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From the HPAlumnipedia – www.hpalumnipedia.com.  The HP Alumni Association is an independent volunteer organization. Not endorsed or supported by Hewlett-Packard. Content is the responsibility of the authors. HPAA may, but is not obligated to, monitor or review content. By using this site you accept the site terms. © 2012 HPAA.
HPAlumnipedia > Leaving HP > Professional Transition

Email

• Unsubscribe from email lists (either company or personal) or make appropriate substitutions on distribution lists. Assign new owners for any email distribution lists that you owned.

• If you have been using your company email address for personal business, you need to untangle your personal business. You will lose your email connections – including not only critical ones (like those with financial institutions) but also seemingly-trivial ones that can be a hassle to straighten out, like the public library or Netflix. You will also lose your personal address book. People who send you email either receive no reply – or get a cryptic message passed on by their ISP. Details here: Personal business on company systems.

Computer Files

• Transfer computer files, including email, to appropriate owners.

• Make copies of any personal files on your PC, take them home, and use your personally-owned computer during your transition. Members recommend using a USB thumbdrive.

Members report that they lost their address books, personal contact lists, and personal files (such as the records of a non-profit they worked with) due to the company unexpectedly collecting their notebook or desktop from them – or IT, management, or other employees removing equipment from their office in their absence.

Passwords are irrelevant – by the time they found out, their hard drive had been wiped clean.

Paper Mail

You need to clean up behind yourself -- and make sure that you can keep up with your profession while you are between jobs:

• Cancel or transfer subscriptions to any physical mail you had delivered to work.

• Change the address on your free professional magazine subscriptions – EDN, Infoworld, etc. – so that they go to your personal address. You can usually do a change-of-address most quickly by going to the website for the magazine. Be sure to check the "don't share my name" box to avoid junkmail. A more ecological alternative would be to change your subscriptions to electronic only.

• Order your own paid subscription to any professional magazine that you depended on – Linux Magazine, HBR...

Personal Transition

• Return any borrowed personal property and retrieve anything that you have loaned to others.

• Settle any outstanding debts. (Did you order Girl Scout cookies from a co-worker's child?)

• Exchange personal email addresses and telephone numbers.

Professional Transition

Although your primary focus as you approach your termination date will most likely be on protecting your own interests, those who will inherit your former responsibilities will greatly appreciate it if you make a reasonable effort to do an orderly transition.

• Notify contacts inside and outside the company that you will be leaving, and point them to suitable replacement(s). Members report that doing this professionally has helped them network for their next position.

• Make a reasonable effort to clean out your office or other work areas before you go, finding new owners for things worth keeping and tossing junk. Often this will remind you of other responsibilities you need to transfer.

• Document things that your successor may find useful – contacts, contracts, processes and the many other things that you never quite had time to write down.

• Transfer physical files to appropriate owners.

• Cancel (or transfer ownership of) conference room or other reservations you will no longer need.

• Transfer ownership of entries assigned to you in any defect tracking system or project database.

• Change the ownership records for equipment as appropriate.

Manager's Checklist

Your manager has a checklist that includes items like:

• Properly transfer or dispose of any confidential information.

• Return company credit cards, keys, access cards, cell phones, phone calling cards, remote access or other home loan equipment or any other company property that you have borrowed.

–Doug Hosking, July 2007