When a Staff Member Leaves

Contributed by Steve Shaw

When it comes to people's digital lives, entanglement is pretty much the norm nowadays. Ask almost anyone what's installed on their computer, phone, or digital device and you'll find a combination of work and personal information. We're always online and always connected whether it's to our friends, our family, our co-workers, our clients, or our suppliers. The lines between each piece of this information has become blurred. Now we're simply connected people.

For many, the digital push has started with their work. There's a much better ROI for an organisation than an individual when it comes to cutting-edge digital devices. As such, the devices we become familiar with and embed our digital lives into aren’t actually ours, but the organisation we work for. Likewise, for those whose first email account was provided by work, it easily becomes the default or only account that’s used – both for personal and work relationships.

So what happens when, for better or worse, someone moves on from and out of their native digital environment? Keeping good relationships is an essential part of any organisation, so maintaining a healthy link to an organisation after someone moves on can be key. How then can an organisation or individual prepare for a healthy breakup, digitally speaking?

Like most processes, the first step is always information gathering. What exactly would be lost if someone were removed from your organisations technological infrastructure? Phone numbers and email addresses of friends? A digital music collection? Personal emails? Family photos? Access to an email address linked to bank accounts? Losing any or all of the above could easily sour a relationship.

Once you’ve established just what’s going to be lost, you can then move forward. For each individual there will likely be a need to migrate data. From an organisation, however, the greatest need is to put in place policies and procedures that will set you up for when the inevitable need to disentangle occurs.

If you’re concerned about any of these points, talk to one of our friendly team members for assistance with the data migration.