FAS Staff Departure Information for Managers and Department Administrators

Managers should request and receive a resignation letter from departing employees. The letter should include the departure date (last date worked). It is customary for employees to provide at least two weeks’ notice. For employees who are leaving the University, their last day must be a day worked and cannot be taken as Paid Time Off.

Please notify your FAS HR Consultant with news about departing employees as soon as possible. This way, you and your employee can work with FAS HR to ensure that the employee has everything they need prior to their last day at FAS, and that your department has the resources it needs to continue any ongoing work. This also allows FAS HR to schedule an exit interview with the departing employee prior to their last day of work.

Managers and Department Administrators should complete the necessary steps outlined in the Department Administrator Checklist for FAS Departures. This includes information about processing termination actions in Aurora, ensuring time and absences are accurate in PeopleSoft, and getting contact info for your employee after they leave Harvard.

The departing employee can find similar information in the FAS Employee Exit Checklist. Please encourage departing employees to review this information and help them to complete all steps as appropriate.

Develop a transition plan with your employee regarding ongoing work and necessary materials, so that this knowledge will be made available to staff members after the employee’s departure. This includes copying or transferring:

• relevant documents/email
• work-related data
• digital materials on OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, personal folders on an FAS shared drive, etc.
• login information for department/group accounts, such as for Mailchimp or Amazon

To maintain compliance with Harvard's policy on access to electronic information, please review these FAS HR guidelines regarding requesting and receiving electronic information from departing staff members.

Decide what work needs to be completed before the employee departs, and who will take on incomplete work once the employee departs. Also, make sure to prepare helpful documentation for the next employee who will take on this work, whether that is a current employee or a new hire. Departing employees will lose access to the administrator privileges for any Harvard website of which they're the owner. Decide who to transfer the website administrator privileges to before the employee's last day. 

Also, make sure to collect any Harvard property the employee may be in possession of, including but not limited to: Harvard ID card, office keys, HUIT technology (laptops, iPads, cell phones, etc), and PCard or Corporate Card. This includes any property that the employee might have taken (such as a chair, laptop stand, etc.) to work remotely.

Contact HUIT and/or system administrators to make sure the departing employee no longer has access to shared departmental accounts after their last day in their position. This includes:

• shared departmental accounts or proxy access to others’ calendars
• online applications or databases that are local to the department or unit
• administrator accounts or privileges on network drives, devices, or servers
• special VPN access (e.g., specific VPN tunnels)

Contact your HR Consultant about filling any vacancies left by departing employees. Also review relevant Talent Acquisition Services information, including the FAS Staff Hiring Toolkit.

Please contact your HR Consultant or Coordinator about employee departures as soon as possible, so that FAS HR can reach out to them about an exit interview. This information allows us to better understand the employee experience across FAS.