Work Handover Report

About this template

When to use it

A Work Handover Report built as a checklist rather than a memo, headed “Handover checklist HR-HO-01 · one copy each for the HR Team and the department”. The overview table records the handover date, the outgoing and incoming owners, the department, and the reason as a tick: Resignation / Transfer / Leave of absence / Role change. It runs three stages and nine items, then six numbered sections, and it is designed to be signed off stage by stage rather than all at the end.

How it is structured

1. Progress summary — 3 stages, 9 total check items, then two cells you complete yourself: completed items out of 9, and progress as a percentage.
2. STEP 1 · Handing over your duties (3 items, due Handover W1) — routine duties and their deadlines listed, the stage and remaining schedule of each open task written down, external contacts and their owners passed to the successor.
3. STEP 2 · Handing over documents and data (3 items, due Handover W2) — shared folders and storage locations transferred, original contracts and quotations handed over, files on your own PC moved to shared storage.
4. STEP 3 · Recovering assets and access (3 items, due last day of handover) — laptop, ID card and corporate card returned, internal system permissions transferred or revoked, administrator rights on external services transferred.
5. Each stage closes with a stage result — Compliant / Needs action / N/A — and an inspector signature. Move on only when the current stage is clear.

Sections Ⅰ to Ⅵ

Ⅰ lists the six documents and assets to check: duty list, open task status, customer and supplier list, account access list, security undertaking, asset return confirmation. Ⅱ holds the target figures — duties handed over 18, tasks in progress 3, accounts transferred 12, assets returned 5 — each measured and marked Met or Not met. Ⅲ tracks implementation across W1 to W4 with plan, actual and an achievement tick. Ⅳ is the corrective action log, taking only the items marked needs action, carried across by item number. Ⅴ is the overall assessment with the completed-item count and, if conditional, a re-inspection date. Ⅵ records each inspection round.

The two ownership columns are the point

Every check row carries an Owner and a Complete by, and the sample deliberately splits them: steps 1 and 2 sit with the outgoing and incoming owners respectively, while step 3 sits with the department head. Assets and access are the items that get forgotten, because the person who should return them has already gone, so the file puts them on someone who has not. If you change nothing else in this template, keep that split.

Access is the part with a deadline

Step 3 mixes two different problems. Internal system permissions can usually be handled by IT on a leaving date. Administrator rights on external services — the ones bought on a corporate card by one person — often have exactly one holder, and if that person leaves before transferring them, recovery means going to the vendor. Work through the account access list in section Ⅰ before the last day, not on it.

Closing it out

• The percentage cells in the progress summary and in Ⅴ are yours to fill; nothing calculates. Nine items complete is 100%.
• A conditional result needs a re-inspection date. Leaving that cell empty is how a conditional pass quietly becomes a pass.
• The corrective action log has three rows. If you need more, the handover was not ready to sign.
• Sign-off is three names — inspector, reviewer, department head — and the closing line asks for confirmation that the handover is complete. The footer sets retention at three years from the date the inspection was completed, and one copy each goes to the HR Team and the department.