An employee leaves on Friday, and on Monday a customer emails an address only that person used. The team also needs a project file stored in that employee’s personal workspace. Now a routine personnel change has become an access, continuity, and records problem.
A good offboarding process should answer two questions at once: how do we end access appropriately, and how do we keep the business’s work available to the people who need it?
HR, the employee’s manager, and IT should know who triggers the process, when access changes take effect, who approves exceptions, and who confirms each step. For an ordinary planned departure, agree on the timing in advance. For an urgent separation, follow your organization’s HR and security procedure.
Keep the checklist with the employee record or ticket, and record completion without putting passwords or other secrets in the ticket.
List the employee’s company accounts and devices: email, file storage, collaboration tools, business applications, remote access, mobile devices, badges, and any privileged or shared accounts they used. At the agreed time, disable sign-in and revoke access using each service’s approved administrative controls. Rotate credentials for shared accounts and update recovery methods that point to the departing employee.
Don’t hand a colleague the former employee’s password. Give the colleague their own account and only the access they need.
Ask the manager to identify business files, project records, customer correspondence, and calendar information that need a new owner or retention decision. Use the platform’s supported transfer, shared mailbox, or delegated-access features, and limit access to the people who need it.
Microsoft’s current Microsoft 365 offboarding guidance includes steps for blocking sign-in, preserving mailbox contents, managing email continuity, and granting another employee access to OneDrive and Outlook data. It also documents a default 30-day retention period for certain deleted-account content. Treat that as a platform behavior to verify in your tenant—not as a substitute for backup or your organization’s retention requirements. Check the live Microsoft guidance and your configuration before deleting accounts or licenses.
If customers or vendors still write to the departing employee, decide who should handle those messages and for how long. A shared mailbox or an approved forwarding rule can help, but assign an owner, review access, and set an end date. Avoid leaving an unattended mailbox open indefinitely.
Collect company computers, phones, keys, badges, and other equipment. Record what came back, then have IT follow the company’s approved process to remove work data, return devices to service, or retire them. Check that authentication apps, recovery phone numbers, and device-based approvals no longer depend on the former employee.
Have the manager confirm the successor can find the work they need. Have IT verify that the former account can no longer sign in, important shared access has an owner, and the device and license status are recorded. If a legal hold or other retention obligation may apply, involve the appropriate compliance or legal contact before making changes.
When employee changes happen across many tools, the hard part is often keeping the steps coordinated and documented. Technic’s managed IT team can help businesses organize account, device, and access workflows around the systems they use.
