Looking for a technique to securely move user to new machine

Our IT department requires that you give up all your passwords so that they can move a user from an old machine to a new machine. There has to be a better way to move a profile and files from one machine to another machine securely without giving the IT department personel your passwords for days at a time. Even if that requires that the user themselves do a little bit of the legwork to execute automated transfer scripts or something.