The First 72 Hours After a Resignation

In the first 72 hours after a resignation, a manager has four jobs. Agree the real leaving date and who tells whom. Find out what only this person knows. Book the handover sessions. Name who covers the work in the meantime. Most of what goes wrong after someone leaves can be traced back to these three days.

Why the first three days decide the handover

The notice period is the only time the leaver and the work are still together. In the Netherlands an employee's statutory notice period is one month, unless the contract says otherwise. In the UK the legal minimum is one week, and most contracts ask for more. In both cases the window is short, and every day spent waiting makes it shorter.

The first days are also when the person is still close to the work. They know what is due next week and which problems are half solved. By the final week their attention has moved to goodbyes and to the next job. That is why a handover left for the end tends to become an exit interview that asks the wrong questions.

Day one: the conversation

Start by listening. Thank the person and ask what made them decide. If you want to try to keep them, say so, and say you will come back within a day. A counteroffer made on the spot is rarely a good one.

Then agree three practical things before the meeting ends.

The real last working day. Check how much holiday they still have. Eight days of untaken leave in a one-month notice period leaves about two and a half working weeks. That is the actual handover window, and it is often a surprise to both sides.

Who tells whom, and when. Agree what the team hears and when, and who tells clients or suppliers. A resignation that leaks before the plan exists creates questions nobody can answer yet.

Access stays on. In a normal resignation the person needs their systems to hand over properly. Cutting access early saves little and costs the handover.

Day two: find out what only they know

Not every departure is a knowledge risk. Some roles are well documented and easy to cover. Others hold things nobody else in the company knows. The second day is for finding out which kind this is.

Five questions give a fair picture:

• What would stop working next month if they were gone tomorrow?

• Which recurring deadlines fall in the next three months?

• Which clients, suppliers or colleagues deal only with them?

• Which decisions do people bring to them rather than to anyone else?

• Which rules do they follow that are not written down anywhere?

The last question matters more than it looks. Much of how a role works rests on agreements nobody wrote down, such as the colleague who checks every quote before it goes out.

If most answers come back as "nothing much", one handover conversation will do. If several come back as serious, plan three.

On the same day, make a list of open items with the leaver. Promises made to clients, work that is half finished and dates that are coming up. This list is the first page of the handover.

Day three: book the sessions and name the cover

Book the handover sessions. Two or three conversations of about 45 minutes, spread over the notice period. Hold the last one at least a week before the leaving date, so there is time to write it up and let the leaver check it. Ask whether you may record the sessions, and say who will see the recording and when it will be deleted. The questions to use are in our list of 42 knowledge transfer interview questions.

Choose who runs them. The manager, or the person who will absorb the work. It should be someone who knows the work well enough to notice when an answer is incomplete.

Name who covers each part of the job. A successor is rarely hired before the leaver goes. So split the role into its main areas and name an interim owner for each, with a start date. Tell the team the same day.

Write the vacancy from the triage. The answers from day two describe the role as it is actually done today. That is usually different from the job description written when the role was last filled.

What not to do

A few habits undo the whole plan.

Waiting for the replacement. The successor almost never overlaps with the leaver. If the handover waits for them, it does not happen.

Asking them to write everything down. People describe the parts of their job they can see, and those are the parts others could have worked out. The rest has to be drawn out by someone asking questions.

Treating the handover document as the finish line. The document is the start of the next person's first weeks. Turn it into role-specific onboarding for whoever takes over, or the interim owners.

The 72-hour checklist

• Day one: listen, agree the real last working day, agree who tells whom, keep access on.

• Day two: run the five triage questions and list the open items.

• Day three: book the sessions, choose who runs them, name interim owners and tell the team.

Frequently asked questions

How long is a typical notice period?

In the Netherlands the statutory notice period for an employee is one month, unless the contract sets a different period. In the UK the legal minimum is one week after a month's employment, and contracts often ask for more. In the US two weeks is common by custom.

What if the notice period is very short?

Hold one focused session of 45 minutes this week. Cover the open items and the answers to the triage questions that came back as serious. Then ask the colleagues closest to the role to fill the gaps.

What if the person is leaving on bad terms?

Keep the handover about the work and away from the reasons for leaving. It often helps to have someone other than their direct manager run the sessions.

Who should own the handover, HR or the manager?

The manager. HR can make sure it happens and keep the timeline. Only someone who knows the work can judge whether the handover is complete.

Just had a resignation? See how Rinto runs the handover interviews during the notice period and turns them into onboarding for the next person.

Sources

• Business.gov.nl, Notice period.

• Acas, Notice when resigning.