HRWorld has a recent article on how to handle Lame Duck employees — those who have turned in their resignation letters. In IT this is particularly critical since many admins have access to critical information about the company. Sometimes it makes sense to escort them directly off premises, instead of keeping them around…

But it is sometimes desirable to transition the employee out of the organization as quickly as possible. For example, you would not want a lame-duck network engineer to continue to have access to critical IT infrastructure. In such cases, it is appropriate to relieve the employee of keys, computer access and other company property and to escort him or her off the premises immediately.

Of course, it’s good to plan ahead for this event — make sure all critical admins are documenting their jobs, and keeping documentation for their network as they go. It would be highly annoying, and probably embarrassing, to escort your newly resigned network admin off premises, only to realize he was the only guy who knew how to access your important file systems.