Employee Offboarding

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Employee Offboarding

Voluntary Terminations
Voluntary Terminations

Voluntary Termination Resources

Voluntary Termination Resources

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Voluntary Termination Checklist

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Exit Interview Questions

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Employment Verification Letter

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Exit Interview Form

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Knowledge Transfer Questions

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Final Paycheck and Vacation Payout Requirements

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Knowledge Transfer Planning Spreadsheet (Leadership Roles)

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Termination Email Templates

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Employee FAQ Template

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A termination is considered voluntary when an employee resigns. While voluntary terminations are typically straightforward, it’s still important to follow compliant procedures and ensure a positive employee experience.

📍 Start Here: If you’re on the HR or Operations team and manage terminations for your company, we recommend reviewing and making a copy of this
Voluntary Termination Checklist⁠
at the start of every employee exit process to ensure that you’re completing all the steps necessary for a compliant and successful termination process.

Once the employee has indicated they are resigning, they should send a formal email or message to their manager summarizing their decision and their desired last day. An employee’s manager may be the one responsible for submitting their employee’s resignation to the HR team. Once HR has been informed, they can coordinate with the employee and manager in advance of and on the employee’s last day, by following the steps outlined in the checklist.

Below, we’ve outlined key components of a compliant and efficient termination process that supports both the manager and departing employee.

1. Knowledge Transfer

After notifying HR of their employee’s resignation, the manager’s main responsibility is to ensure a smooth transfer of knowledge between the departing employee and remaining team members. The manager should first partner with the departing employee on how they want to inform the team. Then, a manager can start planning for the knowledge transfer process with the resources below. The manager may want to arrange for specific knowledge transfer meetings to occur so that other employees can be informed or trained. If the departing employee is a manager, plan a more thorough transition of duties that involves joining team meetings, 1:1s, getting up to speed on team goals and priorities, etc. You may even want to have the departing manager provide feedback or conduct a mini performance review with each team member so no progress is lost with the transition.

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Knowledge Transfer Questions⁠

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Knowledge Transfer Planning Spreadsheet⁠

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At a minimum, the manager should identify who will take over the employee’s key responsibilities until a backfill is identified. The manager should also determine if they want to receive the employee’s emails and access to any files stored in GDrive or Box.

If the employee exiting is an executive or member of the leadership team, the exit will likely require more coordination and change management planning. HR should partner closely with the executive to create a knowledge transfer plan using the tools above, and a communications plan to message the departure to the company in an all hands meeting. You may also need to update items such as your authority matrix, RACI (outline of accountability for certain processes and items), signatory, HRIS and other vendors.

A note on backfilling a departing employee’s role:

An employee departure presents a natural opportunity for the manager to review the talent strategy for their team. Working with HR, the manager can start by analyzing the existing team, identifying gaps due to the employee’s departure, and how to best fill those gaps. This could still be hiring a backfill, or the manager could consider providing other members of the team with new development opportunities.

2. Team-wide Communication

Whether you choose to inform the company of an employee’s departure will depend on a number of factors, such as the employee’s position within the company, the employee’s involvement with key workflows, and your company culture.

When an employee chooses to leave the company, their manager should work with the employee to understand their preference to inform the team and company. The employee may want to send a personal message or prefer their manager send one on their behalf.

We recommend being consistent and treating all employee departures, regardless of the reason, with the same confidentiality and respect. You may choose not to share each departure with the entire company as your company grows, however if the employee leaving is a member of the leadership team, or responsible for several important workflows, it may make sense to send out a broader company message. The message should indicate who will be taking over key workflows, and who can be contacted with questions.

3. Offboarding Coordination

Once HR has been notified of the resignation, they should

reach out to the employee⁠

to help them prepare for their last day. HR can also assist the manager with the knowledge transfer process above, organizational planning, and kicking off a search to find a backfill for the role. Here are some of the additional items that HR will coordinate (also outlined in the

checklist⁠

Employee Outreach: Provide FAQs, set up an Exit Meeting, and send an Exit Survey

Review the employee’s state of residence (in case the termination documents need to be modified, and for final pay requirements) and vested equity (likely will need to request from your Legal team) should an Equity Repurchase Letter be necessary

Notify your Benefits team of the employee’s departure date

Notify your Payroll/Accounting team of the employee’s departure date, and process the termination in the HRIS

Be sure to review the employee’s offer letter and note if they have any clauses related to bonuses that may be due back to the company

Notify your IT team to shut off access, accounts and collect equipment at the appropriate time on the employee’s last day

Prepare the employee’s

termination paperwork⁠

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4. Collect Employee Feedback

An employee’s departure can also be a valuable opportunity to collect feedback on their experience with the company, their manager, and in their role. As an HR Manager, consider creating an

Employee Exit Survey⁠

to collect employee feedback in a confidential and repeatable manner. Surveys can easily be created in Google Forms or in an employee engagement platform like

CultureAmp⁠

. Once you’ve collected feedback over a reasonable period of time (months or quarters), you can aggregate high-level themes to share with your leadership team that may provide actionable insights to increase employee retention. If you’d like to share feedback with managers, make sure to get the employee’s consent in the exit survey.

Tip: Design your Employee Exit Survey to include the same questions as those in your Engagement Survey, so you can do a 1:1 comparison over time.

5. Exit Meeting

On or just before an employee’s last day, HR should set aside some time to meet with the employee. During this meeting, HR should review all prepared paperwork, FAQs, and remind the employee of their obligations under the company’s confidentiality agreement. If you’d like to ask the employee to explain or expand on their employee exit survey, the exit meeting is a good time to do this as well.

Sample Voluntary Exit Meeting Outline

Sample Voluntary Exit Meeting Outline

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6. Termination Paperwork

When putting together the employee’s termination paperwork, the below

forms⁠

are the basic required and recommended forms to provide to departing employees (in California) on their last day. The HR Manager should create company templates for each of these forms to then customize for each departing employee.

Important Compliance Step: In order to ensure your offboarding process is compliant, take note of the various pay requirements and forms your state laws may require you to provide to employees, in addition to any forms you may want to also provide as a company. Required and/or recommended forms (primarily for California-based employees) are listed below. As your company scales, you will also want to consider how to share these forms with employees in an efficient manner.

Resources such as

SHRM⁠

, your Chamber of Commerce, your state government’s EDD website and employment counsel are all great places to check to ensure you’re staying compliant with the necessary procedures and forms in your state and county.

Offering COBRA (Continuation Benefits Replacement Act)

COBRA is a program offered at both the federal and state level that provides certain former employees, and their enrolled dependents, the right to temporary continuation of their employer-provided group health coverage.

Federal COBRA requires that employers with 20 or more employees offer COBRA coverage. COBRA coverage can extend for up to 18 months. Federal COBRA does not extend to unmarried domestic partners. An HRIS, such as Rippling, may assist you with administering Federal COBRA.

Cal-COBRA is a California mandated COBRA program, requiring that employers with 2 to 19 employees provide temporary continuation of coverage. Cal-COBRA can extend for up to 36 months (and can be used to extend health coverage to a total of 36 months for those under federal COBRA). Cal-COBRA extends to registered domestic partners.

If you work with a Benefits Broker, they can assist with ensuring you are complying with the appropriate COBRA program, and sending out necessary COBRA paperwork to terminated employees.

7. Final Steps

On the employee’s last day, collect their computer, badge, and any other company-issued equipment. If the employee is remote, provide them with your company’s FedEx or UPS account number and instructions on how to ship items back to the company (or generate a shipping label for them). Specify the amount of time you will allot the employee to return their items (e.g. 10 business days).

If the employee did not physically sign their paperwork on their last day, send it to them for e-signature on their last day. On or shortly after their last day, send the employee an email with a summary of their signed paperwork and FAQs. Upload all completed paperwork to the employee’s personal file.

If applicable, work with your Legal team to update equity vesting in Carta.

Voluntary Employee Termination Required Documents

Voluntary Employee Termination Required Documents

Document

Description

Actions

Notes

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Termination Certificate

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Reminder of the employee’s responsibility under the Company’s CIIAA Form

Employee signs

Required

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Repurchase Letter

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Letter issued when Company is repurchasing unvested shares from employee; accompanied by a check for the employee for the purchase amount of unvested shares.

CEO signs

Required - if employee was issued RSA’s

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HIPP Notice

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California-only required form describing additional benefits offered by the state that the employee may be eligible for

Employee reviews

Required - if employee is in CA

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Employee Offboarding FAQs

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General FAQs employees may have when leaving the Company

Employee reviews

Strongly recommended

COBRA Packet

Benefits enrollment packet which employee may use to elect coverage to continue under Company’s plans at a cost to the employee. This is provided by the Benefits Carriers, often via the Benefits Broker.

Employee reviews

Required

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Final Paycheck Acknowledgement Form

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Typically employees departing voluntarily can receive their paycheck via direct deposit. If for some reason the paycheck is issued via live check, use this form to get acknowledgement from the employee.

Employee signs

Recommended if using a live check

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