Leaving TTS & Offboarding

This guide covers the offboarding policy and process.

When it's time to leave TTS

These steps apply to all TTS employees: permanent employees, term employees who are at the end of their term, and term employees choosing to resign before their term ends. These steps also apply to employees who will remain in federal government and other GSA offices. Begin this process at least two weeks before your last day of work. Your last day at TTS cannot be a federal holiday.

1. Email your resignation letter

Send an official email to your supervisor and , external,leavingTTS@gsa.gov.

Please include the following information:

• your termination date (the last day of your term or the last official day that you've selected), which should be at least two weeks out. (You can find the last day of your term in , external,TTS-only, eOPF by finding the most recent SF-50 with type EXC APPT NTE or EXT OF APPT NTE and looking at box 5-B.)
• your security clearance level if it is above Public Trust (i.e. Secret or TS/SCI) so that a debriefing meeting can be scheduled, if necessary, with Security.
• your home address. This will ensure that GSA HR enters the correct information on your final SF-50 so that you can receive all of your documents on time and to the correct address.
• your personal email so that if, or when, you wish to request your FERS refund contributions HR can correspond with you after your departure with status/updates on this request.
• If you plan on taking time off during your last weeks, please also include those dates so that offboarding meetings can be scheduled accordingly. Please see the next section for more information.

Once you’ve sent your official letter of notice we will assume your departure is public knowledge, so if you would like to tell folks yourself, please handle those notifications ahead of time.

Taking time off prior to your last day at TTS

If you are leaving the federal government, your final day at TTS must be worked in full, unless you have worked the majority of your final pay period; then you are eligible to take leave for part of your final day.

If you are taking a new role within the federal government, the above restrictions do not apply.

2. Provide summary reviews for direct reports (Supervisors only)

If you are a supervisor and you are leaving within 120 days of the next review period, you need to provide to your supervisor a summary review of each of the employees that report into you. An employee's review needs to come from a supervisor that they've worked under for 120 days.

• Midyear review: provide a written review
• Annual review: provide ratings based on position descriptions

3. Review your benefits

• Review your , external,TTS-only, benefits options.
• Ensure your home address is correct in , external,Employee Express and consider switching your W2 delivery to Hard Copy.
  • Note: Ensure you keep your login information for Employee Express after you leave. Separated employees retain access to Employee Express (EEX) for 3 years, so long as they retain their login ID and password. Separated employees who lose access to EEX cannot regain it. All separated employees receive a copy of their W-2 by mail at their home address.
• Review the , external,TTS-only, FERS refund information and , external,Form SF 3106 before your last day.
• Check your leave balances.
  • If you received Award Leave from your end-of-year performance review or a Special Act Award, it will not be paid out. You must use it before you depart GSA, or you will forfeit it.
  • Your Annual Leave will be paid out. If you are staying in the federal government and you are not taking a break in employment, then it will be automatically transferred to your next agency (but it often takes a few pay periods). We recommend printing a copy of your last Leave and Earnings statement before the end of your final day.
  • Your Sick Leave will not be paid out; however, you will not lose it. If your next role is still within the federal government and you are not taking a break in service, it will be automatically transferred to your next agency (but it often takes a few pay periods). If you leave the federal government and later decide to rejoin, your Sick Leave will be reinstated. If you are eligible for the FERS retirement pension, unused Sick Leave will be added to your , external,monetary calculation upon retirement.
• You may be entitled to , external,unemployment insurance if you lose your job, as long as it's not due to misconduct. The amount is small.

If you have any questions, please email the GSA HR Benefits Contact found in the , external,TTS-only, Benefits & Support Contacts for TTS Employees document.

4. Download copies of important personal documents

• Download copies of your paystubs from , external,Employee Express.
• Download copies of your SF-50s from , external,TTS-only, eOPF(requires VPN if not on GSA network).
  • An SF-50 is a notification of a Personnel Action; it contains your series, grade, and other information useful to you or required if applying for reinstatement.
  • , external,TTS-only, eOPF supports an offline "print" function that will allow you to output all your files. You will want to allot ~1hr for the creation of this file.

5. Update your accounts

• Make sure that you aren't the superuser, sole owner, approver, admin, etc. for Tock, important calendars, Google Groups, critical documents, or processes.
  • Move Google Drive files to shared folders, when appropriate.
  • Invision instructions
• Move all calendar invites off your calendar. Nothing worse than an orphaned meeting!
• Log your final Tock hours.
• Make a list of the approved software that you downloaded or were issued (not necessary to note the pre-installed software).
  • Unregister the software that you're able to.
  • Provide the list of remaining registered software to the Offboarding Lead during the scheduled offboarding meeting.

6. Complete the clearance checklist

Annabel Lombard from (, external,TTS-only, the PeopleOps team) will set time with you to complete the GSA Pre-exit Clearance Checklist, which links to an optional , external,GSA Exit Survey.

7. Return your equipment

When you leave TTS, you are responsible for returning all TTS-issued equipment. Failure to do so may lead to your final paycheck being withheld until the equipment is returned.

Offboarding process

A member of the People Ops Team will Duplicate the Template in the , external,TTS-only, Off-Boarding Tasks doc to make a new checklist once leavingTTS@gsa.gov has been notified that a team member is leaving. If the checklist hasn't been created, please email , external,leavingTTS@gsa.gov or ping #people-ops for help. More detail for certain tasks is below. Note that, per GSA policy, the "technical offboardings" (access to any work system) need to happen within 24 hours of the person ending their work at GSA.

Supervisor

• Work with the employee to transition the employee's workload to other team members.
• Ensure they complete their last timesheet in Tock.

People-Ops Team

• Provide , external,TTS Exit Interview Questionnaire to offboarding employee.
  • For offboarding interns, use , external,this survey.
• Complete the , external,TTS-only, clearance checklist with the employee.

Saying goodbye

Sending an email

You are under no obligation to send out a farewell email, but if you do, please use bcc: for any distribution lists you're sending it to. This allows people to respond to you directly without creating additional email noise for coworkers.

Using Slack as an alumni

As you leave, you’re encouraged to join , external,TTS-only, the alumni channel on Slack. Once you have left TTS:

• Keep conversations and questions visible within #alumni and don't DM staff. For direct communication, use methods available to the general public, such as email.
• If you would like documents or materials, you can either use publicly available methods to request that we publish them publicly, or you can file a FOIA request for GSA to release them. Don't request materials that aren't already public to be sent to you — even if they were non-sensitive or documents that you personally authored while you were here.
• Don't share job postings (unless it is for a role at a government agency). Our #alumni channel should not provide advantages to any particular company due to someone's access to it. You can use email or other publicly accessible methods to share job postings.

Writing a post on your personal blog

If you want to write a post on your personal blog about your experiences in government or why you’re leaving, we recommend that you wait until you are no longer on staff before you hit “Publish.” This helps to avoid any issues with Hatch Act compliance and with inadvertently writing or speaking on behalf of GSA without permission.

Post-employment restrictions

From GSA's Office of General Counsel (OGC):

As a government employee, you are subject to restrictions on current duties when seeking post-government employment. This section provides a brief description of those restrictions, when they begin, when they end, and what steps to take.

Seeking Employment

An employee is "seeking employment" as defined in Subpart F of 5 C.F.R. part 2635, and the recusal requirement applies, if:

• the employee is engaged in actual negotiations for employment;
• a prospective employer has contacted the employee about possible employment and the employee makes a response other than rejection; or
• the employee has contacted a prospective employer about possible employment, unless the sole purpose of the contact is to request a job application. (An employee is seeking employment with any person to whom he sends an unsolicited resume, regardless of how many resumes the employee sends to other employers at the same time.)

If a search firm, an online resume distribution service, or other intermediary is involved, recusal is not triggered unless the intermediary identifies the prospective employer to the employee.

First Step

Contact the Deputy Ethics Counselor or other Ethics Law staff. They will advise on what actions to take and whether a conflict of interest exists with a prospective employer.

Recusal

An employee must recuse themselves from a matter when they have a conflict of interest. If the recusal requirement applies, it extends to any particular matter (virtually any Government matter) that would have a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of the prospective employer. However, an employee may work on particular matters of general applicability that affect the prospective employer if the employee's only communication with the prospective employer is the submission of an unsolicited resume and the prospective employer has not responded to indicate an interest in employment discussions. Here, work on this category of particular matters is permissible until the employee receives an expression of interest from the employer.

Notification

When an employee becomes aware of the need to be recused from a particular matter, the employee should notify the person responsible for their assignments, and may choose to document the recusal in writing. Notification permits a supervisor to minimize any disruption of the agency's mission by arranging assignments accordingly.

When are you no longer seeking employment?

Two months have elapsed since the employee's dispatch of an unsolicited resume and the employee has received no expression of interest from the prospective employer; or Either the employee or the prospective employer rejects the possibility of employment and all discussions of possible employment have ended. A response that merely defers discussion until the foreseeable future does not constitute rejection.