Terminating vs. deleting an employee

Termination and deletion are two ways of discarding user data in the system. Terminated and deleted users are no longer visible on user lists.

Terminate rather than delete

Terminating an employee, rather than deleting the employee, is the preferred and recommended procedure for removing employees. It is the appropriate action to take for an employee leaving temporarily (such as for a prolonged leave of absence). Termination leaves the employee profile in their current organization and keeps historical employee data intact. You can reactivate terminated employees later.

Deleting a user permanently removes the user definitions, though their statistics can be retrieved in a limited fashion.

You can delete an employee who left the company permanently or who left before doing any substantial work. You can also delete any employee definitions that have no meaningful data, such as duplicate records and test records.

Situation	Terminate or Delete?
Employee is leaving the company permanently.	Delete
Employee has no meaningful data, only duplicate records and test records.	Delete
Employee never worked at the company.	Delete
Employee left before doing any substantial work.	Delete
Employee is on sabbatical for a year.	Terminate
Employee is taking leave to care for parent.	Terminate