Much has been written about the importance of employer brand over the past decade. Organisations have invested heavily in defining employee value propositions, improving candidate experiences and creating workplaces that attract and retain talented people. Recruitment marketing has become more sophisticated, employee advocacy has become more visible, and platforms such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor have given organisations greater opportunities to tell their story.
Yet employer brand is no longer shaped solely by recruitment campaigns or careers pages. It is increasingly influenced by the lived experiences employees share throughout every stage of the employment relationship, including the point at which they leave.
For HR leaders, this represents an important shift. While attracting talent remains critical, the offboarding experience has become just as influential in shaping organisational reputation. The way people leave an organisation is no longer simply an operational or legal process. It has become a defining moment that influences trust, culture and how an organisation is perceived by future employees.
Employer brand is built through experience, not messaging
Prospective employees have access to more information than ever before. Before applying for a role, many will explore employee reviews, professional networks and the experiences shared by current and former employees. These insights often carry more weight than carefully crafted recruitment campaigns because they are perceived as authentic reflections of organisational culture.
Research from Glassdoor found that 86% of employees and job seekers research company reviews and ratings before deciding where to apply. Importantly, many of those reviews are written by people after they have left an organisation, making the offboarding experience a significant contributor to employer reputation.
This doesn't mean organisations can avoid making difficult workforce decisions. Most employees understand that businesses evolve, markets change and organisational priorities shift. What they are far more likely to remember is whether those decisions were handled with honesty, empathy and professionalism. The final chapter of someone's employment often becomes the story they tell.
The audience isn't only the people who are leaving
It's easy to think of career transition support as something provided solely for departing employees. In reality, the experience is being observed by a much wider audience.
Employees who remain are paying close attention to how their colleagues are treated. During periods of organisational change, people naturally look to leadership for reassurance that organisational values still apply when circumstances become challenging. The decisions leaders make, the way they communicate and the level of support provided all influence whether trust is strengthened or diminished.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) describes this as "survivor syndrome", recognising that employees who remain after workforce reductions often experience reduced trust, lower morale and increased anxiety if they believe colleagues have not been treated fairly or respectfully.
For HR leaders, this reinforces an important point. Offboarding is not simply an employee exit process. It is also a culture event. How organisations treat people during periods of change sends a powerful message to everyone who continues to work there.
Process creates consistency. Personalisation creates outcomes.
Many outplacement programs are designed around consistency. Employees move through a series of predetermined stages that typically include onboarding, resume development, interview preparation and job search support. While there is value in providing structure, career transition is rarely experienced in a uniform way.
Some people are ready to begin applying for roles almost immediately. Others need time to process what has happened before they can think clearly about what comes next. Long-serving employees may be entering the job market for the first time in many years, while others may be questioning their confidence, professional identity or future direction.
Supporting people effectively requires more than delivering the same program to everyone. It requires understanding where each individual is starting from and adapting support accordingly.
That doesn't mean abandoning structure. It means recognising that two people can follow the same framework while taking very different paths through it.
The organisations that achieve the strongest outcomes tend to understand this distinction. They recognise that career transition is as much about restoring confidence and creating clarity as it is about updating resumes or practising interview responses.
Measuring success means looking beyond completion rates
Like any organisational investment, outplacement should be measurable. Reporting matters, and HR leaders rightly expect visibility over engagement, utilisation and outcomes. However, meaningful reporting extends well beyond the number of coaching sessions completed or workshops attended.
The more valuable questions are whether participants are engaging with support, rebuilding confidence, securing meaningful employment and feeling better equipped to navigate their next career move. Combined with regular touch points between the organisation and the outplacement provider, these insights allow HR teams to identify emerging themes, monitor participant wellbeing and ensure support remains responsive throughout the transition.
Importantly, these conversations should never compromise individual confidentiality. Instead, they provide HR with a broader understanding of how employees are experiencing the process and whether additional support or communication may be required. Done well, reporting becomes more than a dashboard. It becomes an early indicator of organisational sentiment during periods of change.
Offboarding has become part of the employee experience
The concept of employee experience has expanded significantly over recent years. It no longer begins on day one or ends when someone submits their resignation. Increasingly, organisations are recognising that every stage of the employee lifecycle contributes to how people remember their time with an employer.
When employees depart and it is handled well, it reinforces organisational values, protects relationships and enables people to leave with dignity and confidence. Handled poorly, it can undermine years of investment in culture, leadership and employer brand in a remarkably short period of time.
For HR leaders, this presents an opportunity to view career transition and outplacement differently. Rather than seeing outplacement as a transactional service provided at the end of employment, it can instead be viewed as an extension of the employee experience and a reflection of how an organisation chooses to treat its people when they need support most.
For organisations looking to strengthen that experience, it's worth exploring how Progressional approaches outplacement. Their model is built around treating every employee as an individual, recognising that successful career transitions begin with understanding the person before focusing on the process.
