How to Document Tribal Knowledge While Offboarding Employees

If there’s one thing that causes organizational panic, it’s when a person with deep tribal knowledge is about to leave. The panic begins to surface in the final days of that employee’s tenure. That’s when people really face the difficult realization of how much undocumented information is going to just walk out the door without leaving a trace.

The departure of a key employee is the main reason code becomes “legacy.” Despite the implications of the word legacy, it has nothing to do with the age of the code – it’s really about supportability and who knows how to maintain that code. If no one knows how a particular piece of code works, it instantly becomes “legacy.” And this is the main driver for companies to concern themselves with offboarding.

“Offboarding” is the process of capturing the knowledge of an exiting employee so the organization can remain productive without them. In the best case, offboarding captures the proprietary knowledge of an exiting employee and transfers that information into the broader knowledge base of the entire organization.

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