An employee leaving for new opportunities can be a big shift for your company. Learn how to optimize your offboarding process by using an employee departure announcement email.
Employee turnover is a fact of running any business. Even if you nurture a highly engaged workforce with an excellent company culture, employees will inevitably leave for a variety of reasons.
A well-crafted employee departure announcement can minimize the disruption of an employee leaving and help maintain your overall employee engagement. We’ll examine everything that goes into an employee departure announcement email and how you can make your own with the right internal email tools.
What Is An Employee Departure Announcement?
An employee departure announcement is a message that notifies people at your company that one of your employees is leaving. An employee leaving email is an company newsletter idea that informs your employees of their coworker’s leaving. At the same time, you want to wish the leaving employee well in their future endeavours.
Employee departure announcement emails can be written by the employee themselves, a manager or your internal communications team. Ideally, this kind of email will minimize anxieties around an employee leaving, informing your employees of some of the details around the decision and what the future holds for the departing employee.
Emails about an employee leaving are an essential part of your overall offboarding process. Solid offboarding procedures not only provide you with important information about your company but should also help your remaining employees move on smoothly after their coworker’s departure.
How Do You Announce An Employee Is Leaving Via Email?
Your employee departure announcement should be a brief but impactful statement. The ideal effect of your employee leaving email is twofold. You want to send off your departing employee in a good manner and reify their contributions to everyone’s success. You also want your remaining employees to feel that even though their valued coworker is leaving, business will still continue as normal.
Don’t get caught up with details in your email to announce employee departure. The exact details surrounding your employee leaving don’t need to be shared with everyone. Rather, focus on creating an email that helps employees remember their coworker fondly and fosters hope for the future.
It’s important to consider your audience as well. Are you a small company where all coworkers have built relationships with one another? Or are you a large international company where only employees within the same department will have worked with each other? Thinking about your audience will help you decide what tone you should use in your email.
What to write when an employee is leaving?
Though brief, your employee leaving announcement email should touch on a few important points.
First, include the reason for the email! Announce that the person is leaving, and include a brief description of the reason for the move. If you’re worried about oversharing, consult with the leaving employee to get a better idea of what you can share.
Recap some of the employee’s achievements at your company. Discuss the positive impact they had on their coworkers and the overall success of the business.
Always include a positive message of best wishes for the employee. If you want to go the extra mile, gather some quotes from the employee’s coworkers and include them in your email announcement. This personal touch emphasizes the importance of relationships at your business.
Employee Departure Announcement Email Examples
Struggling to figure out how to structure your employee leaving announcement email? Think about your overall company culture. Are your internal communications generally formal or informal? Let this guide how you create your employee departure email.
Check out these example emails for inspiration on your own message. Feel free to add or subtract content from it to best fit your business’ internal communications tone.
Example of formal employee departure email
Subject: Employee Departure Announcement
Dear [department or organization] employees,
Your colleague [employee name] is leaving our organization on [date of departure]. [Employee name] has been an important part of our company’s success over the past [years of employee], and we wish [him/her/them] well in their future opportunities.
Please send any questions you may have about this departure to [relevant personnel], as they will be handling [employee name]’s responsibilities until a replacement is found.
[your email signoff/signature]
Example of formal employee departure email
Subject: Employee Departure Announcement
Dear [department or organization] employees,
Your colleague [employee name] is leaving our organization on [date of departure]. [Employee name] has been an important part of our company’s success over the past [years of employee], and we wish [him/her/them] well in their future opportunities.
Please send any questions you may have about this departure to [relevant personnel], as they will be handling [employee name]’s responsibilities until a replacement is found.
[your email signoff/signature]
Example of informal employee departure email
Subject: [Employee name] is headed for greener pastures
Dear [recipient’s name],
[Employee name] will be leaving us after [X] years of wonderful work. Though we are sad to see [employee name] go, we are happy for [him/her/them] to be pursuing new opportunities.
[Employee name] has been an integral part of our organization, and [his/her/their] coworkers will miss the [personal or unique quality of employee]. Join us in congratulating [employee name] for their new journey, and feel free to send your best wishes to [him/her/their] at [linkedin profile/email].
If you have any questions about [employee name]’s departure, please reach out to [person in charge of employee’s responsibilities] in the meantime.
Best,
[your email signoff/signature]
You’ll notice that in the informal email example, the salutation includes the recipient’s actual name. This would be tedious for anyone sending out emails manually, but a breeze for those using merge tags within ContactMonkey.
With merge tags, you can personalize subject lines and body copy of your internal emails. Personalized emails result in higher email engagement, so make your employee departure email count by using merge tags.
Understand what drives engagement in your organization with these staff survey questions.
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Tips For Creating An Employee Departure Announcement
In addition to merge tags, there are several ways you can make your employee departure announcement email memorable, meaningful, and effective.
Create an appropriate email design
Design a stunning and on-brand departure announcement with ContactMonkey’s easy-to-use email template builder. Whether you’re a design pro or novice, you can use the drag-and-drop- controls to create the perfect internal email.
After you’ve created your first employee departure email, you can re-use that template for future employee departures, simply swapping out the content for updated information.
Generate effective email copy with AI
Not sure how to start your departure email? ContactMonkey has you covered with our OpenAI ChatGPT integration.
Simply enter a prompt describing what you want to your email to say and our AI integration will provide you with copy that you can customize to fit your business needs. Save time and improve your email copy by using ContactMonkey’s ChatGPT internal email assistant!
Send your email to only relevant employees
For larger companies, an employee departure may only be relevant for employees who worked with the departing employee. To avoid sending too many irrelevant to your employees, use customized distribution lists to keep email engagement as high as possible.
Using ContactMonkey’s List Management feature, you can quickly create your own distribution lists without needing to consult your IT department:
ContactMonkey’s list management integrates with your company’s Human Resource Information System (HRIS) like Azure, Workday, and many others. This means your lists will automatically update as employees leave and join your company, no manual list updating required.
Track your employee departure email engagement
Finally, you can see how your announcement email performed by using ContactMonkey’s in-depth email analytics dashboard. View who opened the email and how long they read it to get an idea of your email reach was effective:
By tracking email metrics for your departure email, you can note whether you need to change up your send times or restructure your design. Give your departing employees a proper goodbye by informing as many employees as possible of the change.
You can also use data like click maps to optimize your email design. With ContactMonkey’s click maps feature, you can see what parts of your emails get the most attention from your employees:
All of these metrics and data help you create a departure email that gives your departing employee a proper send off.
Does your organization have internal or external regulations around email privacy? Try using ContactMonkey’s anonymous email tracking to gather email metrics while maintaining your employees’ privacy.
Coordinate departure-related events
Hosting an event for your departing employee or employees? Find out what kind of event your employees would like to see using ContactMonkey’s employee pulse survey tools.
Engagement pulse surveys are a great way to quickly poll your employees and gather their feedback about specific topics—like their preferred employee engagement activities.
Once you’ve determined what event would be appropriate for your departing employee, create invitations and manage RSVPs using ContactMonkey’s Event Management feature:
After you’ve sent your event invitations, you can view your RSVPs from your employees. They can even provide feedback on their RSVPs so you can respond to their particular concerns or questions.
Send Your Departing Employees Off In Style
An employee departure announcement email is an important part of your overall internal communications plan. It also contributes to a better company culture and helps facilitate relationships between your employees. Not to mention, it’s a key employee engagement best practice because it shows current employees that you respect and value your staff.
Though it’s tempting to take onboarding more seriously than offboarding, the best internal communicators realize the value of both.
Save time and effort while creating excellent internal emails with ContactMonkey’s employee communications app. Give your emails about employees leaving the importance they deserve and see real improvement in employee morale when measuring employee engagement after an employee leaves.
Want to try ContactMonkey for yourself? Book a free demo to get setup with our email template builder so you can start creating your own unique internal emails.
