Your Offboarding Process Could Be Costing You

Honest HR

In this episode of Honest HR, host Nicole Bellina sits down with Sarah Rodehorst, CEO of Onwards HR, to discuss the strategic importance of

Key takeaways

• Approximately half of the workforce leaves their jobs every year, making transitions a frequent occurrence.
• A staggering 93% of HR leaders report that they are still managing offboarding and severance manually.

Main topics

• Offboarding as business strategy
• Compliance and legal risks in separations

Notable quotes

Compliance is compassion.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a call to action for HR leaders to invest in tec

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) This episode is sponsored by Intuit QuickBooks Workforce. Intuit QuickBooks Workforce helps businesses by bringing payroll, HR, talent, and your financial data together in one place. Their auto payroll can make payday run itself. With guaranteed, accurate tax calculations, owners aren't second-guessing the math, just approving what's already right. Plus, payroll AI can catch issues and flag changes before they become problems. And when something needs a human, live payroll and HR experts are right there to help out. For more info, head to intuit.quickbooks.com slash team dash management. That's intuit.quickbooks.com slash team dash management. Speaker 4 (0:46) Fundamentally, be human, right? Understand that it's a human on the other side. Understand that it's a difficult moment. They may react in different ways. And just making sure that they, you know, that it's handled with respect and the like. I mean, I think that that is, that goes a long way. Speaker 5 (1:14) When people think about the employee experience, they often focus on recruiting, onboarding, or engagement. But the final chapter, offboarding, can leave one of the most lasting impressions. Welcome to Honest HR, where we turn the real issues facing today's HR department into honest conversations with actionable insights. I'm Nicole Bellina, your host. Let's get honest. Done well, off-boarding isn't just a feel-good practice, it's a business strategy. The way you support your employees through their exit can strengthen trust, protect your reputation, and reinforce the values the organization stands for. Today, we're exploring what it means to create off-boarding experiences that are both efficient and deeply human with Sarah Rodehurst, CEO and founder of Onwards HR, an off-boarding compliance platform and part of SHRM Lab's 2026 Workplace Tech Accelerator cohort. The SHRM Labs Workplace Tech Accelerator cohort is a program designed to work with startups to elevate HR, shape the future of work, and solve today's most pressing workplace challenges through revolutionary technology. Welcome to Honest HR, Speaker 4 (2:40) Sarah. Thank you so much, Nicole. It is an honor to be here and to have been part of the SHRM Labs Workplace Tech Accelerator. Speaker 5 (2:49) Yeah, it's such a pleasure to have you. So I have lots of questions for you, so I'd love to jump right in if we can. So we spend so much time talking about attracting and retaining talent, but off-boarding often gets much less attention. Why do you think organizations have historically underestimated its importance? Speaker 4 (3:12) You know what? It's really surprising when you think about it. About half of the workforce actually leaves their jobs every year. One in 10 are asked to leave as part of a layoff or firing. On the bright side, one in every 20 are actually ultimately rehired. Additionally, more than 1.2 million layoffs were announced. last year in 2025. So you know what? Workforce change is really not a rare event. It's really happening every single day. But you asked, why has offboarding been so overlooked for so long? And I really actually don't think HR has underestimated it. I think it's the organizations that have underestimated it. Leadership so often has invested where they see growth, right? We're hiring. We want to recruit. We want to invest in our talent, onboarding and the like. And that's a lot of times where the technology investment has gone. But if you talk to HR professionals, and I'm guessing you would relate to this, Nicole, is that actually managing workforce transitions or offboarding as a whole is. really complicated and it's really one of the hardest parts of HR. It's something that we say that nobody really hopes to do, but it is a big part of the process. And so I think it's one of those things that bringing to light the complexity around off-boarding, understanding the compliance around it, the state notices, all of the laws, the OBIPAs, the warrants and the like. It is something that we need to bring to the attention of leadership because it really just takes one mistake to make headlines or to result in a lawsuit. Speaker 5 (5:02) Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a really good point. And you're pointing out a lot of very compliance focused things that go along with offboarding. And there is a lot that. is compliance related that goes along with off boarding, right? You want to do it the right way. But I always feel like compliance is sort of like table stakes, right? Really any part of HR, but, you know, but then we also then start to think about the experience. And I know that you published an article with SHRM Labs that was titled Offboarding's Compliance Reckoning, Why HR's Hardest Job Deserves Better Tools. And so. For those listening, we have linked the piece to our podcast page, and I highly recommend the listen. And so in your article, you point out that organizations have sophisticated tools for recruiting and onboarding and everywhere in between, but many still rely on spreadsheets and email when someone leaves. So why do you think off-boarding has lagged behind the rest of the employee cycle? Speaker 4 (6:12) Again, I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that companies believe that HRIS really has off-boarding handled. So you'd say, you know, you ask any leader and they're like, oh, Workday does that, SAP or Oracle, you know, they're handling everything. But we actually partnered with SHRM as part of the accelerator program to do some research and just ask HR professionals. how are they really managing offboarding and severance today? And we found that 93%, which is crazy, 93 % of HR leaders told us that they are still managing offboarding and severance manually. And only 3.7 % said it's fully integrated with their HRIS platform. Like we knew those numbers, like we feel in our conversations with the companies we're helping kind of. really streamline that process and bring compassion to that process. But we were really surprised at how high that number was. Yeah. Speaker 5 (7:16) Yeah. Speaker 4 (7:17) It's it's quite staggering. And you've Speaker 5 (7:20) argued that compliance and compassion are not competing priorities. They actually are closely connected. How did you come to that realization and how has it changed the way you think about employee separations? Speaker 4 (7:34) No, I think that's a really great question. And as our organization, we really have two North Stars. We always say two North Stars is compliance and compassion. And you really have to have both to have a really effective process. We do say that compliance is compassion, and we see it's the foundational layer because those laws are designed to protect employees. right? If we talk about WARN, it's about advanced notice to employees in the event that they are impacted by a layoff. Adverse impact analysis is just making sure that people are treated fairly. State notices, I mean, we're talking about unemployment insurance and making sure that employees know how to find unemployment insurance when they are impacted. So we do really see that compliance is that foundational layer. And then once you have that handled and an organization is able to do that efficiently and timely, then they also have more time for empathy. and more time for compassion. Because at the end of the day, technology really should enable those human moments and off-boarding more so than any other aspect, in my opinion, of the employee life cycle. Speaker 4 (9:00) People in general just need to show up and make sure it is a smooth conversation. It is supportive. Those employees have the benefits they need to