Exit interview
A pleasant goodbye
As an employer or manager, the departure of an employee can feel like a setback. However, it also presents an opportunity for learning and growth through a sincere and well-conducted exit interview, as a step in the offboarding process. Because if you want to improve employee retention, you need to understand why your talent is leaving – regardless of why.
When an employee leaves, it’s not just about the immediate gap in the team. There's a value loss in terms of knowledge, skills, and relationships – not to mention the cost of recruitment.
Conducting exit interviews allows you to understand these losses and gain insights into what’s working and what needs improvement. Even if the employee is leaving for a better salary elsewhere, you may get insights you otherwise wouldn't have, because some employees may feel uncomfortable sharing criticism or haven't felt their concerns have been heard by their line manager.
Exit interviews need to be handled with care and sensitivity, whether the employee has been dismissed or resigned themselves. Because the truth is, often people quit because they're unhappy – and even if they just got a better offer elsewhere, it's extremely rare that they will have no valuable criticism.
Who should conduct the interview?
It's absolutely crucial that the exit interview is not conducted by the employee's line manager or even someone they cross paths with in their day-to-day work.
Optimally it's an external provider, who can conduct the interviews, aggregate and analyse the data. However, we're aware this will rarely be a solution, and the next best thing will be your HR team. This ensures that the employee feels comfortable sharing honest feedback without fear of repercussions – because most of us don't want to burn any bridges.
How should the data from the exit interviews be used?
We also recommend that data from the interviews are aggregated and presented in anonymised reports, of course depending on the size of your organisation. The purpose of the reports should be to identify patterns and act on these, rather than learning why individual employees quit. For example, learning that 70% of departing employees leave because the salary is not competitive or that 53% of employees in Sales leave because they see no further career development, are actionable insights. Learning that Karl from Accounting left because he's moving to Aarhus is not. However, it's still important to act on concerns such as toxic management or harassment, even if it's not a repeating pattern.
It's easier to consolidate the data if you're using a semi-structured interview model, where most questions are repeated but still leaves room for inquiring into personal experiences.
What format to use?
Many organisations simply use a survey, and while it's better than nothing, it's probably not excellent. It's impersonal and does not capture the nuances, and it may reinforce some feedback we often hear: Employees who do not feel heard, that feedback does not lead to change, that organisations are not willing to invest in their employees, etc.
We suggest a personal interview, or online if necessary. It's also a good idea to brief the departing employee on the themes you will cover in the exit-interview, without revealing the questions beforehand. This will allow the employee to prepare and think back on things they would like to share, while still being able to get their immediate thoughts on the questions during the interview.
What else is important to consider when doing an exit-interview?
The timing of the exit-interview is also important. We often suggest doing the interview in the last week of the employment, as 1) the employee's experience in the notice period is also important, 2) the employee may not wish to spend time on it after the employment has ended and 3) often a resignation or dismissal can be emotional, and it will likely affect the interview to some extent. This is why it makes sense not to do the interview shortly after the resignation or dismissal.
If the employee does not bring it up themselves, do not ask about specific colleagues or leaders. Or if you have heard rumours from the employee's department, do not bring it up. However, be prepared that the employee may bring up issues that you were unaware of – and that they can involve other employees. Depending on the situation, you may not want to go into depth with this during the interview, but it's important to acknowledge and investigate.
Reasons for leaving
You want to understand the primary factors which have led to their decision – is it salary, lack of training or opportunities, is it personal circumstances? And maybe more importantly, have they quit as a 'last resort', because they haven't felt heard when they have brought up these factors to their line manager?
Not because you should try to talk them into staying, but what have they enjoyed about working at your company? Especially if it was a difficult decision for them to leave, it's nice to know what employees think you're doing well and be able to reinforce it.
It's a difficult theme, and you will find huge variances from department to department and team to team. However, it's important to uncover, as it's an opportunity to act fast on emerging cracks in culture and your employees well-being. It may also give you a better understanding of the cooperation between colleagues and across departments.
While you should definitely ask about the cooperation with the employee's line manager, it should not be an invitation to a 'bashing session'. But it's important to understand if there are areas where management may need further training. However, it's also important to inquire about employees' view on more senior management and how they communicate.
How is the overall employee experience in your organisation? How was the onboarding back when they started? Do employees fell adequately informed about changes and decisions within the company? Were they happy with the benefits – and what benefits do they think are lacking? What do they think about the office space and equipment? How are the internal career opportunities? How has the offboarding process been?
Ask for constructive feedback: Are employees experiencing too much bureaucracy, do they feel a lack of structure, do they ask for more flexibility or better support from more senior employees? While the suggestions will be very dependent on the individual, you may also see some patterns eventually.
Doing exit interviews is only valuable if the data is put to good use – i.e. if you're able to improve employee retention and satisfaction based on the insights.
First step is to create a framework for collecting the data and coding it into themes, for easier comparison and identifying recurring issues and patterns in the feedback. Next step is to summarise this insight into actionable reports you can share with management and other relevant stakeholders, such as Talent Acquisition.
Examples on how the feedback can be leveraged:
► A more refined recruitment process: The feedback may reveal gaps in the recruitment process, e.g. tasks not matching the description provided in the job post and interview.
► Securing buy-in: If you want to suggest major changes such as a higher salary level or new career path programmes, you will likely have to provide data to support your claim. Using the data from exit interviews to argue that the extra costs incurred by a higher salary level will be absorbed by a much better retention rate, will likely have higher chances of success than anecdotal evidence.
► Benchmarking competitors: If your employees are often leaving to work for competitors, it's also an opportunity to learn what they offer your employees.
To conclude, exit interviews should be more than just a formality. They're an important strategic tool for improving employee retention, employee experience programmes and management performance.
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