Employee handover checklist: when someone resigns

A resignation is rarely a surprise and almost always badly timed. The notice period feels long on the first day and very short in the last week. This plan uses it well.

Day one: decide what matters

On the day someone resigns, sit down with them for half an hour and make three lists.

1. What only they do. Tasks that nobody else knows how to do, or has never done.
2. What is unfinished. Open orders, live negotiations, promises made to customers or suppliers.
3. Who they deal with. The people outside the company who will need a new name to call.

Everything else can wait. These three lists are the handover.

Weeks two and three: write down judgement, not facts

Most facts are already in your records: contract terms, prices, order history, agreed procedures. Do not spend the leaver's last weeks retyping them.

Spend their time on what is not written down anywhere:

• Why things are done the way they are. "We always ship to that customer on Tuesdays because their warehouse is closed on Mondays."
• What usually goes wrong, and what they do about it.
• Which version is the right one when there are several, and why.
• Relationships. Who at the supplier actually answers the phone, and who needs a gentle reminder.

Before the last day: move things into shared places

This is the step most often forgotten, and the one that costs most later.

• Files on the desktop or a personal drive go into the shared drive, in the folder where the next person will look.
• Spreadsheets they keep for themselves, such as the weekend rota or a list of supplier contacts, go somewhere shared.
• Important email threads should be in a shared mailbox or saved to the relevant shared folder, not only in their inbox.

A simple test: if a colleague asked about it next month, could they find it without calling the leaver?

Offboarding: the mailbox and accounts

• Accounts for email, systems and shared drives should be closed on the last day, or the day after. Leaving them open is a security risk.
• The mailbox often holds the most useful record of all. Rather than deleting it, give the successor access to it for a set period, so they can look back at past correspondence.
• Out-of-office replies should name the new contact person, for a few months at least.

When there is no time for a handover

Everything above assumes a notice period. Sometimes there is none. A serious illness. A death. A dismissal that takes effect the same day. A resignation with no notice worked.

In these cases there are no three lists, no shadowing and no goodbye email. The person's records are all the company has: the emails they sent, the files they saved, the chats they took part in. And the most important of these, the mailbox, is usually the hardest for anyone else to search.

What helps in these weeks is the same as before, but now there is no one to ask: someone needs to be able to search that person's records quickly, in plain words, without reading years of email one message at a time.

Employee handover checklist

• The three lists: only-they-do, unfinished, who-they-deal-with
• Judgement written down: the why, the usual problems, the right versions
• Desktop and personal files moved into shared places
• Important email threads saved where others can find them
• Mailbox access for the successor, for a set period
• Accounts closed on the last day
• Out-of-office reply naming the new contact
• A staff policy for mailbox access when someone leaves suddenly

In short

A handover is not about writing everything down. Your records already hold most of it. Use the notice period for judgement, unfinished business and moving things into shared places. And plan for the departures that come with no notice at all, because then the records, and the mailbox, are all you have.