Use Case
The employee offboarding process and checklist
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The basics
What is employee offboarding?
Employee offboarding is the structured process of formally ending an employee's relationship with a company - covering everything from revoking system access and recovering equipment to collecting signed exit paperwork, running an exit interview, and updating the HRIS. Done well, offboarding closes every security gap the moment someone leaves and produces a clean audit trail. Done manually, it usually means a checklist spread across HR, IT, and Legal, where a single missed step (a Slack account left active, a laptop never returned) becomes a security or compliance risk.
Offboarding applies to every kind of departure - voluntary resignations, terminations, layoffs, and contractor or vendor offboarding - and typically involves four teams: HR (paperwork and the exit interview), IT (access revocation and asset recovery), Legal (separation agreements and compliance), and the departing employee's manager (knowledge transfer).
How it works
The employee offboarding process, step by step
- 1
Trigger the offboarding workflow
HR marks the employee as departing (resignation, termination, or layoff) and selects an exit date. This starts a staged workflow, and the case cannot move past access revocation while a system has failed, or be completed while assets are still out.
- 2
Revoke system access
IT revokes access across the selected systems in one action - identity providers like Okta, Google Workspace, and Microsoft Entra ID, and apps like GitHub, AWS, and Slack (Slack revocation needs a Slack Business+ or Enterprise plan) - and confirms the result for each. This should happen on the last day, not days later.
- 3
Recover company assets
Laptops, badges, and other equipment are tracked against the employee record. For remote employees, IT can record the return tracking number on the offboarding and mark the package received when it arrives.
- 4
Collect signed documentation
Separation agreements, NDAs, and other exit paperwork are routed for e-signature through DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign, or Dropbox Sign and stored against the employee record for audit purposes.
- 5
Run the exit interview
The departing employee completes a structured exit-interview form, with sentiment flagged for HR review on Team and up. On Team and up, the interview can also be scheduled through Calendly, which sends the employee a booking link, or Google Calendar, which creates the invite.
- 6
Transfer knowledge and responsibilities
Each handover topic is recorded as a knowledge-transfer item with who takes it over and when it is due, so nothing is left to memory after the employee leaves. Moving files, documents, and direct reports to their new owners is still done in the systems that hold them.
- 7
Close the record with evidence
The case is closed with a timestamped audit trail of every action taken, ready to export. On Team and Enterprise, the offboarding can also start automatically when BambooHR, Workday, Rippling, Gusto, or ADP (HR sync is in beta) marks the employee as terminated.
The checklist
Employee offboarding checklist
A complete offboarding checklist, grouped by the team responsible for each item:
HR
- Confirm exit date and separation type (resignation, termination, layoff)
- Notify manager, payroll, and benefits administrator
- Schedule and conduct the exit interview
- Issue final paycheck and process COBRA / benefits paperwork
- Update the HRIS and org chart
IT & Security
- Revoke SSO and all connected app access (email, Slack, GitHub, cloud infra)
- Disable VPN and remote access credentials
- Transfer or archive the employee's files and email
- Recover company-issued devices, and lock or wipe them in your device management tool
- Rotate any shared credentials or API keys the employee had access to
Legal & Finance
- Collect signed separation agreement and any NDA renewals
- Reconcile expense reports and outstanding reimbursements
- Cancel or reassign corporate card and subscriptions tied to the employee
- Confirm data retention and right-to-erasure obligations are met
- Log every action taken to a tamper-evident audit trail
Before and after
What PurpletGo replaces
Access not revoked for days
Revocation across the selected systems in one action, with a result for each
Checklist steps missed or forgotten
Checklist templates with owners and deadlines, and stage gates on access and asset return
Equipment goes untracked
Assets on each offboarding, return tracking, and overdue reporting
NDA and docs unsigned
E-signatures via DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat Sign, or Dropbox Sign, built into the offboarding
No audit trail for compliance
Audit log of every action with actor and timestamp, tamper-evident on Team and Enterprise
Knowledge not captured
Knowledge-transfer items recording each handover topic, who takes it over, and when it is due
Employee Offboarding FAQ
Common questions about offboarding
What is employee offboarding software?
Employee offboarding software replaces manual offboarding checklists and spreadsheets with a structured workflow that coordinates HR, IT, Legal, and Finance - revoking access across the selected systems in one action when HR, IT or an admin runs it, tracking asset recovery and compliance documentation, and logging every action for each employee departure.
What should an employee offboarding checklist include?
A complete offboarding checklist covers: revoking access to every connected system (email, Slack, GitHub, HRIS), recovering company equipment, collecting signed exit paperwork (NDAs, separation agreements), conducting an exit interview, transferring the departing employee's knowledge and responsibilities, and logging every action for compliance. PurpletGo turns this into a checklist with owners and deadlines, and blocks the case from moving on while access revocation has failed or assets are still out.
How long should employee offboarding take?
Access revocation should happen on the employee's last day, not days later - with PurpletGo it is one action across the selected systems, with a result for each. The rest of the offboarding, including asset return and documentation, usually runs through the employee's final 1-2 weeks, tracked against configurable SLAs.
Why is timely offboarding important for security?
Delayed access revocation is a well-known source of insider risk - a former employee with lingering access to email, code repositories, or cloud storage is a live security gap. Revoking every system in one action, and seeing which revocations failed, closes that window instead of relying on IT to remember each system.
Does offboarding software work for layoffs and reductions in force?
Yes. PurpletGo supports bulk offboarding via CSV import or directory selection, so dozens or hundreds of employees can be offboarded in a single batch with per-row exit dates and separation types - each processed independently so one failure never blocks the rest.
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