My job has asked me to unlock Ipads. They have been here since before the lockdown, They have a Activation lock that a prevoius employee set up that we are not longer in contact with. How do I go about getting around the lock or removing it.

Hello,

I assume this are employer owned iPads so there are two methods for adding Activation Lock. In your case I hope the Device-based lock as used. If the User-based lock was set up you would need to find the bypass codes if they were created in the first place.

Activation Lock on Apple devices - Apple Support

"Activation Lock on Apple devices

When Activation Lock is enabled, it makes it difficult for someone else to use or sell an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch. Managing Activation Lock with an MDM solution lets your organization benefit from its theft-deterrent functionality while simultaneously providing you the ability to turn off Activation Lock for devices your organization owns.

There are two types of Activation Lock available to organizations:

• Device-based: Device-based Activation Lock requires Apple School Manager, Apple Business Manager, or Apple Business Essentials and is generally simpler to manage for organizations. It enables MDM to fully control enabling and disabling of Activation Lock through server-side interactions.
• User-based: User-based Activation Lock requires the user to have a personal iCloud account and for them to enable Find My. This method allows the user to lock an organization-owned device to their personal iCloud account if the MDM solution has allowed Activation Lock.

Note: Some MDM solutions support both Activation Lock methods; if an attempt is made to use both, the first successful Activation Lock event takes precedence."

"Because Activation Lock is disallowed by default on supervised devices, the MDM solution should fetch a bypass code created by the device and store it before allowing the user to enable Activation Lock. In case the user is unable to authenticate with their Apple ID for any reason, including if they’ve left the organization, this bypass code can be used to turn off Activation Lock remotely with MDM, or directly on the device, when the device needs to be erased and assigned to a new user."

I hope this helps.