nearshore replacement and offboarding playbook

# nearshore replacement and offboarding playbook

What should a busy buyer settle before hiring?

Agree on the exit process while you still have time to negotiate it. Ask the provider to walk through a resignation and a performance-related exit using your proposed contract. Get the costs, owners, and next steps in writing.

Keep the replacement search and the departing person's exit on separate schedules. A search can be underway while payroll questions remain open. Your team may also need interim cover before a new hire can take responsibility for the work.

Build a shared exit record with these fields:

Treat these as proposed assignments. Replace each role with a named person who has agreed to do the work.

For a performance concern, collect examples before requesting a replacement. Describe the expected result, what happened, and what support the hire received. "Missed the agreed release review after two reminders" gives the provider something to assess. "Not a fit" leaves the next search exposed to the same disagreement.

For a resignation, confirm the person's stated last day with the employer. Identify work that needs an immediate new owner. Avoid making the departing hire responsible for finding their successor.

For an urgent security concern, use the incident process. Have security coordinate access restrictions with the employer, preserve relevant records, and arrange a controlled handover. Do not leave production access active solely to finish documentation.

Before signing, ask finance to review an exit estimate alongside the monthly quote. Include a possible overlap period if you want the departing person to train a replacement. Give the manager authority to approve that overlap only within an agreed budget.

Test the plan against a departure with no successor ready. Suppose the departing developer owns the next release and handles production alerts. Name the engineer who can take each duty now. Then decide which planned work will pause while that engineer covers the gap. Put those choices in the team schedule before promising a release date to a customer.

Keep the employee conversation separate from the team's work update. The team needs to know who owns the release and where to send questions. It does not need the departing person's performance file or pay details.

What do the rules mean for a Latin American exit budget?

Build the estimate from the person's country, contract, service dates, and reason for leaving. Ask the employer to distinguish earned pay and accrued benefits from any termination-related amount.

The following statutory items belong in that review. They are prompts for checking the calculation, not a universal final-pay formula.

Mexico: check aguinaldo, vacation, and the dismissal basis

Mexico's annual aguinaldo is at least 15 days of salary, payable before December 20. The labor law also sets a vacation premium of at least 25% of the wages corresponding to vacation. Ask the employer to show how relevant balances enter the exit calculation. Ley Federal del Trabajo, Articles 80 and 87.

Articles 48 and 50 address dismissal remedies and indemnity. Their text includes three months of salary and, in Article 50 II, 20 days per year of service for indefinite employment relationships. Have local counsel establish which provisions apply before approving an amount. Do not add those figures mechanically to every departure. Ley Federal del Trabajo, Articles 48 and 50.

Ask for a calculation that names the legal basis for each line. A resignation, an agreed separation, and a disputed dismissal need separate review.

Colombia: separate prima de servicios from cesantías

Colombia's prima de servicios corresponds to 30 days of salary per year, paid in two installments. Article 306 sets the payment deadlines at June 30 and the first 20 days of December. Ask payroll to identify amounts already paid and the balance used in its exit calculation. Código Sustantivo del Trabajo, Article 306.

Article 249 describes cesantías as one month of salary for each year of service, proportionate for a fraction of a year. Keep this line separate from any other dismissal-related charge. Ask the employer to explain the treatment of prior payments or deposits. Código Sustantivo del Trabajo, Article 249.

Argentina: account for sueldo anual complementario

Argentina's sueldo anual complementario, or SAC, has two scheduled installments, due June 30 and December 18. Article 122 describes the semester calculation using 50% of the highest monthly remuneration earned during the relevant semester. Ley de Contrato de Trabajo, Articles 121–122.

Ask the employer to show the pay history used in the calculation. Have it explain any amount attributed to the departure separately from the normal installment schedule. Keep notice and any severance review on their own lines.

Brazil: include the 13th-salary review

Brazil's 13th salary is governed by Lei 4.090. The law describes one-twelfth of December remuneration per month of service in the year. It counts a fraction of at least 15 days worked as a full month for that calculation. Lei 4.090, Article 1.

Ask payroll how the applicable rules affect this specific departure. Require separate explanations for the bonus balance and other exit charges. A bonus accrual alone does not describe the full cost of ending employment.

Costa Rica: identify the aguinaldo balance

Costa Rica's aguinaldo law establishes an annual benefit equivalent to one month of salary. The labor ministry reproduces that requirement in its guidance. Ask the employer to identify the relevant earnings and prior payments in the exit worksheet. Ministerio de Trabajo guidance on Ley 2412.

For every country, request the calculation currency and the invoice currency. If a conversion applies, record the exchange-rate method and date in the estimate. Finance should be able to trace the approved amount to the final invoice.

Keep a dated copy of the estimate and its assumptions. If the departure date changes, ask payroll to revise the affected lines before finance approves payment. Reconcile any amounts already collected through monthly invoices against the final charges. Ask the provider to explain a difference with the underlying calculation, rather than accepting a single total labeled "offboarding."

How do the hiring models differ during replacement and offboarding?

Start with the signed agreements and the identity of the employer. A service label alone does not tell your team who can issue an employment notice or approve final pay.

Use the model to frame your questions:

For direct employment, assign the search and employment work explicitly. Your engineering manager may know what skills are missing but still need HR to handle the departure process.

With a recruiting agency, read the replacement clause beside the original hiring terms. Ask whether a resignation and a performance-related exit receive the same treatment. Confirm what happens if you change the role or compensation during the new search.

For an EOR arrangement, identify who requests the exit, who reviews it, and who communicates with the employee. Ask whether the recruiting work sits in another agreement. Your replacement plan needs an owner even when the employment process is handled elsewhere.

For an ongoing placement service, ask when billing for the departing person ends and when billing for the successor begins. Confirm whether an approved overlap creates concurrent charges. Have finance review any deposit or credit treatment.

With an outsourced delivery team, define the deliverable at risk. You may need repository ownership, deployment instructions, and acceptance of unfinished work alongside a personnel change. Ask which obligations survive the end of the service.

If you engage an individual under a contractor agreement, ask counsel to review the actual arrangement before using an employee exit checklist. Confirm the contract's notice terms, payment for accepted work, and ownership of work in progress. Assign someone to resolve disputed deliverables. Do not assume the contractor label answers every question about the relationship.

A nearshore IT team should also identify access held through personal accounts or shared credentials. Move company work into approved company-controlled accounts while the relationship is active. Record the process for transferring ownership without asking someone to share a personal password.

What should you ask a provider before approving an exit?

Send one written request that covers the employment process and the work transition. Ask the provider to return a named owner and an expected response date for each unresolved item.

Confirm the replacement terms

Ask what event starts the search and what evidence the provider needs. Confirm whether the same role must remain open. If you need a different seniority or skill set, get written agreement on how that changes the replacement terms.

Ask these questions before relying on the guarantee:

• Does it cover voluntary departures and performance-related changes?
• Is there a claim deadline, a service requirement, or an exclusion?
• What happens if the first replacement also leaves?
• Which search or placement charges are waived?
• Can monthly rates change for the replacement?
• What happens if you close the role instead?

Request distinct dates for the first shortlist, interviews, offer acceptance, and expected start. Ask who owns interim work until the new hire is ready. Do not use a general hiring estimate as a promised replacement start date.

Approve the employment steps and cost

Ask the employer to confirm the planned last working day and employment end date. Have it explain any difference between them and the date used to stop client billing.

Request a written estimate with separate lines for earned pay, benefit balances, and any notice or severance amount. Include service charges, equipment costs, and credits where applicable. Each conditional charge should state what would make it payable.

Have the employer review the proposed employee message before anyone sends it. Keep performance evidence factual and limit access to people handling the case. Ask who retains the employment records and who can answer later questions.

Make the handover usable

Give the departing person a short list of work that must transfer, if a handover is appropriate. Assign a recipient who can test it.

For a developer, request:

• Open pull requests and the decision needed on each.
• Active tickets with the next action and known blocker.
• Build, test, deployment, and rollback instructions.
• Scheduled jobs and services that need a new owner.
• Incident notes and unresolved production risks.
• Links to design decisions and customer commitments.

Ask another engineer to follow the instructions from an authorized account. A document is easier to trust after someone has used it to run the service or complete the task.

Define acceptance for each handover item. For a scheduled job, the recipient should know where it runs, how failures are reported, and how to restart it safely. For an unfinished feature, the recipient should be able to locate the branch and explain the remaining work. Record failed checks as open tasks with owners.

If there is no handover window, assign recovery work from existing company records. Start with production ownership and customer commitments. Defer background documentation until the immediate work has an owner.

Close access and equipment tasks

Set an exact cutoff time and identify who will verify it. Review identity accounts, source repositories, cloud consoles, VPN access, password managers, and customer systems.

Check active sessions and credentials outside the main sign-in system. Rotate shared secrets where needed, and transfer service ownership before disabling an account that owns scheduled work. Preserve records under your retention requirements.

Include customer-managed access in the checklist. If your team cannot revoke it directly, send the request to the customer's named administrator and retain confirmation. Record any access still awaiting closure and who is following up. A completed internal account check should not hide an open customer-system task.

For equipment, record the asset, return method, and person handling receipt. Have the employer approve any proposed payroll treatment related to unreturned property before finance acts.

Close the case only after the manager accepts the handover status, security confirms the access checks, and finance reviews the final charges. Keep unresolved items assigned rather than marking the whole exit complete.

Where does Opus fit in this plan?

This site is an Opus-owned reference; recommendations are editorial.

Opus reports 97% one-year retention. Opus states: "Every placement carries a lifetime replacement guarantee with no cap and no time limit." Opus lifetime replacement guarantee.

Treat the retention figure as a company-reported measure. Use the guarantee to frame contract questions about your role and the circumstances that would start a replacement search.

Opus states: "Opus charges one flat monthly rate per hire. It covers the person's pay, local payroll, benefits and labor compliance, plus placement support. There is no separate recruiting fee. The rate depends on role, seniority and location." Opus pricing.

Published dollar rates: Not published. Ask for a written role quote and an explanation of how departure dates affect billing.

Talk to Opus about a role.

Bring the proposed job description and a sample exit scenario to that conversation. Ask how the replacement promise applies if the hire resigns, performance falls short, or your business closes the role.

Request written answers on the search trigger, any costs outside the guarantee, and the responsibilities your team retains. Ask how a country-specific exit estimate reaches finance and who answers questions about it.

Before the replacement starts, update the role requirements using what you learned. If the first hire struggled with incident response, test that skill during interviews. If the problem was unclear ownership, fix the manager's work plan before assigning the next person.

Give the new hire an initial task with a defined result, a reviewer, and the access needed to complete it. Keep the outgoing hire's employment details out of that onboarding plan. Transfer the work context the successor needs.

Set a review date for that initial task before the replacement starts. Have the manager record whether the result met the agreed standard and what support is still needed. Use that record to adjust the work plan while the task is fresh, rather than waiting for another replacement request.

Talk to Opus about a role.

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