7 Critical Mistakes Companies Make When Offboarding Remote Employees

Forbes

05-05-2025

Brandon Batchelor, Director of Sales & Strategic Partnerships at ReadyCloud, the shipping, returns and growth marketing e-commerce CRM Suite
The rush to hire remote workers has changed team formation and disbanding. While most companies have integrated the concept of remote work, offboarding remote employees is often overlooked. What are the consequences? Expensive data breaches, operational bottlenecks and potential legal issues.
Allow me to help you better understand some of the most common offboarding mistakes companies make with remote employees, based on years of helping companies retrieve these assets and what can be done to resolve them.
For companies, collecting laptops, phones, headsets or any other equipment after a remote employee exits often becomes an afterthought. This makes it easy to forget, and leaving it unattended becomes out of sight and out of mind.
Not retrieving equipment does more than just create financial problems; it also poses risks for data breaches if the hardware is repurposed or sold. Failing to return equipment may not be intentional, but the absence of a concise process certainly makes it possible for things to get lost or mistakenly thought of as thrown away.
The Solution: Create an offboarding workflow that uses checklists. Put prepaid shipping labels on everything and impose timelines for returns.
Remote teams frequently use different platforms such as Slack, Zoom, Asana, Google Drive, Salesforce and many more. If an ex-employee still has access to these services, whether intentionally or unintentionally, you are giving them the opportunity to compromise or leak sensitive data.
Way too many organizations are slow to receive requests for access termination, particularly when offboarding is conducted casually or during layoffs. The consequences are far too damaging when an ex-employee has access to telecoms, files and other critical tools that have been temporarily procured.
Fix It: Prepare and maintain an employee-specific centralized list of all applications, services and tools used by an individual. Schedule offboarding calls with employees that are accompanied by access termination.
This isn't only focused on IT or HR. Uncluttered remote offboarding requires inter-departmental collaboration, which poses a greater problem. Without intra-organizational communication, other teams may still reach out to the ex-employee, utilize their account or pull in tasks that are no longer their responsibility.
Remote teams have a greater tendency to have gaps in communication. Not informing pertinent employees about an employee's exit leads to a lack of certainty, unproductive work and potential blunders from client-facing roles.
Prevent This: Once the team is certain that an employee is leaving the company, the entire team must be informed. Clearly delineate the objectives of a transition plan, including who will manage it and what assistance will be provided, clarifying all roles and responsibilities involved.
Most employees conduct handover meetings with their colleagues for work-exit walkthroughs. That can also be done seamlessly in a remote setting. However, if such knowledge isn't documented anywhere, it can get lost.
When there are no clear handoffs, upper management needs to keep a close eye on how work is being done, as projects can get stalled, client work can come to a standstill, and all of this can result in big mistakes where knowledge isn't clearly passed down—as is the case when tribal wisdom is not shared. The reality is even worse within smaller teams, where one individual would single-handedly take care of an entire function or workflow.
To Solve This: Start the transition as early as possible. Have the departing employee prepare the documents for major processes, record walkthroughs, transfer relevant credentials, drive active engagements and explain current burning issues from the ongoing projects.
There is something about working remotely that is very isolating. Being offboarded, particularly in a layoff context, can feel excruciatingly cold, especially when it's just a Zoom call followed by silence. The lack of closure can be damaging to the employer brand, especially if the departing employee feels as if they were just "cut loose."
What's more, ex-employees still form part of your brand's reputation. How you treat them during the offboarding process shapes the narrative they relay about your company on Glassdoor, LinkedIn or even beyond the industry.
Make It Right: Be more human. Set up a proper exit interview and show appreciation for their contribution. Create a way for them to remain in touch, even if it's just a general HR email. Allow for leaders to send personal notes.
A number of companies neglect to check contracts when employees leave or go remote. This creates loose ends regarding confidentiality, non-compete agreements and ownership of IP—primarily for international contractors or team members.
If these documents weren't watertight at the beginning, you may face troubles down the line from a disgruntled ex-employee misusing sensitive information or industry contacts.
Fix It: Have all exit interviews alongside employment contracts. Go over responsibilities tied to NDAs or non-solicit clauses as needed and make them provide affirming statements.
Delays in final payment, payout of PTO or benefit handover can't be done without a significant reason—and might breach workplace laws depending on your office location. With remote workers from different places, compliance cut-off dates are often easily missed.
Apart from that, not sending out COBRA notices, the 401(k) rollover or forgetting the details of severance agreements can give an impression of obsolescence, which can bring unwanted consequences later on.
Prevent It From Happening: Be familiar with the myriad labor laws involving your employees—your company location is not everything. Automate the payroll and benefits stopping process, along with roles done by HR representatives for confirmation.
Look, remote work is not going away anytime soon. What will not go away is the need for smooth, respectful, wise and fool-proof procedures for offboarding. Set the bar early, and you will be thankful to yourself in the long run.
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