A relieving letter is an official communication or document issued by a company to their employee. It is also considered to be an acknowledgment letter for the service rendered by the employee. The relieving letter is a critical document issued by an organization to one of its staff members who has duly resigned from their role.

Key features to remember while writing a relieving letter

1. The relieving letter should always be issued from the organization’s letterhead only.

2. The relieving letter is usually addressed 'To Whomsoever It May Concern', until the employee has a specific person to be addressed.

3. The relieving letter has to mention and begin with the resignation of the employee and that it has been accepted by the company.

4. The employee post held in the last tenure should be mentioned in the relieving letter.

5. The relieving letter should always talk positively and give credit to the employee’s performance.

6. The relieving letter should always mention the date of joining and the tenure of the employee held in the organization.

7. The relieving letter should also end positively wishing the employee more success for the future.

8. The relieving letter should be written in simple English yet the language and tone should be kept professional. The relieving letter should never use slang words.

9. The relieving letter should always be a letter of communication to help the employee go ahead in their career and never a road block to get more career offers.

10. The relieving letter should always be issued at the time of the employee leaving the company. Any delay in the issue will only dampen the employee’s career pursuits.

Key findings in the issue of a relieving letter:

    More than 92 per cent of Indian companies across various domains and cities believe in exit policies and they give utmost importance to the process. Leading cities and companies strongly believe in the issue of a relieving letter which is well drafted and documented.

Most of the companies issue a relieving letter after manually conducting an exit interview.    A majority of around 76 per cent of the companies still conducted exit interviews manually only

 Organizations always want to find the reasons for the employee quitting their company. Usually salary and better prospects are the strong reasons.   

23 per cent of companies in India said that they could not process or go ahead with the employment since the employee did not carry a relieving letter.

    Relieving letter is a critical official document required while recruiting a new person for most of the companies across various industries.

A relieving letter is considered on par with other official documents provided by the candidate during the interview. Employers want to make sure that the candidate doesn’t have any pending jobs in previous company.

An example of a good relieving letter following the key features:

************** COMPANY LETTER HEAD ******************************

Date of issue

Name of the employee

Designation of the employee

Address of the employee

Dear Candidate,

With reference to your resignation letter dated on….., we hereby accept your resignation and agree to relieve you from the duties on ….. We confirm that you have been working in our company from …. (Tenure)  as a …. (Job designation)

During your employment with us we found you to be sincere and hard working in performing your duties.

The management would like to thank you for your service extended to the company and we wish you the best and success in your future endeavours.

Yours Sincerely

Signature of the executive issuing the relieving letter