Managing Employee Offboarding in Jira

Managing HR processes in Jira is a great option for small software companies who are already using Jira and who don’t have, or necessarily need, dedicated HR software. An earlier post demonstrated how Jira can be used to manage employee onboarding. However, employees don’t just come, they also go. Jira  can be used to manage employee offboarding as well.

• Product: Jira Work Management
• Apps: Issue Checklist for Jira
• Workflow & Issue Type: HR Onboarding project template
• Set-up Tasks:
• Workflow modifications
• Checklist template
• Automation rules

Workflow

We can expand our Onboarding Workflow to accommodate the entire lifecycle of an employee by adding a few more statuses:

Since members of multiple teams (HR, IT and Facilities) will be working on the issue, it’s good practice to add Workflow Conditions that only allows a member of the HR team (User is in group) to transition the issue to IN REVIEW to ONBOARDED,  and from FINAL REVIEW to OFFBOARDED .

Checklist Template

As with onboarding, HR, IT and Facilities will each have multiple tasks in order to offboard the employee. However, there is not the same dependency-based order of operations. All three teams will need to prepare their tasks to be executed at the last minute. Therefore, all of the tasks can be listed in the same checklist, with separators to keep the checklist organized.

To create the Offboarding template, select Checklist from the left project nav bar. Then click Create template to create the checklist.

Tip: You can also add checklists that track the on/offboarding tasks for specific teams.

Automation Rules

Using checklists in combination with automation is a great way to streamline repeated tasks and ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. This is example will use automation to:

• Check todays date against the employee’s last day to trigger the process at the appropriate time
• Clear the current checklists (from the onboarding process) off of the issue
• Change the issue status
• Add the checklist
• Notify the appropriate team members

A second automation rule will change the status once the checklist is complete.

To create the first rule:

1. Find the custom field ID of the Checklist Template field.
2. Find the ID of the template to be applied by the rule. Templates are listed in alphabetical order and numbered from top to bottom. (In this examplee, the Facilities template has ID number 1 and the IT template has ID number 3.) Note that the template ID numbers are reset when the list of templates is updated. Therefore, you may need to update the automation rule if new templates are added.
3. Select the Scheduled trigger.
4. Set the rule to run once per day at the desired hour.
5. Click the Run a JQL search and execute actions for each issue in the query checkbox
6. Insert a JQL query that returns all issues that are in the ONBOARDED status have a Due date within the next two weeks due <= 2w AND status = Onboarded
7. Click Save.
8. Click New action
9. Click Edit issue and select the Checklist Text field.
10. Click Save. (This will clear the current checklist from the issue.)
11. Click New action
12. Click Edit issue and click on the More options dropdown.
13. Paste the following code (where 10044 is the Checklist template custom field ID and “5” is the template ID) into the Additional fields text box.

f{
    "fields": {
              "customfield_10044" : "5"
              }
}

    }
}

14. Click Save.
15. Click New action.
16. Select Transition issue.  
17. Select OFFBOARDING as the destination status.
18. Click Save.
19. Optionally, you may want to add an additional action to set the Assignee or notify a member of the HR team.
20. Name the rule and click Turn it on.

‍

To create the second rule:

1. Navigate to Project Settings > Automation (or Jira Settings > System > Automation rules).
2. Click Create rule.
3. Select the Field value changed trigger.
4. Select
5. Checklist Completed in the Fields to monitor for changes dropdown
6. Any changes to the field value in the Change type dropdown
7. Edit issue in the For dropdown
8. Click Save.
9. Click New condition and select Issue fields condition.
10. Select Checklist Completed from the Fields dropdown
11. Select equals in the Condition dropdown
12. Type All Completed as the Value text box.
13. Click Save.
14. Click Add component and select New action.
15. Select Transition issue.  
16. Select FINAL REVIEW as the destination status and click Save.
17. Optionally, you may want to add a second action to set the Assignee or notify a member of the HR team.
18. Name the rule and click Turn it on.

Issue Life Cycle

1. The supervisor notifies HR that an employee is going to be leaving the organization.
2. HR sets the Due date field as the employee’s last day of employment.
3. The automation rule is triggered when the Due date is within two weeks of the current date.
4. The issue is transitioned to the OFFBOARDING status, the Offboarding checklist is automatically added to the issue (replacing the Onboarding checklists) and appropriate team members are notified.
5. When the teams have completed the checklist items, the issue is automatically transitioned to FINAL REVIEW .
6. A member of the HR team reviews the issue, sees that all onboarding tasks have been completed and transitions the issue to OFFBOARDED .
   

‍

This example assumes the HR team is using Jira Work Management. Alternatively, you could manage employee offboarding in Jira Service Management. With JSM:

• The hiring manager could submit the original request and follow progress on the portal;
• You can create multiple forms and can use pre-built form templates which have been created for offboarding.

‍