The offboarding process execution is shared by the People Business Partners (PBPs), People Specialists, People Experience team, and Tech Stack Provisioners.
The People Experience team is responsible for creating the actual offboarding issue and executing on logistical tasks to remove access from certain systems and eliminate specific information in the handbook, etc. as outlined here, while the PBPs and People Specialists collaborate to work through the rest of the process.
The People Experience Coordinator completes a weekly audit of all offboarding issues opened within that specific week and checks that all tasks have been completed by all Departments. In the event that tasks are still outstanding, the People Experience Coordinator will ping the relevant Departments within the offboarding issue to call for tasks to be completed.
Once all tasks have been completed, the People Experience Coordinator or Associate will close the offboarding issue and mark as completed in the offboarding tracker.
All offboarding tasks by all Departments need to be completed within 5 days of the offboarding due date. For systems that are more critical and time sensitive, these will be completed within the first 24 hours (example 1Password, Okta, Slack) by the relevant Departments. Information about application & system deprovisioners can be found on the Tech Stack Applications handbook page.
A voluntary offboarding occurs when a team member informs his or her manager of a resignation. The choice to leave GitLab was their decision.
If you are a current team member and you are thinking about resigning from GitLab, we encourage you to speak with your manager, your assigned PBP, or another trusted team member to discuss your reasons for wanting to leave. At GitLab we want to ensure that all issues team members are facing are discussed and resolved before a resignation decision has been made. This will allow GitLab the ability to address concerns and in return foster a great work environment.
If resignation is the only solution after you have discussed your concerns, please communicate your intention to resign to your manager. This will trigger the following voluntary offboarding steps outlined below:
location and employment status of the team member.Note: For GitLab UK team members, payroll can pay up to and including the 5th day of the following month. For example, if a team member's last day is February 2nd, the team member can receive their final pay for this in January's payroll.
people-exp@domain.com, the People Operations Specialist team email inbox peopleops@domain.com, as well as to the payroll lead. The PBP will indicate the last day, reason for resignation, and rehire eligibility in the email.
Note: If the team member has a contract with a co-employer, the payroll lead will forward the email to the contact at the co-employer.DRI for the offboarding process; both offboarding process management and Exit Interview. It is expected that a Specialist replies within a maximum of 24 hours.Specialist Offboardings tab indicating they will be the DRI.Specialist:The People Specialist will post a message in the #offboardings confidential Slack channel and provide the name, last day, reason for resignation, rehire eligibility and location of the individual. To share this information, the Specialist will use the Slack shortcut icon and follow the steps below:
#offboardings slack channel 
Offboarding Form workflow from the menu 
#offboardings channel#offboardings channel#offboardings Slack channel and in the People Exp/Ops Tracker.Surveys from the top menu bar. Select Exit Survey and select the start exit button - this will allow the People Specialist to assign the survey to the departing team member.#pbp-peopleops Slack channel to confirm that the notes have been added and that the Exit Interview has been completed. This ping will occur within 48 hours of the exit interview.The Exit Survey provides team members with the opportunity to freely express views about working at GitLab. People Operations Specialists will send the CultureAmp survey to all team members who are leaving voluntarily. The People Specialist & the team member may proactively set up time to discuss their responses and ask for further information. Exit interviews are not mandatory, however your input will help provide GitLab with information regarding what is working well and what can be improved. Please point team member to the Offboarding FAQ page.
All offboarding may request to be added to the Slack channel gitlab-alumni by requesting through the PBP who can review the request and confirm to the People Experience Associate who can open an access request on behalf of the former team member.
Reasons that someone would not be permitted to join would be due to involuntary offboarding due to extreme behavior or gross conduct.
Underperformance is not a reason to exclude someone from the channel.
The purpose of this channel is to network and socialize with team members.
Joining the channel is voluntary and subject to GitLab's Code of Conduct.
GitLab, the company, monitors the channel and can remove people from it at their sole discretion. The GitLab code of conduct is enforced in the channel.
Involuntary offboarding of any team member is never easy. We've created some guidelines and information to make this process as humane as we can. Beyond the points outlined below, make sure to refer to our guidelines on underperformance, as well as the offboarding issue.
If the need for Involuntary offboarding arises, the process is as indicate below:
In some cases a team member will go on a Leave of Absence or Garden Leave prior to their actual offboarding date from GitLab. Team members on LOA or Garden leave will have no access to GitLab systems and may not be required to do any work on GitLab's behalf. The People Experience team will generate the offboarding issue at the end of the team member's last working day, as per notification from the People Business Partner. Once the LOA or Garden leave expires the team member will be officially offboarded from GitLab. Prior to the offboarding issue and the overall process for the term listed below. The PBP will complete the following:
Note: The offboarding process will remain the same as listed below in the Involuntary Process section below. The People Specialist will notify the team via the confidential #offboardings Slack channel to start to start turning off the team members access.
The manager and the team member should have walked through the guidelines on underperformance before reaching this point.
#pbp-peopleops confidential Slack channel. The PBP will indicate the team member's name, last day, reason for resignation, and rehire eligibility. The first Specialist to respond to the post will be the Specialist that partners with the PBP for the offboarding process.Severance Elgibility guidelines accessible by PBPs and Specialists.
Note: For any severance that has less than 48 hours turn around the People Business Partners will handle.Time Off section.Specialist: The Specialist will confirm and coordinate the date and time of the offboarding and who will be available to assist with the offboarding. At this stage, the name of the departing team member is not yet shared. To share this information, the Specialist will use the Slack shortcut icon and follow the steps below:
#offboardings slack channel InVol Hold Request workflow from the menu #offboardings channel#offboardings channel#team-member-updates Slack channel to share with the wider team.
#team-member-updates Slack channel until the team call has been completed.#team-member-updates Slack channel the following day.Infrastructure Managers to determine who will be available to assist with the offboarding. Once an infrastructure team member has been identified, they should be added to the private calendar invite sent to People Experience, Security, People Specialist, and Payroll to hold the time for the team member offboarding. Once the offboarding conversation starts the PBP will privately Slack the infrastructure contact the name of the team member to start the offboarding process.When on the call…
"Thanks for joining the call, [team member name]. Unfortunately, the reason I wanted to speak with you is because we have decided that we have to let you go and end your employment / contract with GitLab because of xyz."
#offboardings Slack channel with the name of the team member to immediately start the offboarding process.This section will define key terms in offboarding slack workflow forms.
The following points need to be covered for any team member:
The following points need to be covered for US-based employees:
If appropriate (to be determined by conversation with the manager, the Group Executive, and People Ops), use the following offboarding memo, which is provided here as an openly viewable Google Doc, but of course needs to be personalized and tailored to each individual's situation. As written, it is applicable to US-based employees only.
Separation and Release of Claims Agreements do not apply for all offboardings. To review in which cases they do/do not apply, please reference the Severance Eligibility document accessible by People Specialists and PBPs. In the case that a severance agreement is applicable, the steps below should be followed:
Copies of Individual Severance Agreements folder.assign signature order option in HelloSign to ensure the team member signs the document firsttermination folder#payoll_peopleops_terms private channel and @menion the appropriate PBP to confirm that the Severance document has been signed and uploaded to BambooHRImportant Notes:
To be documented
As explained briefly in the offboarding issue, GitLab does not provide any context around why people are leaving when they do. However as mentioned in the procedures, for voluntary offboarding, the team member can share their reasons for leaving if they wish.
If they choose not to then the departing team member's manager shares the following in the #team-member-updates Slack channel:
"As of today, [X] ([X's job title] from the [X's team] team) is no longer with GitLab. I would like to take this opportunity to thank X for their contributions and wish them all the best for the future. If you have questions about tasks or projects that need to be picked up, please let me know. If you have concerns, please bring them up with your manager."
If someone is let go involuntarily, this generally cannot be shared since it affects the individual's privacy and job performance is intentionally kept between an individual and their manager. Unless it's for extreme behaviour/gross misconduct, the team member will be advised the areas of concern about their performance, given support and guidance on how to improve and provided with an appropriate timeframe to reach and sustain the expectations.
If you are not close to an employee's offboarding, it may seem unnecessarily swift. Please remember that these decisions are never made without following the above process to come to a positive resolution first - we need to protect the interests of the individual as well as the company, and offboarding are a last resort. According to our values negative feedback is 1-1 between you and your manager and we are limited in what we can share about private employee issues. Please discuss any concerns you have about another employee's offboarding with your manager or your People Business Partner.
Given the expectations and responsibility that come with a VP and above position, when there is an involuntary offboarding for one of these positions, additional context for the personnel change can be provided to the organization.
Silence is unpleasant. It's unpleasant because we are human, which means that we are generally curious and genuinely interested in the well-being of our team members.
Is it more unpleasant in a remote setting? Probably not. When people are all in the same office building, they can "kinda sorta" know what may be coming because of the grapevine, the water cooler, and so on. When the news hits it might be less of a shock - only because of unprofessional behavior in the first place. But at larger companies with multiple office buildings, departures will tend to come as more of a surprise and with less context (at least to the people in other buildings).
We strive to maintain personal information regarding all team members private, this includes information regarding a team members voluntary or involuntary departure from GitLab. However, a manager with the consent and approval of the departing team member can share more details with the GitLab team regarding the decision to leave GitLab.
For a voluntary departure a team member may have chosen to leave for many different reasons, career development, promotion, a new role or career path, dislike remote work, etc. For example, a team member may tell their manager that they really miss being in an office environment and remote work is not suitable for their personality. Based on that decision they have taken another opportunity that allows them to go to an office.
If the departing team member gives their manager permission to share that information then the manager will share while making the departure announcement on the team call. We want all GitLab team-members to be engaged, happy and fulfilled in their work and if remote work, the requirements of the job or the role it self are not fulfilling we wish our team members the best of luck in their next endeavor.
Regarding involuntary offboarding, certain information can also be shared with the GitLab team regarding the departure. Some team members do not thrive or enjoy the work that they were hired to do. For example after starting at GitLab a team member quickly learns they have no desire or interest to learn Git or work with Git. This doesn't make them a bad person, it just means they don't have the interest for the role and based on that the decision was made to exit the company. Again, we want all team members to enjoy and thrive in their work and that may or may not be at GitLab.
The departing team member may author a goodbye message for either voluntary or involuntary offboarding:
In some instances there will be no further clarification on why a team member has departed, if there are concerns you can address those with your manager. Different levels of transparency will exist based on maintaining respectful treatment for all departures. Having team members leave may be a learning opportunity for some, but should not be a point of gossip for anyone. Managers will need to balance the opportunity for learning with the expectation of privacy and consult their People Business Partner should they have questions.
Transparency is one of our values. In the case of offboarding transparency can be painfully specific, calling out an employee’s flaws, while inviting more questions and gossip. We opt to share the feedback only with peers and reports of the person since we balance transparency with our value of collaboration and negative is 1-1.
GitLab's turnover data is only viewable internally. This data is updated on a monthly basis by People Operations.
To track all tool deprovisioning, please open an offboarding issue following the offboarding guidelines.
As part of offboarding, any GitLab property valued above 1,000 USD needs to be returned to GitLab. One exception to this rule is that the team member can opt to purchase their laptop at a depreciated market price which will be provided by Finance upon request.
To return your laptop to GitLab, please contact itops@gitlab.com immediately upon offboarding.
To remove someone from Expensify Log in to Expensify and go to "Settings" in the left sidebar. Select the right policy based upon the entity that employs the team member. Select "People" in the left menu. Select the individual's name and click "Remove". If the person has a company credit card assigned to them please notify Finance before un-assigning it.
Should a new hire be onboarded by the People Experience team, but:
This is not seen as a true offboarding, but there are still relevant steps to take.
