Employee Engagement and Offboarding

With an abundance of jobs and a shortage of qualified professionals, high churn this year will be inevitable. In fact, according to Robert Half UK, 80% of business executives are concerned about losing their top performers to other job opportunities in 2015.

What is the solution to this?... Employee Engagement! The fix-all solution to retention, widely encouraged by HR leaders and consultants. But what about when employees still decide to leave? This is typically when we politely say goodbye and stop wasting our time and resources on a “lost cause.”

While it makes sense to direct employee engagement efforts to current employees, research give us deeper insight. A recent study by the Aberdeen Group concluded that organizations with a formal approach to off-boarding were more likely to improve both retention (71% vs 57%) and engagement (44% vs. 33%) compared to organizations with no formal process for off-boarding employees.  

Saying goodbye properly through successful off-boarding can have a real impact on organizational performance and workforce engagement and therefore should be treated as a critical component of the employee lifecycle. Currently only 29% of organizations have a formal off-boarding process in place, implying a large-scale opportunity for improvement across the board.

For more tips on employee engagement, visit Aberdeen's website at http://www.aberdeen.com/research/8494/ai-offboarding-talent-management/content.aspx