**Source:** https://heykiku.com/glossary/offboarding

# Offboarding

When someone leaves, they take more than their personal belongings. They take client relationships, process shortcuts, historical context, and **answers to questions nobody thought to ask yet**. The two-week notice period is your last chance to capture what's in their head.

The real cost of poor offboarding **shows up months later**. Why did we set up the Client X account that way? What was the context behind that pricing decision? How do we handle the edge case that only Sarah knew about? These questions have no answers because Sarah left and took the knowledge with her.

Most agencies don't have an offboarding process at all. There's an exit interview HR runs, maybe a goodbye lunch. But nobody sits down with the departing employee and **systematically captures what they know**. Nobody asks them to record explanations of their key processes or document their client relationships. The knowledge transfer that should happen doesn't.

Agencies that retain knowledge through turnover **build capture into the offboarding process**. Recorded handoff sessions. Documented client contexts. Process walkthroughs that live on after the person leaves. When knowledge capture is expected during offboarding, the next person doesn't start from zero.

## Related terms

- [Team Onboarding](https://heykiku.com/glossary/team-onboarding)
- [Tribal Knowledge](https://heykiku.com/glossary/tribal-knowledge)
- [Handoff](https://heykiku.com/glossary/handoff)
- [Institutional Memory](https://heykiku.com/glossary/institutional-memory)
- [Account Handover](https://heykiku.com/glossary/account-handover)
- [Key Person Risk](https://heykiku.com/glossary/key-person-risk)