How Construction Companies Are Implementing Effective Offboarding Strategies with KanBo

As much as construction organizations would prefer to retain their top-performing employees, the fact of the matter is no worker stays forever.

While the average employee turnover rate around the world has been reported to be about 12%, the construction industry suffers from a higher employee churn rate that sits at 21%. It means that every year 2 out of 10 construction industry employees are likely to leave their company. This doesn't only create recruitment challenges for the business but also puts them in a precarious position where it becomes difficult to ensure sustainable growth.

This is why it has become imperative for construction organizations to develop an effective offboarding strategy that puts them in a better position to leverage the knowledge and experience of leaving employees and workers. In the absence of a robust offboarding plan, the organization doesn't only incur the costs of recruitment, onboarding, and training new employees but also loses on the tangible benefits of the skill and knowledge of the workers going out. That's where an offboarding strategy can help a construction business retain expertise and intellect while minimizing risks and costs associated with employees' exit.

Many construction organizations are putting their faith in all-around work and business process management platforms like KanBo that ensure complete knowledge flow and transparency across multiple departments.

What Does Offboarding Mean in Construction

Offboarding is the process of overseeing the last days of a worker's employment with the company. The term "offboarding" refers to the process of separating oneself from an employee after they have resigned or been terminated. On one hand, an employee exit phase is supposed to assist the company to become smarter in recruiting and staff satisfaction and minimize the effect of the exit on the business. Employees' final views and public perceptions of the organization are also shaped by this strategy.

During the transition time, human resources and the worker both have a long set of tasks to do. All business resources, such as a computer or a mobile device must be returned and the employee's identification card must be surrendered. In addition to managing the team's reaction and evaluating sentiment, HR will also have to manage all the required documentation, including compensation documents, signed resignations, NDA contracts, etc.

With no defined procedure, it's simple to miss critical milestones and expose the organization to security issues or legal challenges, as well as harming the exiting worker's relationship with the company.

The offboarding process usually entails the following steps:

• All the work essential to let the employee go includes the time spent on filing proper documentation, securing the worker's login details, making arrangements for transitory coverage of the worker’s job, notifying contractors and project team members, making adjustments to business directories, modifying documents that are presented to customers, and completing any remaining accounting tasks.
• All the steps that need to be taken in order to employ a substitute, which include evaluating the job requirements, publicizing the position, collaborating with recruitment agencies and job sites, conducting interviews, screening applications, and performing the other essential recruiting duties.
• The activity of familiarizing the substitute employee with the job includes appropriate protective and safety training, system training, process training, meetings with the staff, skills evaluation, and initial job assessment along with the management of productivity losses while the replacement catches up to the previous employee learning their new responsibilities.
• The efforts required to remedy the initial errors that the substitute is likely to make, as well as the amount of time necessary for the successor to develop successful professional relationships with workers of the organization, subcontractors, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
• The effort the management needs to put in to understand why the worker quit, as well as the effort needed to devise strategies to avoid anything similar in the future.

Why Construction Organizations Need an Offboarding Strategy

Make Previous Employees Your Brand's Ambassador

It's crucial to make a positive initial impact since people tend to remember it longer. But final impressions are equally crucial in the construction industry. How you part ways with colleagues is something that stays with you for the rest of your life. There are a number of critical moments that occur throughout an employee's tenure while working for a particular organization. These are the occurrences that stick out in your mind and that you know for a certain that you won't forget any time soon.

If you leave a business with positive feelings about your time there, you'll likely have positive things to say about the organization in the future. You are probably going to have a favorable attitude when others inquire about you regarding your time spent working there, despite the fact that you are no longer employed by them. This helps the company curate a significantly positive influence when it comes to its brand enabling it to attract top applicants.

Create a Boomerang Employee Effect

Employees may leave your company for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it's the absence of career and financial growth, other times there are personal reasons. There are also times when a company simply cannot afford to keep the worker employed. It means that people don't always quit their employers just because they don't like the organization or its culture. That's why it is natural for many workers to rejoin their former organization after acquiring professional experience somewhere else.

Rehiring previous workers is beneficial for a company as it is more cost-effective since your new worker will become functional and efficient more quickly, and you will know whether or not they are a good match for the corporate culture. As a result of the difficulty of finding new employees and the ongoing skills gap, the majority of businesses in today's market tend to welcome boomerang workers.

Build and Enforce Security Practices

A correct offboarding procedure is absolutely necessary from a more pragmatic standpoint for concerns related to the protection of your company data. Because, even though it’s not something we want to talk about, if someone’s exit isn’t mutual, they could react out of malice or despair and attempt to bring harm to the company. For instance, by erasing information or making the customer database of the firm accessible to the public.

In actuality, somewhere about twenty percent of businesses report having been victims of data breaches caused by former workers. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given that at minimum one-third of former employees still have access to the data of the firm they worked for. However, this is something that can be avoided with very little effort by using your offboarding procedure to ensure that former employees do not have access to the firm’s networks after they have left the organization.

Apart from that, if your country enforces any regulations and legal guidelines on the construction industry, you can also rely on the offboarding strategy to ensure compliance. This will not only keep your construction organization away from any controversy but also add to the brand’s reputation.

Ensure Compliance with the UN Sustainability Goals

To meet their climate goals, construction enterprises must engage in sustainable production and consumption practices. For the construction industry to be successful in recruiting young people, it must prioritize climate and environmental concerns. This is particularly true considering that ecological and environmental problems are among their primary priorities.

Even if available infrastructure and economic systems are able to significantly reduce carbon emissions, future climate neutrality would need new solutions. Environmental sustainability requires an emphasis on innovation in every sector, including the onboarding and offboarding of talent. As new technologies emerge, the demand for digitalization that is of greater quality and more useful increases.

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has suggested a new objective, Goal 9, which is closely related to the construction industry. It invites global corporations to invest in and construct robust infrastructure while fostering a long-term and universally accessible industrialization and economic growth process. In addition, the objective of cultivating a creative atmosphere that is supported by constant innovation motivates organizations to undertake this endeavor.

The following sustainability goals should be pursued by construction companies:

• Creation and installation of eco-friendly and certified infrastructure, as well as the use of PPP concepts. In addition, the expansion of the telecommunications system, the construction of new transportation systems, and industry participation and operations should be promoted.
• Encouraging the promotion of workplace safety and health in addition to the delivery of health care services and engagement in sporting events for employees, apart from the expansion of property investment in the healthcare business. Corporate sponsorship and corporate citizenship should be undertaken to benefit the communities in which construction companies operate.
• All workers should have quick and easy access to a multitude of continuing education options, including the development and oversight of higher education institutions. In addition, there should be support for intellectual efforts, connections with academic institutions, engagement in corporate social responsibility and sponsorship programs that help the next generation of talent, and involvement in other activities.
• It is essential to guarantee that the construction of flood protection and treatment facilities is coordinated with the development of water supply and wastewater treatment and disposal systems. Throughout the construction process, businesses should take efforts to minimize environmental impact as much as feasible.
• Environmentally friendly building and infrastructure initiatives should be linked with the development of energy infrastructure. Alternative energy initiatives should be created and managed by enterprises in the construction industry.

Best Construction Industry Practices for Offboarding Management

While the offboarding process can look different based on the nature and size of your construction organization, there are a number of steps that need to be taken to ensure adequate offboarding across different teams.

Managing the Resignation/Termination Process

When a worker is laid off or submits their resignation, the human resources department should be quick to initiate the offboarding process. Although it may be enticing to wait until you have all the specifics to communicate about a worker's exit, it is better to do so straight away. In order to avoid a situation where a voluntary resignation becomes an employment termination, it's best to make the announcement as soon as possible. This type of rumor may be avoided by informing your coworkers and concerned departments.

• Ensure the contract termination is properly documented and get the sign of the leaving employee to make it official.
• Don't let the employee leave the company without conducting an exit interview. Get honest feedback from the worker about their experience with the organization, their job duties, and the cause of departure. Ensure that the employee feels welcomed as this is going to be their final interaction with the company.
• Make sure that all the stakeholders including clients and vendors are notified in a timely manner to enable operational continuity.

Taking Care of All the Essential Documentation

It is important for every construction business to protect the interest of the employee as well as the organization. Taking paperwork and documentation for granted can have a wide range of unwanted and unnecessary consequences for both your company and the departing employee. That's why it is imperative to complete all the documentation on time and make the exit process as seamless as possible.

• Accounting should be consulted as soon as an employee's remuneration and tax details are known to have been terminated. Among the steps in this procedure include reimbursing the employee if they haven't been paid yet, assuring that the employee does not owe you anything in the way of bonuses or vacation time, and processing the employee's tax and benefits paperwork for their departure.
• To ensure that everything is in place, carry out a last check of the employment agreement. Any non-disclosure agreements should be reviewed with the worker before they leave the company.

Enabling Seamless and Effective Knowledge Transfer

Regardless of whether you replace the departing worker or not, it is essential that the organization preserve the information and skills the departing employee has. The details will differ based on their individual situation, however, they should include a concise rundown of their typical day, their primary and secondary job tasks, access to all documents and systems, the employees they collaborate and work with, and the external parties they communicate with, and more.

Asking for a transference paper or video containing relevant recommendations for the new employee is a fantastic idea. When it comes to jobs that can be automated or incorporated into standard procedures, the leaving employee is an ideal candidate. You'll save both cost and resources this way. An additional benefit of maintaining favorable relationships with former workers is that you may ask them for assistance if you need it, and they'll be pleased to do it. Some of the key considerations during this process include:

• Identifying people who will continue to perform the necessary tasks until a substitute is hired.
• Ensuring all the information and training is available to such people who will be acting as temporary or permanent replacements. Ask the employee departing the company to address the skills and experience gap by transferring knowledge.
• Preparing a full knowledge base comprising of files, documents, and video content along with credentials, accounts, passwords, client information, notes, and more.
• Creating a quick list of all the projects that are currently underway and final deliverables and their deadlines.

Managing and ensuring universal access to all this information across a multitude of teams and departments can be a huge challenge for any construction organization. That's where software like KanBo enables any construction business to not only host all the information in an organized manner but carry out the offboarding process in a strategic manner to ensure seamless business continuity without any loss of productivity.

Having a Checklist for Employees

In the frenzy of an employee's departure, particularly an unexpected one, it can become a difficult task to keep an eye on everything important. That's why an effective offboarding process should include a checklist for the departing employee that they have to go through before they leave. As your HR department is going through the procedures of finalizing documentation, ask the employee to run through the checklist.

• Return all the company assets and equipment in the possession of the employee including ID badge, mobile device, laptop, uniform, keys, parking permit, business credit card, a company car, and anything else they may have.
• Remove all the personal artifacts and belongings from the workstation as well as their locker if there's one.
• Prepare a file or video containing all the essential information to perform the job that can be passed on to the next employee.
• Proper organization and naming of essential files and documents along with notes so the replacement or temporary worker can figure out where the files are and what they need to do to get the job done.

Having a business procedure management software like KanBo allows construction companies to create a checklist using simple building blocks. There can be different checklists for the offboarding process of different teams and departments.

Revoking Permissions and Network Access

When emails are left open and passwords are not changed or private platforms and tools are not revoked, the organization makes itself vulnerable to security attacks. It may also lead to misunderstandings and stumbling blocks in interaction. Configure the worker's accounts as soon as possible by working with IT, including:

• Disable internal services and platforms, such as email, from access by employees.
• Carry out password changes for any business accounts to which the worker or employee had access.
• Issue a notification of the change in employment to respective teams or contacts.
• Reroute all correspondence and phone calls to the current point of contact.
• Upgrade the organization chart of the corporation.
• Take the employee out of the corporation's calendar and meeting schedules.

Finalizing the Offboarding Process

The offboarding procedure may be a difficult and tedious operation. However, do not lose sight of the fact that, at the conclusion of the day, you are handling a partnership with another individual. The best way to ensure that you leave a positive impression on a worker is to address them with dignity and show how much you appreciate the contributions they made to the organization throughout their time there. As applicable, contemplate:

• Putting your gratitude into written form.
• Giving them a present with a personal touch.
• Sending a goodbye card for the crew to sign around the workplace before leaving.
• Organizing a send-off bash to make sure they go out in style.

KanBo Improves Offboarding Management Practices

Every construction company desires a digital platform that allows them to manage all of its offboarding operations and duties from a single spot. KanBo's work-and-business process management platform's scalability and versatility may be advantageous to any construction company. Construction contractors no longer need to erect organizational silos that limit information when it comes to cross-departmental cooperation and the generation of new ideas and discoveries. Even if a company has a hierarchical organizational structure, KanBo can accommodate it.

KanBo Is C-Level Executives' Digital Headquarters

Using KanBo, employees may readily access critical information like goals and projects, work assignments and competencies, and internal communications. Senior management might set up a virtual base of operations on an agile work management platform if wanted. Construction executives will now have simple access to data and analytics presented in a highly visual style. A speedier and more accurate decision-making process may improve an organization's innovation strategy.

KanBo Offers a Low-Code Platform for Citizen Programmers

The only two benefits of a low-code approach mentioned here are faster application delivery and less human coding. Non-programmers, such as project managers or business analysts, now have the capacity to develop and construct mobile applications. Non-technical individuals may have a greater impact on the organization by minimizing IT backlogs and eliminating shadow technologies. As a result, the operating system has become more efficient. As a consequence, cutting-edge new technologies are emerging.

An Excellent Alternative for People Who Do Not Use Code

As a consequence, both developers and non-developers may create application software without having to learn conventional computer programming. People at the top of an organization may find it difficult to conduct their duties efficiently if they do not know how to code. The key advantage of employing a platform like KanBo or any no-code solution is faster application development. Businesses are increasingly depending on these platforms for assistance as the number of mobile employees expands and technical knowledge becomes rare.

KanBo May Be Used By Information Workers as a Project and Workflow Management Tool

Processes, for example, are long-term actions required to achieve a certain objective. KanBo's platform gives employees the tools they need to handle projects successfully. Several teams and departments may easily interact with one another by using the software's building elements.

Final Word

Farewells are always difficult. However, whenever it pertains to leaving staff, a well-devised offboarding procedure may reduce tension and inconvenience. Offboarding executed right enables you to check all of the formal paperwork and regulatory boxes while also providing the departing employee with a positive departure experience. Building a structured offboarding strategy assists HR departments in systematically and effectively managing the leaving experience. However, keeping your workflow streamlined and accessible might be difficult.

When combined with a centralized platform like KanBo, the employee offboarding strategy will make your organization a great place to work by protecting your critical resources and keeping you safe from potentially deadly security vulnerabilities. KanBo offers a centralized platform for offboarding management, ensuring that every departure is appropriate, thorough, secure, and fully transparent.