Why you should always tell your IT team someone has left before they have left.
Team members come, Team members go; that is a regular occurrence for any business. It is very rare for a team member to be hired on the spot or fired on the spot. Hiring and firing are typically planned at least a week in advance. Still, business owners and managers of small business fail time and time again to inform IT of these changes.
It is not uncommon for IT teams to be informed of a new starter less than half an hour before starting! Worse still, when a team member leaves, IT gets told last minute that all their accesses need to be revoked, or in some cases, IT is not informed until after the team member has already left - and this could be days, weeks or months down the line!
How to have a seamless offboarding of a team member
The vast majority of times a team member leaves your business, it will be on good terms, they are moving on, and they will have a notice period to work. At this point, you should inform IT that the person is leaving and what date they will finish so a planned offboarding can take place - ending with the user's access to your systems gets cut off on the final day of work.
Sadly, the above scenario is rare, especially in small businesses. If IT is informed, it will typically be a last-minute request which leaves an incorrect assumption that IT will be able to suspend access immediately.
This is rarely the case, especially when using cloud services that can easily connect to many other services. The team members account itself could be vital in the function of these services. For example, the account may be used to access and control your business YouTube channel or Google Ads account and simply suspending the account will block your ability to manage these services. A planned transfer of these services needs to occur, which could have been seamlessly processed if you'd informed IT that the person was leaving in advance.
How to avoid putting your client's data at risk
When you fail to inform IT of a team member leaving until after the fact you have successfully put your business data and any client's data you manage at risk.
During a planned offboarding, you will know well in advance who is leaving and when their notice period ends. Vital information you should tell IT as soon as you can! When you fail to do this and don't tell IT someone had left during that interim period of the team member leaving and IT getting informed that the individual has gone - they have free reign to login to their accounts access, syphon and change data. And now you are left deservedly so dealing with a potential data breach and fines.
It is far more common for a small business to fail to inform IT of a team member leaving on good terms than bad. When someone leaves on bad terms, business owners are usually angered, and that passion makes them inform IT almost immediately. That’s why it is important as part of your offboarding (and onboarding) process (you should have one drawn up, for people to follow), IT should be one of the first departments you inform of the changes.
