How to: Prepare for a Departing Employee

Applies to: TTI Employees

Information resource access, business continuity, and compliance need to be considered when an employee resigns. As soon as a supervisor becomes aware that an employee is resigning, they should begin planning with the departing employee for the transition of business-related information, documents, and access to ensure the business processes and programs continue as seamlessly as possible.

The transition should be a managed process between the supervisor and the departing employee that should be completed before the departing employee’s last day.

Procedure

Notify NIS of the employee’s departure. Submit a service desk ticket to help@doit.tamu.edu notifying the Department of IT of the name, NetID, and UIN of the departing employee, their last day of work, and any special requests.
Interview the departing employee and transfer business-relevant electronic documents and email items:
1. Does the departing employee have business-relevant documents and files in only places they have access to? Locations only the employee may have access to may include:
  1. Their “M:” drive or “My Documents” folders
  2. Their desktop
  3. Cloud storage locations such as Google Drive or Dropbox
  4. Portable storage locations such as thumb drives or removable disks
  5. Note - It often helps to go down a list of employee’s responsibilities or major job duties when determining what may be relevant.
2. Document a plan for the departing employee to move relevant business documents and files to other staff members or departmental shared locations as appropriate.
3. Does the departing employee have email, contact, or calendar appointments in their mailbox that need to be transitioned to maintain business continuity?
  1. If yes, have the departing employee export relevant mailbox items into a .PST archive and move the .PST file to an appropriate staff member or a shared location. Instructions on how to export to a .PST can be found here: (See KB <KBArticle>).
4. Does the departing employee have or manage shared calendars or mailboxes that need to be transitioned to maintain business continuity?
Determine how to handle incoming email to the departing employee’s mailbox after their last day of employment:
1. Solution 1 (Most common) – The employee sets an out-of-office reply indicating that TAMU-related queries should be directed to a new person or address. They also often include their new email contact information. The out-of-office reply continues to work for 30 days until their mailbox is disabled and deleted.
2. Solution 2 (Less common) – The employee sets a forwarding rule for all emails to be forwarded to another address. The forwarding continues until 30 days after their employment ends and the account is disabled and deleted. Departing employees can also create an out-of-office reply message with this solution.
3. Solution 3 (Rare) – In some rare cases a custom solution may be needed for business continuity reasons, including the need to access TAMU resources after employment has been terminated. Please contact DoIT a week before the employee departs to coordinate a custom solution.
4. Retiring employees – Retiring employees may retain their @tamu.edu email address and access to Google Mail through their retirement. For instructions on how to do this please see KB KB0011082.
After the last day of employment, the Department of IT will disable the account, remove the departing employee from any distribution lists automatically, and remove employee access to the mailbox. The employee will no longer be able to access TAMU resources.
Thirty days after the account has been disabled, the Department of IT will delete the departing employee’s account, “M:” drive, “My Documents” folders, and mark the mailbox for deletion. Relevant files and emails have already been moved to appropriate staff or shared locations.