Urges old groups of individuals to leave company (7)
I believe the answer is:
exhorts
'urges' is the definition.
('exhort' can be a synonym of 'urge')
'old groups of individuals to leave company' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'old' could be 'ex' (prefix meaning former or onetime) and 'ex' is present in the answer.
'of' could be 'o' and 'o' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for exhorts that I've seen is " 'Urges, spurs on (7)'".)