Career Exit Handover: A Structured Guide for UK Professionals

Exit File is a handover document. It is addressed to you, at the point immediately after leaving employment, and it covers the actions, decisions, and records that require attention before they become problems.

The format is deliberate. You have produced handover documents before — task lists, status updates, knowledge transfers. This document applies the same logic to your own exit. The reader is you. The predecessor is the employed version of you. The sections exist because the information does.

Nothing here is motivational. The structure is the product. Work through the sections in order, complete what applies, and discard what does not.

Start with the sections in the order listed. Each section is self-contained and can be returned to independently.

• Day One — Immediate actions for the first 24–48 hours. Time-sensitive items only.
• Financial Snapshot — Record your current financial position before it changes. Includes statutory entitlements, outstanding pay, and cashflow runway.
• 30/60/90 — A planning frame for the first three months. Not a motivational framework — a scheduling tool.
• What You Know — Contacts, system access, and tacit knowledge that exists only in your head. This degrades faster than you expect. Most career exit resources don't cover this. Capture it in week one.
• Routine Rebuild — Structural scaffolding for an unstructured period. Calendar, output targets, weekly review.
• The Search — Job search administration. Pipeline, applications, targeting, and record-keeping.
• Templates — Fillable documents for immediate use across all sections.

Your departure type determines which statutory entitlements and time-sensitive actions apply to you. If you have just been made redundant and are not sure where to start, select Redundancy below. Otherwise, select the entry point that matches your situation.

The core sections of this document apply regardless of how you left. The pages below provide departure-specific supplementary notes — statutory context, entitlements, and actions that differ by type.

A set of fillable templates covering financial snapshot, 30/60/90 planning, knowledge capture, and job search tracking is available at Templates.