6 Technology Considerations When Offboarding Employees
When employees depart a company, either through a planned departure or unexpectantly, there are several considerations when it comes to digital offboarding.
There was a time a few decades back when a company just wanted to make sure they got the key to the office door back from a soon-to-be ex-employee. But today, employees may have multiple “keys” in the form of account passwords that companies need to worry about.
The rise of the remote workforce has also complicated the offboarding process. Now companies may have employees that have company computers, headsets, and printers at their home offices that need to be retrieved. Not to mention business data that may need to be extracted from personal devices.
Approximately 41.8% of the American workforce is working remotely since the pandemic.
Without a comprehensive technology offboarding process in place, companies risk their IT security and loss of important data that may have been built up over the years.
We’ve put together a checklist of technology offboarding considerations you can use to ensure you’re not missing anything important.
Checklist for Digital Employee Offboarding
Get a List of All Cloud Accounts
In a survey of security professionals, 83% said that employees stored company data on unapproved cloud apps. This shadow IT can be a big problem when an employee departs.
The company could be left unable to retrieve important data or a process may be “broken” when a key employee leaves because no one knew the app they used to do a certain function.
Ask an employee for a list of all applications they use for any of their tasks. This way you can get any needed logins and can ensure you have all company data accounted for that they worked within the cloud.
Change All the Employee’s Passwords
One of the reasons it’s important to get that list of cloud apps that an employee uses as one of the first things you do is because you’ll need to change all the account passwords used by that employee.
Yes, you should delete the accounts as well, but usually, companies are still copying data or figuring out who to transfer data to when an employee leaves, so to ensure security until the account is shut down, the passwords should be changed. Make sure to include their email password as well.
Retrieve Business Data From Personal Devices
Sixty percent of companies don’t bother to remove company data from employee devices when an employee leaves. This can lead to customers being poached if the employee still has all their contact details or to a data privacy breach due to an ex-employee having access to sensitive information on customers or vendors.
Retrieving business data from employee devices is easier if you set yourself up with mobile device management ahead of time.
A mobile device manager, such as Intune in Microsoft 365 Business Premium, allows you to keep control of the “business side” of a person’s device to back up and remove data and revoke access to company apps remotely.
Retrieve Any Company-Issued Devices
If you have employees working from home, they may have company-issued laptops, headsets, or other devices that you’ll need to have returned.
It’s best not to leave anything to chance and have a policy of getting devices during an in-person offboarding or shipping the employee a box and packaging with prepaid postage so they can return work devices. Make sure to coordinate with the employee and do a pickup request so they can just set the box outside for the carrier.
Otherwise, they may get busy and just not get around to taking a company device to the post office.
Get Important Passwords
Some employees may be the only ones with the company’s social media passwords or with another critical password. If they initially set up a cloud account for the business on their personal email address, the company may have no way to use the “lost password” process to regain access to that account once the employee is long gone.
Make sure you get a full list of all the employee’s login passwords for any company systems or applications.
You can avoid the potential of getting locked out of a company account by using a business password manager. This allows the company to maintain control of employee business logins once they’ve left.
Close Employee Cloud Accounts
You don’t want to leave ex-employee cloud accounts open for too long or they can pose a security risk. Decide who to transfer any account data to and then close the account through your cloud provider.
This also ensures you’re not paying for unused accounts on your cloud subscriptions.
Need Help With Technology Offboarding?
Quantum PC Services can help your Sturgeon Bay area business put a streamlined and thorough digital offboarding process in place to ensure all your bases are covered.
Contact us today to learn more! Call 920-256-1214 or reach us online.
