What Is the Procedure for Removing Access for an Employee When They Leave an Organization?

Whenever an employee leaves an organization—whether voluntarily or involuntarily—it’s important to have a robust offboarding process already in place in order to protect your company’s data and maintain security. However, offboarding becomes more stressful when dealing with terminating an employee. One of the key steps to focus on is removing access for terminated employees—immediately disabling their accounts and revoking access to all company platforms. But how can you make sure that you’re effectively and efficiently removing access when an employee exits your organization? We’ve put together this short guide to explore the process of offboarding a terminated employee and touch on how employee offboarding automation can help. Let’s get started!

What Is the Process of Firing an Employee for Your HR and IT Teams?

The process of terminating an employee should start well before the decision is made. The first step is to create a comprehensive offboarding policy—think of this as your roadmap, helping you reach your destination safely. This document should outline the responsibilities of each department as well as emphasize the importance of documenting each action taken.
Once your teams are tasked with terminating an employee, the offboarding workflow begins. For HR, the first step is often to complete administrative tasks like prepping the termination letter and final paycheck. Next, they’ll conduct the termination meeting to formally notify the employee and address any questions, followed by an exit interview to gather feedback. HR also needs to inform relevant departments about the termination to make sure everyone at your company is aware of the change.

IT’s role in this process is just as important—they are responsible for revoking the employee’s access to all company systems, including email and internal databases, to prevent unauthorized access. IT must also retrieve and secure company-owned hardware like laptops and mobile devices, checking that all data is wiped from these devices to protect sensitive information. Additionally, IT manages software licenses by reassigning or deactivating them to optimize resource use and reduce costs.

Your HR and IT teams need to work closely together to make sure that the offboarding process is smooth and secure, protecting your company’s data and maintaining operational continuity. This coordinated effort will help prevent security breaches—and is a great way to handle a termination professionally. ​

What Should an Employer Always Do When Terminating an Employee?

When you’re letting an employee go, one of the most critical steps is handling the user access termination process. As soon as you decide to terminate someone, you need to cut off their access to all company systems immediately. This includes their email, databases, and any internal applications they might use. Quick action here is key to preventing any unauthorized access, which could lead to serious data breaches or misuse of your company's sensitive information.

Right after the termination meeting, get IT on it. They should disable all accounts and access points, change shared passwords, and make sure the employee can’t access anything remotely. It’s also wise to audit your systems to confirm that all access has been fully revoked and no permissions are left lingering.

By focusing on revoking user access, you’re protecting your company’s data and keeping everything secure. This step helps prevent any potential threats from former employees who might still have access to important information​

Removing Access Example: What Is the Proper Procedure When Terminating an Employee?

When John was terminated from his role at EcoSaaS, he left feeling bitter about how he had been let go. John had been with the company for three years, and the sudden change was a shock. Unfortunately, due to the fact that their offboarding process wasn’t clearly detailed, IT didn’t revoke his access to the company email immediately.

A week after his termination, John logged into his company email out of curiosity. He found sensitive emails about an upcoming product launch as well as confidential client information. In a moment of bitterness, John forwarded these emails to a rival company, hoping to cause trouble for his former employer. 

The next day, EcoSaaS noticed the unusual activity and the IT department quickly traced the breach back to John’s still-active email account. This discovery led to significant damage control efforts, legal consultations, and attempts to reassure concerned clients. The phrase “terminated employee email forwarding” became a cautionary tale repeated over coffee and donuts in the morning.  

To prevent incidents like this in the future, EcoSaaS revamped their offboarding procedures. Now, the IT department is immediately notified of any termination, and they use automated tools to make sure that access to all systems, including email, is revoked at once. They also implemented a "this employee is no longer with our company” email message, automatically responding to emails sent to terminated employees to inform senders of the change and redirecting them to appropriate contacts.

Incidents like this highlight just how important it is to promptly remove access to company systems when an employee is terminated.

What Is the Best Way To Remove Access for Terminated Employees?

The best way to remove access for terminated employees is to use a unified access management platform like Lumos. With our tools, you can streamline your entire offboarding process—and really, your entire employee lifecycle management—making it efficient and secure. When an employee is terminated, you can quickly start the process of removing access to all company systems without delays or introducing manual errors.

But that’s not all you can do with Lumos. Monitoring progress across the entire employee lifecycle is another strength of our platform. You can govern all Joiner-Mover-Leaver processes before, during, and after they occur, all from a centralized view. You can track and manage the allocation of apps and licenses during employee transitions, all while monitoring usage to optimize your software usage. Plus you can create HRIS-driven workflows that support both employee and contractor onboarding and offboarding with ease. By setting triggers like status changes or API calls, Lumos will grant or revoke access seamlessly, according to your controls.

The fun doesn’t stop there! Remember, we’re a unified access management platform—you’ll also have comprehensive tools to help you with identity governance, privileged access management, user access reviews, CIEM, spend management, SaaS discovery, onboarding, offboarding, and ITSM automation. 

If you’re ready to see the difference Lumos can make, book a free demo today!