Get access
Free kit

The Handover Kit

Find out how a job really works before the person leaves. Then write it down for the next person.

For the leaver’s managerFour stepsAbout six hoursOver three weeks
Start with step 1 Your answers stay in this browser.
Step 01

Is a handover needed?

All roles are different. Treat them all the same and the important ones get the same forty-minute handover as the trivial ones.

Gate
Would anyone outside their team notice within a month if this role went unfilled? Is the honest answer no? Then stop here. Unique knowledge that moves nothing is not worth six hours.

Risk score from 0 to 10

How much of the role is genuinely written down?
Not “is there a folder”. Could a stranger work from it?
How long have they held this role?
Time in seat is the best single proxy for undocumented knowledge.
How many tasks can only they do?
Things that would stall on Monday if they did not come in. Cannot name them? Then nobody has mapped them yet. Treat that as several.
Do they personally hold outside relationships?
Clients, suppliers, regulators.
Is there a named successor? Will they overlap?
An overlap is the cheapest knowledge transfer there is.

Time until they leave

How long until they actually leave?
This decides the shape of the plan.
–Not scored
Answer the five questions above. Then say how long you have.
You will get a plan and the interview sections worth running.
Step 02

Book it properly or it will not happen

The most common failure is an interview in the final week. By then the person has mentally left and the calendar is full of goodbyes.

01
Start the week they hand in their notice.
02
Three sessions of forty-five minutes each.People remember things between handover sessions. Some of the best material arrives at the start of session two.
03
Last session at least a week before they leave.
04
Successor in the room for process and history. Not for people and judgment.Successors ask more relevant follow-up questions than most managers. But the leaver will not speak freely about colleagues with the successor in the room. The successor has to work with those colleagues next month. Keep the Relational and Judgment sessions one-on-one.
If the departure is not their choice. The session is still worth asking for. The knowledge risk is usually higher because the exit is abrupt. The framing changes: it may belong in the settlement or garden-leave conversation rather than a friendly email. The last line of the template below comes out.

The email that books it

Written for three handover sessions. It rewrites itself once you have scored above.

It clarifies the intent and bounds the time honestly. It asks about the recording instead of announcing it. And it says exactly who will read the result.

Before you record anything. In the EU recording an employee counts as processing personal data under the GDPR. You need a lawful basis and a stated retention period. Do you have a works council or other employee representatives? Then check whether a recurring practice like this needs their approval. Outside the EU check the equivalent local rules. Agree it once as a policy rather than once per person. Tell the leaver what happens to the recording and delete it once the document is written.
Step 03

Start the manual handover session

Forty-two questions in six sections. They are built around the four kinds of knowledge that leave with a person. You will not get through all of them and you are not meant to. Your risk score picks the sections. Type straight into the boxes or print the page and write in them.

01
Record it if you can. Do not take notes.Note-taking means you are writing instead of listening. The follow-up question is worth more than the note. Cannot record? Bring a second person to take notes so the interviewer only listens.
02
Chase every “obviously” and every “it depends”.Both mark knowledge the person no longer experiences as knowledge. “Obviously you would check the batch number first” is not obvious to anyone else. They will not repeat it unprompted. “It depends” is the beginning of an answer and never the end of one.
03
Ask what went wrong as well as what to do.People volunteer the procedure and withhold the failures. A competent successor can work out the procedure. They cannot work out which shortcut cost someone three weeks in 2024.
Risk scoreRun these sections
0 – 3Opening and Closing. One conversation is enough.
4 – 6Opening, Relational, Judgment and Closing. Add Procedural only if you scored above zero on the first question.
7 – 10All six sections across three handover sessions.
Under 3 weeksJudgment and Relational only. The score does not matter here. Everything else can be reconstructed.

Opening · Mapping the role

Start wide. These calibrate everything after them. They are also easy to answer. That gets the conversation moving.

Q 1–5
1
2
3
4
5

Procedural · How the work actually happens

The gap between the documented process and the real one is where most of the value in this session sits.

Q 6–15
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

Relational · Who to call

The org chart tells you who is supposed to approve things. This section tells you who actually does.

Q 16–23
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23

Judgment · The expensive part

These need the most patience and produce the most value. Expect “it depends” and follow it every time.

Q 24–34
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34

Context · Why things are the way they are

Without this section the successor spends their first year re-proposing ideas that were rejected for good reasons.

Q 35–39
35
36
37
38
39

Closing · Gaps and priorities

Ask these at the end of the final session. By then they have had time to think between meetings.

Q 40–42
40
41
42
Step 04

Turn the answers into something usable

This is the half that gets skipped. It gets skipped because nobody owns it. So: the interviewer writes it, the successor reads it, the leaver checks it. Are those three different people? Then name them in the booking email.

The output is not a transcript. It is a document organised by situation. That is how the successor will look things up.

The eight-section role document

1
What this role ownsThe three-sentence version. Then the list of things that stop if nobody does them.
Q 1–5
2
The recurring calendarDaily, weekly, monthly, annual. Include the deadlines that live only in the leaver’s head.
Q 2, 11
3
The processes that matterUsually three to six. Step by step in the real sequence rather than the documented one. Note where they differ.
Q 6–15
4
The people mapWho to call for what. Mark who actually approves things and which relationships need a warm introduction.
Q 16–23
5
Judgment calls and their conditionsEach recurring decision and what it actually depends on. It takes longest and is worth the most.
Q 24–34
6
Known failure modesWhat goes wrong, the early warning signs and the standard fix. Write them as “if you see X then do Y”.
Q 13, 26, 29, 41
7
History and settled argumentsWhy things are the way they are and what has already been tried and rejected. Saves a year.
Q 35–39
8
First week, first monthWho to meet, what to read and what not to change yet. Write this last. End it with a date to revisit the whole document after ninety days.
Q 22, 40, 42
Example: one line from section five Whether to accept a rush order: yes if the line is under eighty percent load that week. Otherwise call Marloes before promising a date. That is the shape of every entry in sections five and six. If X then Y. Otherwise ask Z.
01
Write it within a week of the last session.While you can still remember which answers mattered. The transcript will not tell you.
02
Anything that will not fit the eight sections goes in an appendix.A handover document that runs to forty pages is a handover document nobody reads.
03
Send the draft back to the leaver before they go.They will correct three things and add two they forgot. Fifteen minutes. The highest-value quarter hour in the process.
04
It lives with the role’s other documentation and is linked from the onboarding.Never in the leaver’s inbox. Never in the interviewer’s downloads folder. Does the successor have to ask where it is? Then it does not exist.
If you only do one thing. Sections 5 and 6 cover judgment calls and failure modes. A competent successor cannot reconstruct those alone. Everything else they can piece together from the systems and the people around them. Short on time? Write those two properly and let the rest be bullet points.
Rinto

Rinto asks the follow-up questions for you.

The 42 questions in this kit get you started. The useful answers usually come from the next question: the example, the exception or the name of the person to call. Rinto asks those questions and keeps everything in one safe place.

  • Follow-up questions on every answerRinto listens to each answer. When an answer is vague it asks for the example, the exception or the person to call.
  • A role document and an onboarding planOrganised the way this kit organises it. The successor has it on day one.
  • Stored safely and easy to findEverything is kept online on servers in the EU. The manager, the successor and HR open it in the browser. Each has their own access.