Handover when someone leaves: the list with three columns

Echipa HR 365 · reviewed 2026-09-14 · 5 min read

A handover done as a two-hour conversation on the last day is not retained. What works is a written list, filled in across the notice period by the person leaving and checked by the person taking over — with three columns, one of which is almost always missing.

The three columns

What gets documented first

Not everything can be documented in two weeks, so the order matters. The priority is not the importance of the work but how hard it would be to reconstruct without them.

In this order

1. First — what only they know and is written nowhere — informal procedures, arrangements, the history of decisions
2. Second — work in progress, with its state and its next deadline
3. Third — external contacts and what each of them has from you
4. Last — the routines already documented — those get checked, not rewritten

The first item is the only one that disappears entirely at departure. The rest can be reconstructed, with effort and delay; what only they know and never wrote down is never recovered — which is why it happens in the first week of the notice period, not the last.

The handover sessions

Two or three one-hour sessions, in the calendar, work better than a single long conversation or than “we will find time”. The reason is simple: the successor needs to work in between, so they know what to ask next time.

• First: the context and the full list. The successor only listens and writes down questions.
• Second, a few days later: their questions, based on what they tried in between. This is where the real information transfers.
• Third, in the final week: what is still unclear, and what happens to work that outlives the leaving date.

The second session is the most valuable and the first to be cancelled under the pressure of the final days. Without it, the handover remains a presentation that nobody has tested against real work.

What is lost anyway

Even with a well-run handover, something goes: accumulated judgement — why you handle a particular client a certain way, what went badly two years ago and is no longer attempted, who in another team replies quickly and who does not. It cannot be documented and there is no point pretending otherwise.

What you can do is reduce the surface of the loss: someone who has worked alone on an area for three years leaves a far bigger hole than someone who worked in a pair. Which means the handover really begins long before the resignation — in how the work was distributed.

What if the notice period is too short for all of it?

Prioritise by the rule above: what only they know comes first. The rest can be reconstructed with effort — but what is written nowhere and walks out of the door is gone.

What if there is nobody to take over?

Documentation matters even more, but the audience is different: you are writing for someone who does not exist yet. Concretely, that means more context and fewer internal shorthands — a document a newcomer can read.

How much time should the handover take?

Roughly 20% of the notice period, spread out rather than saved for the end. On a two-week notice that is about a day and a half in total — and if it is not planned, it becomes the last morning.

Where to start

On the day the resignation is handed in, ask for the three-column list. Not at the end of the notice period — by then half the useful time is gone.

Then put the three sessions in the calendar, with dates. Without them in the calendar, the first happens and the second never does.

Who verifies the handover

Not the person leaving and not the manager alone — the person taking over. They are the only one who can say whether the information is sufficient, because they are the one who will use it. The check is one question against each line of the list: “could you do this on Monday, by yourself?”

What does not work is signing a handover record without that check. The document confirms that a transfer took place, not that the information arrived — and the difference is discovered three weeks later, when it is too late to ask.

Work that outlives the leaving date

These are the riskiest and they are handled separately: a project with a deadline two months out is not handed over with a list, it is handed over with a conversation about what comes next, what was promised to whom, and which decisions are still open. Ideally the successor joins the last meeting with the client or the team, alongside the person leaving.