In 2020, a former Cisco engineer deleted 456 virtual machines, 5 months after his release. The company reported spending $2.4 million to repair the damage internally and at their customers. 

In the age of hybrid working, standardized employeeoffboarding remains a largely neglected process. Only 29% of companies follow a formal offboarding process, and many organizations bear the hidden cost of poor management.

A subject that is all the more topical with the Great Resignation, born in 2021 in the US, and arriving today in France. Triggered by the health crisis, the phenomenon describes a large number of employees leaving their jobs for more flexible and mainly remote work opportunities. 

A new threat to IT. 

Today's work environment is pushing IT to modernize. While HR can collect office access badges, IT has to manage all kinds of virtual access and all the remaining hardware. It has to shut down every system access, application, email, servers. Recover the computer, phone, telecommuting equipment... And think of everything, even the undeclared resources related to Shadow IT. 

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What is offboarding? 

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It is the departure of employees from the company. This includes the business processes, whether HR, IT or business, that contribute to the smooth exit of employees. From the transfer of skills and recovery of company assets to the revocation of access, there are many key steps involved.  

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What about the IT department? 

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In the age of digital workflows, companies have extensive IT infrastructure and routinely deploy hundreds of SaaS applications to keep their employees working efficiently. According to an Okta report, companies with more than 2,000 people have an average inventory of 175 SaaS applications. In times of massive offboarding, this translates into more responsibilities for IT.

IT administrators must determine which devices, software applications and other peripherals are assigned to active employees and retrieve them in a timely manner to ensure the security of the company's infrastructure.

To remain effective even as the company grows, the IT department must have all the information it needs to optimize these transitions.

"The IT team often suffers from not having received the information about the arrival or departure of a collaborator in time. The IT department ultimately needs a powerful tool to manage resources and associated workflows." Maxime Baudry CCI Pays de la Loire

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The benefits of early offboarding

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This makes IT offboarding a crucial part of the overall process triggered when an employee leaves. Proactive IT offboarding not only benefits the company, but also helps convert departing employees into advocates for future hires. Theemployee experience is enhanced.

The 2nd benefit is financial. The costs associated with the loss of expensive hardware, the late cancellation of software licenses and the economic consequences of intellectual property theft/security breaches after an employee has left... These are all costs that can be avoided with prepared offboarding. 

Finally, it ensures compliance in terms of security and auditing. An inventory of hardware and software by employee allows you to cut off access and retrieve equipment as soon as the employee leaves, to avoid data leakage. Quick offboarding also reduces audit risk by keeping your repository of available assets up to date.

"The IT department needs to have a global view when it comes to safety and security issues that impact the company and the incoming and outgoing flows". Loic Bournon, Former CIO Safran - Cyber Expert

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Offboarding checklist

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Some tips to anticipate offboarding on the IT side: 

• Keep a record of each employee's departure dates. Ideally, it should be kept by the HR department, which has control over this information. 

• Maintain an inventory of all computer hardware, peripherals and software licenses used in the company. Enter what each employee owns. It will then be easier to know which accesses to cut or which material to recover when an employee leaves. 

• Send alerts for each employee offboarding, to all resource administrators, to cut off access on the employee's exit date.

• Retrieve the employee's equipment, including telecommuting equipment. 

• Check that all accesses have been cut off on the day of departure. 

• Reallocate resources to incoming or existing employees 

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Ensuring offboarding with Pyla

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Pyla is a software for managing the company's computer resources. It centralizes all the software and hardware that the company has, and offers a mapping by employee. This way, you have the details of who-to-what and an up-to-date register. 

At each departure, Pyla sends alerts and reminders to each resource administrator with a precise list of tasks. Offboarding is centralized and managed through a single platform. 

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A smooth employee exit is just as important as a good start, for the employee and for the company. Formalizing the offboarding process not only mitigates legal and security threats, but also ensures minimal disruption when an employee leaves.

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