Gabi B. retires. She was with the company for 26 years. Last day of work: Small drink. Everyone clap goodbye. Thanks Gabi – for everything! Your position has not yet been filled. Skilled workers are hard to come by. So there was no transfer. It’s already clear: the newcomer will need months to get used to it. Because what everyone forgot: to ask Gabi what her working day actually looked like. What special features were there? How did she approach projects? Which contacts were what kind? This includes a lot of knowledge that cannot be found in file cabinets.
Offboarding is often still a blind spot in companies. If it is missing, money and time will be sunk. And ultimately it’s not just about preserving knowledge. How employees are sent off board also reflects the employer spirit both internally and externally. Ariane Lindemann talks to Dinah Schmechel from CyberLab alumni Themis about an AI tool that optimally solves the employee exit process.
By Ariane Lindemann
Offboarding is becoming increasingly important. Why?
In the next twelve years, more than 16 million people will retire in Germany. This means that with these people, an enormous wealth of knowledge and, above all, a valuable wealth of experience for companies is lost. Our discussions with companies, public organizations and HR departments have shown that there are currently hardly any plans as to what can be done to keep knowledge and experience in companies.
Retirement rarely comes as a complete surprise.
A handover should be possible here without any problems.
That’s correct. But if you look at the shortage of skilled workers in Germany, it is not the case that one person comes and the next one starts right away. In many cases, it takes months for the position to be filled again. Not only for retirees, but also for normal layoffs. Colleagues therefore hardly manage to retain the knowledge of this person and then pass it on to the successor in a targeted manner.
Not only knowledge is then lost, but also money …
Indeed, turnover costs are a major concern for companies. The economic damage caused by the fact that employees are unable to act because they lack the necessary knowledge is sometimes huge. An important task of every company should be to ensure that new employees pick up where the other person left off as seamlessly as possible. The question is: How can the offboarding of one person become the onboarding of the next?
“How can offboarding one person become onboarding another?”
So what’s missing?
A structured exit management. Because what currently happens when people leave: In the last week they get a routing slip, give back their laptop, key card, mobile phone, maybe file a few more documents, send an e-mail handing them over and say a few goodbyes to Kolleg and partners. That’s it.
But many companies are already using knowledge management tools…
Yes, there are of course a lot of knowledge management systems, some work better than others. But very often these seem more like a kind of information dead end. You have a filing system, everyone puts their knowledge in there, you can find most of it using the search function – if it goes well – but it doesn’t really flow into the corporate cycle.
Where are the critical points of knowledge transfer in companies and where is the biggest and most expensive loss when knowledge is lost?
This is really where one person leaves and another begins. Because this person first needs months to get to the same level or to work things out from scratch. This creates an incredible amount of inefficiency. That’s why this interface is so exciting for us, to make it easier for one person to leave and the next person to come. With Themis, you can prepare the knowledge for subsequent people within minutes, not days and weeks. And not just text-based!
Now I’m curious …
We use artificial intelligence, similar to ChatGPT technology. Employees who are retiring can drag and drop documents that they have created in the course of their working life, whether they are presentations or reports, into our tool. These are then screened, summarized and converted into a new interactive format and can be shared with one click.
So you end up with a video file?
Exactly, we deliberately chose video as a medium because it is the most popular format, especially for millennials and Gen-Z, to absorb and pass on knowledge. The video is automatically designed in an appealing way, you can record yourself, add your individual comments or work experiences to the soundtrack and then share the whole thing with colleagues. The recipient can click through the video and find the corresponding original files stored in links. You can use the tool to contact relevant colleagues, write messages, translate or move texts.
This is a low-threshold format to save and transfer knowledge without having to torment yourself through endless documents. A kind of signpost with reference to the respective documents, such as e-mails, files, photos, tables, memos, customer data, etc.
How much time does that cost me?
It’s a matter of minutes.
Wow, how is it?
We work with automated templates. That means we simply ask about certain things. A valuable experience, the relevance of which is often underestimated, for example, can be captured with a simple question: What was your week actually like?
You hand over documents and accounts. But there are also important things that you can’t look up anywhere. For example: How is my day structured? Who do I talk to about which topic? More than just specialist knowledge, it is precisely this content that is often even more informative for colleagues. These templates do most of the work for you. Nobody has to sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper and start from scratch.
And where is the AI?
Our goal is that you no longer have to create a lot yourself, but machine learning and natural language processing take over the majority. Users upload relevant documents, our tool screens them and then an existing template is automatically filled in.
Let’s take your journalistic work as an example. You upload all the interviews you have conducted, plus the email communications. From this, the AI creates a guide so that others can easily orientate themselves on your experiences. At the end you look over it again and adjust something if necessary. This means that such a template can be used to understand the work process, the work week, projects, agreements, etc.
Your target audience tends to be a bit older because it’s typically people who are retiring. What does that mean for the Themis product?
The product must be easy to use, intuitive and barrier-free. We have a great product and design team focused on this.
Where are you going with Themis?
We want to be synonymous with offboarding. That means when people leave a company, we are always part of the process.
“We want to be synonymous with offboarding.”
The founding team
As CEO, Dinah oversees the business side of Themis. After her time as a consultant, she most recently managed the German market entry for GoFundMe, the world market leader for donation platforms.
In addition to digitization consulting for DAX 30 companies at TLGG, Teresa has developed digital products at the Bertelsmann Foundation.
CTO André has been programming since he was eight and before Themis he supported many startups and companies as a lead developer.
Photo: Sarah Gottschalk