Terminated Employee Process - What does your company do?

[mokkapoop]

Hello [H]! I am working on a huge project here for my company. It involves the employee termination process and what the "HelpDesk" does in terms of completing the task. I have found several loop holes and problems with our process and am trying to revamp the way we do things.

To make a long story short, I am trying to change the following in the process we take. Currently a request comes in to the HelpDesk and we send out email notifications, change network passwords, remove from scanners and set forwards and such. Here is where the problem lies.

From my own personal opinion, a PST of a user's mailbox should be created ASAP when the employee termination request is created (say within 12 hours). This is to capture any and all work that the user has done while employeed with the company. However, our company does the opposite. When an employee termination request comes in, the form filled out gives the requestor (generally the office manager) the option to "delete mailbox at a certain date and time". The problem is, some of the requestors use a 6 month to 2 year WAIT in allowing us to delete the mailbox. When that time finally comes, that is when OUR company decides to create the PST of the mailbox.

Now, my concern is this. While waiting so long to "delete the mailbox", we are also giving full mailbox rights to other users (as requested by requestor), thus allowing CHANGES to be made to the terminated employees mailbox. This could consist of deleting emails, moving emails, HIDING things, or any other kind of act that can manipulate what that employee actually did for the company. Before we can actually delete the mailbox and finish the request out, we have to contact the requestor and get permission to do so, EVEN THOUGH they have a requested date for this to happen. Most of the time, the requestor says NO and we have to wait longer to finish the ticket. This causes MANY problems for the HelpDesk, because at any given time, we have around 30-50 tickets sitting in the queue "pending" the creation of the PST and deletion of the mailbox.......and we have NO idea when we can actually do this.

Furthermore, as requested by the requestor (sometimes) we give "Send on Behalf" rights where another user in the company can send an email on behalf of the terminated employee. Is this NOT a legal issue here? Sending emails froma person that does not exist in the company anymore is in a sense illegal right, or is this common practice?

This is a VERY shortened blib of what we actually do when it comes to terminated employee's, but I am only describing the problems that I see. So I have been asked to come up with some ideas on how to change this. I have a very basic concept:

1. Request comes in
2. Complete initial tasks (email noticiations, password reset's, blackberry deactivation, etc)
3. Create PST ASAP (given a 6-12 hour grace period for the HelpDesk to do this)
4. Delete mailbox within 3 days
5. Create and alias under a departmental mailbox for terminated employees to catch any future emails that come to that "address", but not leaving the users actual account open. This part is the huge part because it would consist of creating a mailbox either for each office or even deaper as to each department in each office called something like "[email protected]". All emails would be centralized for the office managers to manage these types of things in one place (rather than now where they have 23453435987 mailboxes opened in their own mailbox.
6. If "Sending on Behalf of Terminated Employee" is in fact a legal issue, we elimate that altogether

I have a few more ideas to go along with this, but this is all I wanted to address to all of you. I am looking for ideas, practices and models. What does your company do? If you could change the process, what would you change?

I know this is a long post, but I am looking for very imformative people that can help a fellow out! Exchange experts to the rescue.....what do you do here?

 

[DeaconFrost]

I'm at a small company, so my steps may be a bit more liberal.

1) Change password on the account and disable remote access.
2) Give manager option of disabling e-mail or forwarding e-mail to them or another employee.
3) Once the account can be deleted, I put their .pst file (using ExMerge) on a DVD along with their documents.
4) Remove account from domain completely.

I'm the only IT Staff in the entire company, so it seems like a lot of your issues don't pop up for me. I might not be a good example in that regard.

 

[zacdl]

Sending emails froma person that does not exist in the company anymore is in a sense illegal right, or is this common practice?

I'd say so, and I'd end it.
[/QUOTE]
What I would do first is just disable the account all together. Prevents that user from doing anything at all. If someone needs into his stuff to collect settings, change password and re-enable.

Once you are satisfied with what you need, backup PST ASAP, and if you would like- delete both the user and the mailbox after my next suggestion.

As manager what he wants to do with the mail (You already have PST- you just need to know what to do for FUTURE mail).
If the terminated person's email was "[email protected]", just create a distribution called [email protected], and add anyone who needs to get his email.
Once you are satisfied [email protected] is no longer needed, delete the distribution list and carry on

 

[mokkapoop]

[/QUOTE]
What I would do first is just disable the account all together. Prevents that user from doing anything at all. If someone needs into his stuff to collect settings, change password and re-enable.

Once you are satisfied with what you need, backup PST ASAP, and if you would like- delete both the user and the mailbox after my next suggestion.

As manager what he wants to do with the mail (You already have PST- you just need to know what to do for FUTURE mail).
If the terminated person's email was "[email protected]", just create a distribution called [email protected], and add anyone who needs to get his email.
Once you are satisfied [email protected] is no longer needed, delete the distribution list and carry on [/QUOTE]

The thing with this is (and I have thought about this process as well) is that our company likes ALL originals. Having a distribution list doesn't actually store emails. Say I create a distribution list for [email protected] and want it to go to [email protected]. What happens if [email protected] is terminated to. We would have to back track and investigate everything with his account, and what was forwarded to his account (in my company is a huge pain the ass). Creating one centralized mailbox where all emails are stored solves this problem.

 

[ne1wantaride]

Forward all e-mails to supervisors for the former employee and CC it to a gatekeeper account for possible record keeping. Then the only problem will be if a supervisor is let go.