Employee Offboarding: An IT Checklist for Calgary Businesses

An employee returns their laptop on Friday. On Monday, a colleague needs a client document saved in that employee’s account. Nobody knows who can access it.

Meanwhile, in the company project management app, the former worker still shows up.

They belong on the same checklist.

Employee offboarding is the process of closing out someone’s access and handing over their work when they leave. For a Calgary business, a clear IT checklist helps protect company information while keeping everyday work moving.

Before the handover is deemed finished, consider examining these six areas.

1. Decide who does what and when

Start with the employee’s manager, the person responsible for HR, and your IT provider.

Confirm the departure date, the time access should end, and who can authorise changes. Give each task an owner so everyone understands their responsibilities.

A simple checklist might include:

• The manager identifies work that needs to be handed over.
• IT handles company accounts, access, and devices.
• An authorised person confirms which business records must be retained.
• A named colleague takes responsibility for ongoing client enquiries.

For a planned departure, organise the handover in advance. If circumstances change, make sure the person managing access receives updated instructions promptly.

2. List the accounts the employee uses

Email is where you would start, but that may not include the entire access of the employee.

Look at the tools they utilize as a part of their role. These are for accounting software, shared storage, scheduling tools, customer records, social media, website administration and remote access, to name just a few.

Include services purchased directly by a department. Check whether any business account uses the departing employee’s phone number or email address for account recovery.

A useful question is:

“If we needed to reset this account tomorrow, who would receive the verification message?”

Record the account, its administrator, and the action needed. This gives you a practical list to check after the departure.

3. Remove access through appropriate controls

Have your IT provider go through the offboarding process for each platform. This can include blocking sign-in, revoking active sessions, removing permissions for apps/services and reviewing authentication methods depending on the service.

When it comes to blocking a former employee from access and safeguarding business data in Microsoft 365, Microsoft has a concrete procedure. It also covers email and OneDrive content in its employee removal guidance.

Collecting a laptop does not complete this step. Check access to services used from phones, home computers, or other devices.

If the employee knew shared credentials, arrange to change them and update authorised users through your approved process.

4. Preserve business files before deleting accounts

Discover what the business still needs before removing an account.

Ask the manager where current work is stored and who should take responsibility for it. An unfinished proposal may need to move into a shared project folder, while a client handover may require access to relevant correspondence.

Restrict access to only those who are authorized, and be sure to abide by your organization’s retention and privacy policies.

Account deletion and licence changes can affect access to stored information. Microsoft’s offboarding guidance covers data preservation, mailbox handling, and account removal as separate parts of the process.

Before marking the handover as “complete” have the receiving colleague confirm that all necessary files are in place.

5. Collect equipment and plan its next use

Inventory the company equipment given to the employee. These include laptop, phone, external drives, security keys and other issued items.

Write down what has been returned, and what is still pending. If employees are remote, agree on how and who will verify they were returned.

Before reassigning a device, have IT preserve required business information and prepare it for the next user. Avoid handing over a computer that is still signed in to the previous employee’s accounts.

For personally owned devices, follow your own device management policy. You should only take action on company access and data that your organisation has approvals to manage.

6. Check that the handover works

After the scheduled tasks of changes are done, go through a checklist with the responsible persons.

Verify completion of access adjustments, hardware returned and that the business files transferred can successfully be used by the new owner.

Decide how incoming work will be handled. Does a client need a new contact? Should an approved automatic reply direct enquiries elsewhere? Who will manage recurring tasks previously assigned to the employee?

Record unresolved items with an owner and a follow-up date.

This final review catches down-to-earth gaps such as a folder that was transferred but no one could open and an old contact still linked to a supplier portal.

Create the checklist before the next departure

Begin with looking at one role in your business. List the accounts, devices, critical files and current obligations it has.

Then ask whether someone could complete the handover using that list without relying on memory.

With a repeatable process, departures are easier to manage and your team has a clearer record of what was carried out.