouldn’t expect too much, as the benefits that you contribute to the separation phase is largely reduced to the salary. I
The departing individual’s priorities inevitably shift towards their future (looking for a suitable house at the new workplace, first onboarding measures in the new position), making it a foreseeable outcome that performance is limited during the remaining time.
Loss of Information in the Handover
In the best case, you have already found a successor for the person leaving before they leave. Whether transferring responsibilities to this team member, the process typically involves direct meetings. To enhance this exchange, I propose two strategies:
- Instead of 1:1 meetings, I recommend a 1:1:1 meeting with an additional moderator. This can significantly improve the sender-receiver situation by better structuring the conversation, pointing out gaps in the handover, and keeping the energy high for this important task between the participants. In my experience, this approach saves team time in the end.
- The departure of a team member can be an excellent occasion for knowledge sharing within the entire team. Why not plan a workshop, presentation, etc., for some of the tasks to hand over to the entire team? This costs a bit more team time, but it can be very beneficial for certain things if, for example, everyone knows what to do in maintaining a mouse colony afterward.
I said I only have two recommendations on this topic, but here’s a bonus.
- Appoint a handover specialist, who could also act as the moderator, and consider designing an offboarding questionnaire or checklist. This ensures consistent documentation and quality in the handover. Word of caution: Make the handover specialist accountable, not the person leaving. I’ve done it the other way around with questionable results. The bottom line is, you can’t hold someone accountable who isn’t there anymore.
Fail to Appreciate Achievements and Support Transition
Incorporating appreciation for achievements and support during the transition into a new job is an essential part of the offboarding process, serving not just to honor the departing member’s contributions but also to maintain a positive relationship in the tightly-knit world of research. Celebrating their accomplishments and offering support, such as flexible scheduling for interviews, providing advice during negotiations and of course references, can significantly impact morale and underscore your team values. This practice not only benefits the person leaving, but also enhances your team’s reputation.
Given the interconnected nature of the research field, a supportive offboarding experience can foster future collaborations or even facilitate the return of the individual in a new capacity. By ensuring a respectful and appreciative departure, you invest in your team’s long-term success and in lasting professional relationships.
Embracing Change with Grace
The process of offboarding, while often overshadowed by the emphasis on onboarding, is an integral component of your team’s lifecycle. It presents an opportunity not just for the individual departing but for the entire team to grow, adapt, and prepare for future challenges. This transition, when handled with care, thoughtfulness, and strategic foresight, can transform a potentially disruptive departure into a moment of collective advancement and renewed focus. Through meticulous planning, open communication, and a culture that values continuous learning, offboarding becomes less a period of loss and more a chapter of evolution and opportunity for all involved.
– Stefanie