Top HR Expert Weighs In: Why Exit Interviews Matter for Your?Startup

In the fast-paced world of Indian startups, where attracting and retaining talent is crucial, exit interviews are often overlooked. Swati Srivastava, Director HR at Gameskraft, sheds light on how these conversations can be a goldmine for valuable insights and brand advocacy.

She argues that exit interviews are not just an HR formality, but a strategic tool to understand employee sentiment and improve company culture. Just like a mechanic needs to understand the problem before fixing a car, startups need to know why employees leave to make effective changes.

Swati Srivastava is an HR Professional with a decade of extensive well-rounded experience across all things HR. We asked her a few questions about the importance of Exit Interviews in Indian Startups today, and how they can be leveraged to retain employees in the long run. Here is what she had to say.

With limited HR resources common in many Indian startups, how can exit interviews be conducted efficiently while still gathering valuable insights?

Imagine trying to fix a car without knowing which part of the car is not working?—?a challenging task that can lead to wasted effort and resources. Similarly, treating exit interviews as just another administrative piece overlooks their crucial role in understanding and improving organisational dynamics.

Exit interviews can not be seen as a mere HR chore, but a business essential in today’s war for talent. Startups thrive on attracting, developing and retaining high-potential talent. Neglecting to understand why employees leave can lead to missed opportunities for improvement and innovation.

At Gameskraft, we prioritise employee feedback, including insights from exit interviews, as foundational to shaping effective people strategies aligned with our business needs. This approach ensures that our interventions are relevant and responsive to organisational dynamics.

In my experience, startups that leverage employee feedback, including insights from exit interviews, often exhibit greater agility in making strategic pivots and organisational advancements. This mindset also strengthens the organisation’s ability to evolve and thrive in a competitive market.

Startups often rely heavily on employee referrals for talent acquisition. How can exit interviews be leveraged to maintain positive relationships with departing employees and turn them into brand ambassadors?

The essence of a great organisational culture lies not in how employees are treated during hiring, but in how they are treated during exits. Equally respecting and considering incoming and departing employees is crucial. As employees leave, they transition into ambassadors for your brand, influencing the stories others hear. Building a strong organisational culture hinges on authentic experiences that span the entire employee lifecycle, including exits.

In startups, often in the daily hustle, the exit employee experience takes a backseat because it is not baked-in by process design. It’s crucial to integrate the roles of managers, leadership, and HR into the exit process to ensure departing employees feel valued and supported rather than neglected.

Conducting thorough exit interviews to gather authentic feedback becomes a vital tool in instilling confidence in departing employees. It assures them that their experiences and insights matter and are actively used to drive positive change within the organisation. This approach not only enhances employee satisfaction and loyalty but also strengthens the organisation’s reputation as an employer of choice. The number of employees who have returned to your workforce after exiting can be an interesting metric to track (if you have a rehiring policy in place).?

Given the high turnover rates often seen in Indian startups, are there specific metrics or data points from exit interviews that can be most helpful in identifying and addressing employee retention challenges?

More often than not, Employees leave their “Managers” and not the organisation. Managerial capability poses a more pronounced challenge in startups compared to established organisations. With each product or business unit being at different evolutionary stages, there are very prominent subcultures that exist?—?mostly driven by managers and leadership in the respective pockets. These subcultures are important to accommodate the nuanced business needs?—?but if not kept a check on, they can result in massive cultural derailers.

Detailed exit interviews can give those early signs that you need to address within the org/ team or individuals before it becomes a real problem. It is important to use these inputs as developmental constructive interventions and not make them punitive unless warranted. Giving this room of comfort might, at times, give organisation a chance to even retain the outgoing talent.

At the end of it, we are all humans and being heard and seen takes care of half of the problems.?:)

Want more insights on Exit Interviews? Download our FREE Exit Interviews 101 Report for a comprehensive guide! Learn best practices for conducting exit interviews, crafting effective questions, & using the data to improve your startup. Get it now: https://tinyurl.com/MMExitInterviews101

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