The Impact of Exit Interviews: A Closer Look

This underutilized practice has the potential to be a great retention aid.

An exit interview is a conversation in which a departing employee and their employer exchange information, usually on the employee's last day of work. Typically, the exit interview allows the employee to explain their reasons for leaving as well as provide feedback on their experience working for the organization.

This discussion could take the form of a face-to-face interview between the employee and a management or HR representative, or it could simply be a survey that the employee completes and returns. The first option is recommended for the most effective communication.

Before the exit interview

As part of the offboarding process, HR personnel should ask the departing employee to complete an initial questionnaire prior to the in-person or virtual interview. The questionnaire can be a potentially beneficial support to the interview itself, assisting the employee conducting the interview to generate follow-up questions.

Purposes of an exit interview

1. Uncover issues relating to HR.

Companies that conduct exit interviews virtually always attempt this goal, but they frequently focus on income and perks too narrowly. To be sure, employees require a certain degree of financial compensation to stay with an organization, but unless their income is significantly lower than their colleagues from other organizations, money rarely drives them off. There are numerous more HR practices that can influence an employee's decision to leave. From my experience; one departing employee shared with me dissatisfaction regarding performance evaluation ( promotion, increment) biases.

2. Uncover issues relating to leadership practice.

According to a Gallup poll of more than 1 million employed U.S. workers, the No. 1 reason people quit their employment is a lousy boss or direct supervisor. 75% of workers who left their employment voluntarily did so because of their supervisors. An effective exit interview can reveal a manager's distinct leadership style gap, which increases staff quitting their job. To maximize employee retention, management may take corrective action based on exit-interview data.

This enables the organization to strengthen positive managers while identifying toxic ones. According to one executive at a prominent Pharmaceutical company, multiple departure interviews he recently did suggest that micromanagement and biasness was the major issue.

3. Learn about competitive organizations' HR benchmarks (pay, perks)

"We use exit interviews to determine how competitive we are against other employers in the same industry in terms of time off, career advancement opportunities, benefits, and pay packages," an HR manager communicate with me. "We also want to know who is stealing our people."

4. It exposes the flaw in current work practices

Exit interviews might reveal flaws in current work practices. It specifies the level of efficacy of present processes and also brings to light various SOPs implementation issues.

The exit interview procedure

It's a very straightforward procedure. All you have to do is prepare your questions and then conduct the employee exit interview when they are ready to leave. You can use the following framework for frequent exit survey examples:

Step 1: Organise your exit interview process.

Step 2: Gather few basic information regarding the exit case

Step 3: Allow for a two-way conversation.

Step 4: Remind employees that the procedure is strictly confidential.

Step 5: Analyse and validate the feedback you receive once the interview is over.

Step 6: If you discover recurring same reasons for employee leave, investigate ways to strengthen your company's infrastructure.

Response analysis yields truly useful information, which can subsequently be used to support policy reform and management training programs.

However, while conducting a departure interview, you must confirm that your company is actually committed to improving the employee experience.

Few effective questions you can ask during exit-interview:

1. Why are you leaving your position, or what led you to the decision to leave?
2. How do you feel about your former colleagues and managers?
3. Did you feel appreciated by your team and/or managers?
4. What were the best parts of working in this position?
5. What was the hardest part of working in this position?
6. Which organizational culture do you like most?
7. Which organizational culture needs to be changed?
8. Would you consider returning to work for us in the future?
9. What could we have done to retain you?
10. Did you feel valued here?
11. What could your manager have done better?
12. What was the best part of your job? The worst?

Approaches of interviewer

Exit interviews are intended to aid in employee retention and improved understanding of team dynamics. An exit interview is a chance to give honest criticism, but not anything unprofessional or unethical.

• Don't let them exaggerate or embellish stories or feelings
• Be straightforward and don’t speak in riddles
• Evaluate your self-awareness and emotional intelligence to see how this information will be received.
• Avoid hurtful or offensive language, because it can damage your organization's image.
• Create real examples of negatives and positives to draw on throughout the interview.

Never say:

• Don't ask directly about specific individuals
• Don't address office gossip
• Don't give your opinions

Approaches of interviewee

In your exit interview, you have the opportunity to say a lot, but a few things should jump out to you. Some information is more useful than others for employers as they seek to improve the work environment, so here are four exit interview recommendations for what to emphasize:

1. Your reason for leaving the job
2. Satisfaction with the job as a whole
3. What you like best about the company
4. Your suggestions for the future

Never say:

1. Immature comments
2. Boast about your new position
3. Rude and unprofessional comments