Leaving a job is rarely tidy. You have handed in your notice, the leaving card is going round, and somewhere in the back of your mind is a list of things only you know how to do. If that list stays in your head, it tends to come back to you as a string of phone calls and messages in your first weeks at a new job, when you have the least time to answer them.
A good handover prevents that. It is also one of the kindest things you can do for the colleagues you leave behind, and for whoever takes over your work. This guide sets out a practical approach: what to write down, what to leave out, how to use your final weeks, and what to check on your last day.
Start earlier than you think
Most people start their handover too late. The last week of a job fills up quickly with leaving drinks, final meetings and the small admin of leaving, and there is rarely time left for careful writing. A useful rule is to begin the handover document on the day you hand in your notice, even if you only jot down headings at first.
Ask your manager early who will take over each part of your work. Sometimes a single replacement will be hired in time. More often, your responsibilities will be split between existing colleagues, or covered temporarily until someone new arrives. Knowing who the readers are changes how you write. A document for an experienced colleague can be brief. A document for someone who will not start for two months needs to explain much more.
Kasia, an office manager at a small architecture practice, learned this the hard way. When she left her previous job, her replacement did not start for six weeks, and the handover notes she had written for a colleague assumed knowledge the new person did not have. “I got a call on my second day at the new place asking what ‘the usual supplier’ meant,” she said. “I’d written that phrase about twenty times.”
The handover document
The centre of any handover is a single document that someone else can pick up and use without you in the room. It should live somewhere your team can find it, such as a shared drive or the team’s wiki, not in your personal files, which may be closed when your account is switched off.
Keep the structure simple and consistent. A document with clear headings is easy to scan and easy to add to later. Write in plain sentences, and imagine the reader opening it in six months’ time, with a problem to solve and nobody to ask.
Recurring tasks
Start with the work that happens on a schedule, because it is the work most likely to be forgotten. Go through your calendar for the past year and note every task that comes round daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. Annual tasks are especially easy to miss, because nobody remembers them until the deadline has passed.
For each recurring task, write down what it is, when it happens, roughly how long it takes, and where the instructions or templates are kept. If there is a trick to it, such as a report that has to be run before a certain time or a form that always needs a second signature, write that down too.
Access and passwords
Your handover document should list the systems, tools and accounts you use, and who needs access to each of them after you leave. It should never contain the passwords themselves. A document full of passwords can be copied, forwarded or left open on a screen, and it will almost certainly outlive the passwords it contains.
If your company uses a password manager, make sure every shared login you rely on is stored there, and that the right colleagues have access to it before you go. If some accounts are registered only in your name, work with your manager or IT team to transfer them or add another owner. Anything tied to your personal email address, such as a supplier account set up years ago, deserves particular attention.
Contacts
List the people you deal with regularly, inside and outside the organisation, and what you deal with them about. Include clients, suppliers, contractors and colleagues in other teams. A name and email address is a start, but the useful part is the context: what they need from you, how they prefer to be contacted, and anything that helps the relationship run smoothly.
Unfinished work
Every job has loose ends. For each piece of work still in progress, write down where it stands, what the next step is, who is waiting on it and any deadlines. Be honest about problems. If a project is behind or a client is unhappy, your successor needs to know that now, not discover it in a difficult meeting a month from now.
Where things live
Explain where files, records and templates are kept. Many teams have a shared drive that made sense to the people who built it and to nobody else. A short map of the important folders, with a line on what each contains, can save your successor hours of searching.
The unwritten rules
The most valuable part of a handover is often the part people forget to write, because they no longer notice they know it. Every job has unwritten rules: the habits, preferences and history that make the difference between doing the work and doing it well.
These might include the client who needs a phone call before any bad news is put in writing, the finance team’s unofficial deadline two days before the official one, or the fact that a particular report is read closely by the board and should be checked twice. They might be as simple as which meeting room has a projector that works.
The things you no longer notice you know are exactly the things your successor will spend months learning the hard way.
A good way to find these rules is to spend a week noticing your own working day. Each time you do something because “that’s how it’s done here”, or avoid something because of a past problem, make a note. By the end of the week you will have a list that no manual contains.
Dev, who managed events for a membership organisation, called this section of his handover “things I wish someone had told me”. It ran to two pages and covered everything from which venue staff to call when something went wrong to how the chief executive liked speeches to be timed. His successor later told him it was the part she read most often.
Shadow weeks
A document can only carry so much. If there is any overlap between you and the person taking over, use it for shadowing: time when they watch you do the work, and then time when you watch them do it.
A common pattern for a two-week overlap works like this.
First week: they watch. Your successor sits in on your meetings, reads over your shoulder and asks questions. You explain what you are doing and why as you go.
Second week: you watch. They take the lead on the same tasks while you observe, step in only when needed and add anything you missed to the handover document.
The second week matters more than people expect. Watching someone else do your work shows you all the steps you forgot to explain, because they get stuck at exactly those points. Each time they pause, you have found something to add to the document.
If there is no overlap, you can still do a version of this. Record short screen videos of yourself doing the trickier tasks, talking through each step. Walk a colleague through your recurring work so that at least one other person has seen it done. And introduce your successor, or the colleague covering for them, to your key contacts before you leave, ideally in a short call or a joint email.
Introductions and goodbyes
Relationships do not transfer automatically. A client who has dealt with you for three years will not simply start calling your replacement because an email told them to. Personal introductions make the transition far smoother.
For your most important contacts, arrange a short meeting or call with you and your successor together. For others, a warm email introducing the new person, explaining what they will look after and copying them in is usually enough. Tell people clearly when your last day is and who to contact from then on.
It is also worth setting up an out-of-office message for your final day, if your account will stay active for a while. It should name your successor or a team inbox, so that anyone who writes to you after you leave is pointed in the right direction.
The last-day checklist
Your final day will feel rushed. A checklist, written a week in advance, stops you forgetting the small things that cause problems later.
The handover document is finished, saved in a shared location and linked from somewhere your team will find it.
Your manager and successor have read it and had a chance to ask questions.
Shared logins are stored in the company password manager, and the right people have access.
Any accounts registered only in your name have been transferred or have another owner.
Important files are moved from your personal folders to shared ones.
Key contacts know you are leaving and who to contact instead.
Your out-of-office message is set and names the right person.
Company equipment, keys and passes are returned.
Recurring meetings you organised have been handed to someone else or cancelled.
You have left a contact method with your manager for genuine emergencies, if you are willing to, with a clear note of how long you are happy to be contacted.
That last point is a personal choice. Some people prefer a clean break, and that is entirely reasonable. Others are happy to answer the occasional question for a month or two. Whichever you prefer, say so clearly, so that nobody is left guessing.
Why it is worth the effort
A careful handover takes time, often at a point when your attention has already moved to the next job. It is tempting to do the minimum. But the benefits are real, for you as well as for the people you leave behind.
Your former colleagues will remember how you left. Industries are smaller than they look, and the manager you leave today may be a reference, a client or a colleague again in a few years. A thorough handover is one of the few things you can do in your final weeks that people will still notice long after your leaving drinks are forgotten.
It also protects your new start. The calls and messages that follow a poor handover rarely come at a convenient time, and they pull you back into a job you have already left. Writing everything down before you go is the most reliable way to make sure that, when your phone rings in your first week somewhere new, it is someone from the new place calling.
Written by
Owen Achterberg
Owen writes about the practical side of work: handovers, tools and the systems behind everyday technology. He spent ten years in IT support before he started writing.
