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Offboarding is the process most organizations underinvest in — until something goes wrong. A former employee still has access to your production environment. A critical vendor relationship existed only in one person’s head. Expensive equipment sits untracked in someone’s home office. Beyond the operational risks, a chaotic offboarding experience leaves a lasting impression on the departing employee, affecting your employer brand and any future rehire possibility. A Seilers offboarding playbook makes sure every departure — voluntary or not — is handled completely, compliantly, and with dignity.

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What to Include

Cover every workstream involved in a clean employee departure:
Define the standard notice period expectations, how the final day is communicated to the team, and who manages the departure announcement. Include guidance on transitioning the employee’s responsibilities during the notice period.
Every system the employee has access to, in the order they should be revoked. This includes email, SSO-connected apps, admin panels, code repositories, cloud infrastructure, financial systems, and any third-party tools with individual credentials. Assign clear ownership to IT and HR.
The step-by-step process for recovering company equipment — laptop, monitor, peripherals, phone — including how to arrange shipping for remote employees, the timeline, and what happens if equipment isn’t returned.
A structured plan for the departing employee to document their key responsibilities, in-progress projects, vendor contacts, and institutional knowledge before their final day. Include a template for knowledge transfer notes and who should receive them.
Who conducts the exit interview, the standard questions asked, how responses are recorded, and how feedback is used. Include guidance on making the exit interview feel voluntary and safe so you get honest input.
The final payroll run, PTO payout policy, benefits continuation (COBRA or equivalent), and any required documentation or signatures. Tag HR and Payroll as owners of this section.
Your company’s policy on providing references — who is authorized to give them, what information can be shared, and how to handle reference calls for departed employees. Include your rehire eligibility criteria and how to flag employees as rehire-eligible in your HR system.

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Building It in Seilers

1

Start from the Offboarding template

In Seilers, go to Playbooks → New Playbook and select the Offboarding template. The template organizes the workstreams for HR, IT, and the direct manager in parallel so nothing is missed.
2

Customize the access revocation checklist as a linked SOP

The access revocation checklist is the highest-stakes part of any offboarding — it deserves its own SOP where every system is listed and each revocation step can be checked off individually. Create an Access Revocation SOP, list every system your company uses, and link it inside the Account and System Access section using Link SOP.
3

Assign IT, HR, and the manager as owners of their respective sections

Use Assign Owner to distribute accountability clearly: IT owns access revocation and equipment return, HR owns payroll, benefits, and the exit interview, and the direct manager owns the knowledge transfer plan and responsibility handoffs. Each owner receives notifications and can track completion within their section.
4

Add your company's reference policy

Paste your actual reference policy language into the Reference and Rehire Policy section. If your policy lives in your employee handbook, link directly to it so the playbook stays authoritative without duplicating text that changes over time.
5

Set a trigger reminder when an offboarding ticket opens

In Seilers, use Playbook Settings → Trigger Reminders to configure a notification that fires when a new offboarding record is created in your HR system or ticketing tool. This ensures the playbook is surfaced at the moment it’s needed, not discovered after the fact.
Ensure the access revocation SOP is completed before the employee’s final day — not after. Revoking access post-departure leaves a window during which a former employee could access sensitive systems, customer data, or proprietary code. Make access revocation the first item IT confirms, ideally on the last business day before the final date.
Pair your offboarding playbook with your onboarding playbook to create a complete employee lifecycle in Seilers. Link them directly so HR can navigate from one to the other — this is especially useful when you’re backfilling a role and the offboarding and hiring processes overlap.

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