Planning for the End of Summer: Offboarding Student Employees the Right Way

Believe it or not, the summer is nearing its end, and your student employees will soon leave and go back to their education. It is always bittersweet to lose valuable student employees who helped you. In order to have a smooth transition for you, your student employees, and the rest of your team, it’s important to offboard student employees the right way.

Offboarding is a functional way to separate from your employees, especially when you want to take time to celebrate your student employees for a summer well spent and a job well done. It can also leave a positive impact on employees and may make your student employees come back to work for you next summer or after they graduate. Rather than burning any bridges, you are continuing to foster a positive work environment.

When you utilize communication and thinking ahead, you can plan for the inevitable end of summer.

Confirm Last Day

First and foremost, you need to confirm your student employees’ last day. When you hired them, maybe there was a vague timeline as simple as ‘the end of August.’ Now that the end of August is approaching, it is time to confirm when your student employee is available until. Without proper communication, they might not show up one day you’re expecting them!

Once the last day is confirmed, make sure to relay this information to the rest of your team. That way, everyone is on the same page and can say their farewells to your student employee team member.

Transition Unfinished Work

As the end of summer nears, make sure you are not starting your student employees on any big, time-intensive projects. If they have finished their biggest projects, rather than starting them on something new, give them smaller tasks that can last throughout the remainder of their time with you.

If there were any projects they took the lead on but have not gotten a chance to finish, you need to have a plan for that transition of the work to one of your full-time employees. Set up meetings between your student employee and whoever you decide to take on their work so that they can communicate clearly about the status and responsibilities included.

If necessary, consider asking your student employee to create a step-by-step guidebook that any employee can follow. This transition will ensure that there are no gaps at the end of summer and keep your workplace running smoothly as fall arrives.

Schedule Exit Interviews and Surveys

Offboarding student employees gives you the valuable opportunity to gain feedback on your work environment, and especially your student employee program. This allows you to get what works and what doesn’t in your managers’ best leading practices and the type of work your student employees were up to.

While you can choose just an exit interview or survey to get this kind of information, there are positives about both. Interviews give you time face to face with your student employee and provide both of you with an opportunity to thank each other for the opportunity and ask any remaining questions. A survey can be anonymous if you have multiple student employees who might be too nervous to provide feedback to your face. People feel comfortable being honest when they know that their work and name will not be tied to the responses they give.

Collect Company Resources

Lastly, before you officially say goodbye to your student employees, you have to take back any resources or items that the company loans to all workers. This includes items such as keys, laptops, and uniforms. This isn’t limited to just physical items, but digital as well. Make sure their technology access is revoked so that they cannot do anything after their last day. Even though you’re parting on good terms, leaving former employees with these resources is a liability and reflects on the entire company if anything goes wrong.

If you want to give your student employees something to remember your company by, give them some branded swag instead. A mug or a lanyard are always useful and will keep your company name on their mind.

It’s always good to start planning for the end of summer as soon as you can. It has a way of sneaking up on us and will be here before you know it. Start planning your offboarding process for your summer student employees so that you can depart on good terms and keep things running smoothly with a seamless transition.

Saying goodbye can be difficult, especially if your student employees are hardworking superstars. Just because you are offboarding them at the end of the summer doesn’t mean it’s goodbye forever. You never know what paths life will set you on and who you will meet down the road. It comes back to your offboarding to keep a positive environment.