When an employee leaves a small office, the IT part of their exit usually gets about ten minutes: someone changes the email password, maybe forwards the mailbox, and moves on. Then six months later a vendor is still emailing a dead address, a shared folder is still syncing to a laptop nobody can find, and the copier is still sending scans to someone who no longer works there.
Offboarding is not glamorous, but it is one of the easiest places for a small business to lose data, money, or both. Here is the list we work from, in the order that matters.
The same day: accounts that hold the keys
These should be handled before the person walks out, or within the hour if the departure is sudden.
- Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Block sign-in first, then reset the password. Blocking stops existing sessions on phones and laptops; a password reset alone often does not, at least not right away.
- Sign out of every device. Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have a “sign out all sessions” option. Use it.
- Remove MFA methods tied to their personal phone. Otherwise the authenticator app on their phone is still a valid second factor if the account is ever re-enabled.
- Shared logins. Bank portals, payroll, the supplier ordering site, the domain registrar. If they knew the password, change it. If you don’t know which shared logins they had, that is a problem worth fixing for the next departure.
The first week: where the data actually lives
Do not delete the mailbox. Convert it to a shared mailbox (Microsoft 365) or transfer ownership (Google), so customer emails sent to that address still land somewhere a real person reads them. Set an auto-reply that names who to contact instead.
Then look at files. OneDrive and Google Drive belong to the user, not the company, until you move them. Microsoft 365 deletes a removed user’s OneDrive after a retention window, so move anything important into a shared location before you remove the license. Check for files they shared out to personal addresses, too.
Finally, collect hardware: laptop, phone if it’s company-owned, keys, badge, and any USB drives that were used for “temporary” backups. Wipe and reimage the laptop before handing it to the next person.
The one almost everybody forgets: the copier
This is the part of offboarding we see skipped most often, because nobody thinks of the copier as an IT system. It is one.
On the Toshiba e-STUDIO machines we install and service out of Markham, the copier keeps its own address book, its own scan-to-folder destinations, and, if your office uses them, its own department codes for tracking who prints what. None of that is connected to your Microsoft 365 account. Disable someone in 365 and the copier has no idea.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Scans go to a dead mailbox. A coworker picks the departed employee’s name from the copier’s address book out of habit, hits Start, and the scan disappears. No error at the machine, no bounce anyone sees.
- Scan-to-folder points at a missing share. If their PC or their personal network folder was a scan destination, that button now fails, usually on the morning someone needs it most.
- Department codes keep counting. If you use codes to split print volume between departments or to bill copies back to clients, an old code that someone else quietly starts using will throw off those numbers.
The fix takes about five minutes in TopAccess, the copier’s web admin page: remove or update their address book entry, delete or repoint any scan destinations, and retire their department code. If you don’t know your copier’s admin login, that tells you something too, and it’s a quick call to whoever services the machine.
Write it down once
The real fix is a one-page checklist that lives somewhere other than one person’s head. Every system above, who owns it, and how to shut it off. The first time you build it takes an hour. Every departure after that takes fifteen minutes instead of a month of loose ends.
A small office does not need an enterprise identity platform to get this right. It needs a list, and someone who actually runs it every time.
Want a second set of eyes on yours?
We’ve been supporting south-suburb offices since 1983, and we handle the computers, the network, and the copiers, so nothing falls between two vendors when someone leaves. If you’d like help building an offboarding checklist for your office, or want us to clean up a copier address book that has collected a few years of former employees, call us at 708-596-2990 or email admin@dynamic83.com.
