It’s not often talked about, but offboarding departing employees may be just as important as onboarding their replacements. When employees say they are leaving, management may be concerned about losing their institutional knowledge and experience. So how can management ensure the transition will be a smooth one, and the departing employees' expertise will be retained? Typically, offboarding is a hurried affair, with hasty exit interviews, a mountain of paperwork, and slapped-together project wrap-ups. “The manager might ask the person who’s leaving to write a [report] to share his knowledge,” says John Sullivan, HR expert and professor of management at San Francisco State University, “but often there’s just not enough time for that.” Or enough time for such a report to be meaningful, anyway, particularly with veteran employees or those with so much “tribal knowledge” that they have made themselves almost irreplaceable. The best way to conduct the offboarding process for such workers is to first make a plan that determines how the departing employees' knowledge will be transferred, to whom, and along what timeline. If possible, pair the departing employees with their replacements so knowledge can be transferred in a structured way.