Questions · · By Dorian, founder
A staff member is leaving: what to switch off, what to keep
Most trouble with leavers comes from one of two mistakes: switching things off too early, or never switching them off at all. Do it on the last working day, in this order, and write down what you did.
Before the last day
- List every account they use: email, shared drives, the website's admin, social media pages, supplier and bank portals, the phone system, the card machine.
- Find anything registered to them alone: a domain, a social media page, a supplier account or a subscription on their personal email. Move it to a business account now, while they can still help.
- Agree who takes over their email and their work.
On the last day
- Block their sign-in and sign them out everywhere, phones included. Delete the account later, not today.
- Remove their two-step login devices and any app passwords.
- Keep the mailbox: forward new mail to a colleague, or give one colleague access, and set an auto-reply naming the new contact.
- Move their files to a colleague before anything is deleted.
- Change every shared password they knew: Wi-Fi, shared logins, anything in a shared list. A password manager for the team shows exactly which ones they could open.
- Collect company phones and laptops, and reset them before anyone else uses them.
Afterwards
- Keep the mailbox only as long as you need it, for example three months, then export it and close it. Say in your staff privacy notice how long you keep a leaver's mail.
- Keep a short record: what was switched off, when, and by whom. If a dispute or a data protection question comes up, it is your evidence.
If the person leaving looked after your IT
This is the riskiest leaver: they may hold the only admin login for your email, domain and website. Before the last day, ask for every admin login, the domain registrar and hosting accounts, and the two-step login recovery codes. Check that each one works with someone else signed in. If they have already gone, read Our web person has gone.
How DARCH helps
Both include the leavers process:
| Service | What you get | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Office essentials | Website maintenance for one website, up to ten mailboxes on your own name, two-step logins set up, a password manager for the team, a leavers checklist and a one-page report every month. | £99 per month |
| Security check | Accounts, two-step logins, backups, email protection and the leavers process checked and fixed, with a short written summary. | £250 |
Someone leaving soon?
Send the leaving date and how many people use email through the form. We reply within one working day.