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“If you’re on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately”. This is how Vishal Garg, CEO of US-based mortgage provider company Better.com fired around 900 employees from the company last year over a Zoom call.
This method of firing reignited the debate of the importance of the offboarding process and how it should be done.
In some cases, the offboarding has gone awry from employees’ ends when they tried to steal data from the company.
According to a survey, around 20% of organisations state that they have experienced data breaches from former employees.
“Imagine an ex-employee who is joining a similar organisation or company, walking away with a customer list with all contact details. This jeopardises all the efforts poured in over the several months,” said Mayank Goyal, co-founder and Head of AI, Leena AI—an enterprise employee management platform.
The company’s employee solutions help streamline workflows and plug process gaps with its artificially intelligent platform that can answer recurring employee queries automatically.
Leena AI has more than 350 enterprises as clients who are using its solution. Among this list are clients including Al Jazeera, Coca-cola, Puma, OnePlus, Mercedes-Benz, Sony, Nestle, Airasia, P&G and others.
Analytics India Magazine had an exclusive conversation with Mayank Goyal, who talked in detail about data leak attempts by former employees, how to prevent it and the need of automation for the offboarding process of employees.
AIM: Why is the offboarding process crucial for the company and the employee?
Mayank: An outstanding offboarding process benefits both the organisation and the employee. Former employees are brand ambassadors; thus, it is of utmost importance for any organisation to say goodbye on a positive note. In fact, a smooth goodbye also ensures that they may come back as an employee or even a customer.
AIM: What role does Leena AI play in the process of offboarding?
Mayank: Offboarding an employee is never easy. Organisations can avoid common pitfalls in the employee exit process by ironing out glitches in their entire transition process and providing the employee with a seamless experience. Some key elements of a well-planned employee offboarding process include smooth knowledge transfer, streamlined exit interviews, and a window for the employee’s return.
Our offboarding solutions streamline the process while simultaneously acquiring intelligent insights using tools such as exit surveys and sentiment analysis. These insights aid in understanding the true cause of departure, allowing organisations to work on improving employee retention and attracting fresh talent.
AIM: How can AI and automation help overcome offboarding challenges?
Mayank: HR processes are often complex and offboarding is one of them. Despite advancements in work environments, there are still some challenges that HR teams face with employee offboarding. One of the challenges includes recovering company assets like phones/laptops based on manual process management, resulting in misleading records and loss of assets to the company. Another challenge may be related to legal documentation and conflict resolution.
These can be overly complex if the offboarding process is not comprehensive and up-to-date. Further, untimely revoking of system access may lead to a significant data breach by an unhappy employee. Hence, each process comes with its own challenges.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation has proven to be a utilitarian addition to the employee offboarding process due to minimal chances of human error. These technologies are critical in keeping IT security intact as they assist the IT department in securing trade secrets and controlling software health. AI and automation also manages revoked system access, avoiding any sense of resentment and malice that could harm the firm. In addition, it assures legal compliance when an employee leaves the organisation. Finally, AI and automation aids in the engagement of the organisation’s most valued asset—its people. It helps in linking employees with alumni groups, especially when a firm has a large employment base. This preserves the possibility of referrals and rehires, which benefits the organisation in the long term.
AIM: How important are exit surveys? Do companies analyse the mountain of data lying with them?
Mayank: Exit surveys are particularly important in the offboarding process. Data from exit interviews provides relevant insights into an organisation’s strengths, shortcomings, and the ways in which it can improve employee engagement. An AI-based, automated offboarding system like Leena AI can streamline and smoothen the exit interview process. It can generate conclusive and insightful reports. Based on said reports, organisations can take necessary steps to increase employee satisfaction and, hence, the retention rate.
While many organisations collect data based on exit interviews, not all may analyse it. Some organisations may analyse the data but might not share with senior leaders who can act on it. Only a few organisations collect, analyse, and follow up with action.
AIM: How do you see the Future of work?
Mayank: Future of work lies in the digital transformation of HR service delivery. According to a Leena AI survey, almost 30% of organisations are looking at improving employee experience in the hybrid workplace through employee engagement initiatives—as identified in the aforementioned report. Digital tools and AI-powered HR processes help in streamlining their handling of an employee’s journey with the organisation. They can automate easily repeatable, futile tasks and allow focus on high-value initiatives. Digital transformation can enable HR teams to become more data-driven in their processes. This can help them better meet the department’s strategic goals related to recruitment, retention, development, or motivation.
AIM: Have you done any studies on employees in terms of work satisfaction?
Mayank: In the ‘Employee Engagement & Hybrid Workplace Report 2022’, we surveyed more than 250 organisations globally (including India). We discovered that for 60% of the organisations surveyed, employee engagement was an integral part of their business strategy. In fact, all participating organisations reported having seen benefits of employee engagement with almost 50% seeing an improvement in employee satisfaction and productivity.
With India at the brink of its own Great Resignation phase, this is the perfect time for organisations to revisit how they treat their employees, and focus on employee engagement to retain the best of talent. Especially in the hybrid work model, employee engagement has become challenging yet important, as an organisation is as strong and resilient as its employees are.
AIM: How do you see the whole discussion around moonlighting?
Mayank: Lately, there has been a lot of chatter about moonlighting, especially in the tech space. At the end of the day, it is an ethical issue. If an organisation condemns the practice of moonlighting, the respective employees need to adhere to those policies. At Leena AI, we do not support the practice and we specify as such in our employment contracts as well.
