Professional Offboarding Processes for Sustainable and Future-Oriented Universities

Abstract

Professional offboarding processes offer great potential facing the shortage of skilled professionals through demographic changes, lack of resources and fast changes in the current work era. A precise and appreciative approach regarding administration, knowledge management and the professional accompaniment throughout the separation process leads to better and more sustainable solutions to fill or bridge personnel gaps. While companies have increasingly recognized this potential, professional offboarding processes are not yet treated as a strategic solution by the human resource management of colleges and universities. Possible reasons for this are described. We present how colleges may increase sustainability in their human resource management through professional offboarding processes. As examples we focus on offboarding due to fixed-term contracts and on offboarding due to retirement, a topic of urging relevance, especially in Germany and other similarly aging (European) countries.