Exit Interviews

The helpful (and often forgotten) tool that may help you improve employee retention.

Is your business providing exit interviews to employees when they resign? If not, you should definitely consider it.

What Is An Exit Interview?

An exit interview is just that; an “interview” provided to an exiting employee.

The truth is, while some employees may be vocal during their time with you, others may have a lot to say but choose to stay silent until they are “on their way out.”

Some employers are not too keen on the idea of having to talk to employees for fear of confrontation. Or, some employers don’t want to hear about what’s wrong with the company because they choose to remain oblivious so they don’t feel need to address certain things that may be wrong.

The good news is, you don’t necessarily need to sit down face-to-face and conduct the questioning personally. Exit interviews are often more effective when provided to the employee to complete on their own without the pressure of having to answer someone in real-time.

Importance Of Exit Interviews

There are many reasons why offering departing employees the chance to provide feedback may be beneficial to your business. Here we examine some of these reasons.

1. Understanding Employee Perspectives: Exit interviews provide departing employees with an opportunity to candidly express their perspectives on their overall work experience, including their reasons for leaving, job satisfaction, and any concerns they may have had during their tenure. This allows businesses to gain a deeper understanding of the factors influencing employee turnover and help in identifying recurring patterns or issues within the organization.
2. Identifying Underlying Issues: By discovering what is on the minds of departing employees, you may uncover the issues they may not have talked about while they were still working for you. The issues may or may not have ultimately led them to decide to leave your company. Issues could range from inadequate professional development opportunities and limited career advancement prospects, to concerns related to the work culture, work-life balance, or poor leadership. Identifying these issues is crucial for addressing systemic challenges and implementing specific solutions to help improve the employe experience.
3. Identifying What’s Working: As an alternate to the “negatives,” you may also gain insight into what’s actually already working for your company. Understanding what you’re doing well in is a great way to know what you should lean into and continue to improve on.
4. Enhancing Employer Reputation: Showing a genuine interest in understanding employees’ experiences may enhance a company’s reputation. When you value the input of your workforce and take proactive steps to address their concerns, you may establish yourself as an employer of choice; attracting top talent and building a positive reputation within your industry and within the local community. In other words, people will want to work for you!

By understanding the value of exit interviews and using the insights gained from them, businesses can proactively decrease employee turnover and increase retention by addressing any hidden issues among teams and concerns with inadequate people leaders, identify areas to improve upon as it relates to training and development, and learn what employees “really want” from their time with you. This will all help improve upon the overall employee experience offered by your company.

Content – What To Ask

Your Exit Interviews should have a good mix of basic questions that require a quick, light response, with questions that invoke a more insightful look into what work life at your company was really like for the departing employee.

Avoid making the survey so long that it appears tedious upon first glance; they may not even attempt it if it looks like it will take too long to complete. You’re likely going to get a higher amount of participation if there are a modest amount of clear, concise questions.

Some example questions to consider:

1. Did you have a good understanding of the company mission, vision, and values?
2. Did you feel your work had meaning and purpose?
3. Did you understand where your role fit into the company’s overall mission?
4. Did you receive adequate training in order to properly do your specific job?
5. Did you receive training in company policies and procedures?
6. Did you feel supported by your direct supervisor or manager?
7. Did you receive regular feedback on your job performance?
8. Was feedback you received on your job performance constructive and helpful?
9. Is teamwork and collaboration encouraged in your department?
10. Did you feel your professional career development was nurtured?
11. Did you feel you were treated fairly at work?
12. Was the work environment safe and comfortable for you?
13. Would you like to share what made you decide to leave the company?
14. Is there anything else you’d like to add that may assist the company in improving for future employees or the business overall?

The questions listed here are just samples to inspire you. You’ll see they are a combination of items related to the individual’s experience, career aspirations, their new hire training, their department, their manager, and the company overall.

Ways To Provide & Collect The Feedback

Depending on the size and nature of your organization and the role of the departing employee, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all method of providing and collecting the feedback.

One thing that should remain consistent, however, is that all departing employees should receive generally the same set of questions (give or take any that may be job or department specific). Second, when sending the exit interview, you should not make it appear as though it’s being imposed on them as mandatory, but rather as a voluntary item they may choose to complete. Third, when possible, a Human Resources representative should be the one to send and collect the exit interview versus having the immediate manager be the one to do it (this will help the departing employee feel more comfortable with providing candid feedback, especially if they’d like to include items they never wanted to, or tried to, talk to their manager about during their time working there). If there’s not an HR department to collect the exit interviews, then immediate supervisor, skip-level supervisor, or business owner may suffice. Having a plan in place on how to distribute and collect the feedback is a good idea for those businesses who have no dedicated HR department. Finally, try not to send out exit interviews after an employee is already gone.

Some methods of delivery and collection to consider:

1. Sending an e-mail with question prompts or an attachment: Send the departing employee an e-mail with a set of questions to answer, either within the body of the e-mail or as a Word or PDF attachment. Ask the employee to return the questions to you. Sending this out about a week ahead of their planned resignation date is ideal. Of course there’s no set “right time” and there is no harm in sending two weeks ahead, or even the day of, however, about a week ahead of the resignation date is a good best practice in order to allow them time to wrap up, collect their thoughts, fill out and send back.
2. Having an online, software-driven survey form such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey: There are a few great, free or low cost options to create your own surveys and send them out to departing employees. These types of surveys are useful not only for sending and collecting questions collecting feedback, but also good for analyzing and comparing data as you begin to save and collect more responses. You’ll be able to view trends in responses which will help you discover patterns in the reasons why employees are leaving. As with the e-mail option, having this sent out ahead of the last day is ideal.
3. Scheduling a phone, video, or in-person call with Human Resources: Likely the last of the preferred methods, this is always an option for those who prefer it. Sometimes if the company is large enough to have a dedicated HR department and an employee is disgruntled, they may request a meeting with HR for an exit interview. It depends on the size and resources your company has on how you would handle if someone requested a meeting. A larger company would typically have an Employee Relations team that may handle this or consider it an “exiting employee grievance” and they would collect information to see if anything is an EEOC concern (and if anything is a legal issue that needs to be addressed). If there’s no Employee Relations department and an employee is requesting a meeting with HR, and you have an HR rep available, you should oblige and set a time to meet. Sometimes there may be serious allegations that need to be discussed confidentially, and sometimes the employee just wants a chance to be heard. It will be dependant upon the information learned during the meeting what the next steps are, if any (for example; if a departing employee shares information on team members breaking rules or creating a hostile environment you may open an investigation, or, if a departing employee shares that they never felt they had adequate training in order to do their job you may look into what training and resources they had and identify improvements to be made).

What To Do With The Information Collected

You have your Exit Interview back from the departing employee – now what?

The worst thing you could do is to do NOTHING.

Review the information completely and identify any areas that need to be investigated further.

Identify any areas you may immediately and easily improve upon, and ACT.

Of course, there may be issues that led to the employee leaving your company that were out of your control, or totally unrelated to their role or your company.

Chances are, you will occasionally learn of things that are within your control.

Conducting exit interviews will help you gain insight into how you may improve the overall employee experience, ultimately improving your employee retention.

Keep feedback within a “need to know” basis with minimal exposure; you may address concerns or issues without sharing word-for-word candid information when you can. Keep the exit interviews in confidential employee files.

It’s our hope that after reviewing this detailed article, you have a better understanding of both the purpose of, and how to implement, Exit Interviews.

Need help with your Exit Interviews? We’re here for you!

Click here to contact us and set up a free discovery call to see how easy and affordable it is to partner with Eagle Mountain HR on your employee relations needs.

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E-mail: EagleMountain@workmail.com