How good is your leaver process?

Believe it or not, one of our clients found out that they had been paying an ex member of staff for an additional not 1… not 2… but a whole 6 months!  

“How on earth did that happen”, you ask.

The company was profitable, growing fast and didn’t have a leavers process in place. As such, they didn’t notice these payments for a long time – not ideal. 

Whilst this may sound like an extreme example, a bad/non-existent leavers process is something we commonly pick up on during our on-site security audits.  

What is a leaver process?

This is the process your business follows when a staff member retires, leaves, moves internally or is removed from your business. 

There is more to it than just disabling the user on your servers and informing payroll.

Whilst our earlier example is that of an ex-employee being paid even after they’d left, this isn’t the only thing you need to consider when looking at your leavers process.  

Whether your main aim is to collect their IT equipment, gather data on why they have left or notify clients, in order to ensure no mistakes are made, we suggest you map out your leavers process, noting who needs to know that a staff member has left and why.  

Do HR need to know so they can complete the necessary paperwork? Is it IT who disable their user account? Do your payroll team know when to stop salary payments? Have the marketing team been informed to remove said employee from the website? Are there any 3rd party processors who need to be informed? And of course, anyone else…  

By mapping this information out, your leaver process can be holistic and slick – making sure no leavers slip through the net.  

Other considerations

Cloud-based services 

Due to the rise in cloud-based services, there are now many disparate systems (some that may even be unknown to the IT team) that the user may need to be disabled or made secure. 

We would also suggest making use of services which allow all the cloud-based systems you use to use a connected account, or a ‘Single Sign On’. When a user leaves, you can contact IT to disable the account which blocks access to all the Single Sign On systems.  

Can ex-employees still see your data? 

In order to ensure that your data and your clients’ data is always secure, there are tools available which help you discover which cloud services your teams are using. The tools for this purpose can see who is doing what with cloud services and you can either decide to block these as part of your company policy, or allow them if it is within your IT strategy. 

Another area often overlooked can be maternity leave 

Where the staff member decides to not come back to work. Payroll may stop paying but might not inform the IT team to remove the account.  

Infuse has access to a variety of methods and tools to help you build your leaver process. 

You can contact our team on 01332 374444 or by e-mailing hello@infusetech.co.uk.