Sunday, March 17, 2024

Who Should Conduct An Exit Interview

Don't Miss

Why Are You Leaving The Company

Should You Conduct Employee Exit Interview – Human Resources

Even if you already know the answer, asking allows you to probe for further reasons as to why an employee might be leaving your company. For example, you may have heard that Mary is leaving your company for a position with better pay. However, during Maryâs exit interview, she reveals that she struggled to get along with her manager. That insight gives you the opportunity to improve a managerâs leadership style, which can prevent more employees from resigning.

Ticking The Task But No Takeaways

Its not always necessarily the case that exit interviews arent carried out, or completely neglected, but not utilised correctly. A number of companies do carry out the Exit Interview process through their HR team, however, results are often only handed over to management when asked to, meaning that potentially vital interviewees responses are left untouched and practices inevitably stay the same. It would appear that very few collect, analyze, and share information and actually take follow-up action from it. Without doing all of these, however, conducting exit interviews is essentially a waste of time.

Perception About The Management

It is hard to spot problems and issues between management and employees, but when a steady stream of employees are leaving the job, there has to be a reason. The exit interview is a chance for the company to know about its management.

The interviewer must ask questions related to this issue so that the employee can provide his thoughts and perception about the management team and his direct manager.

Don’t Miss: What To Say After Interview Email

An Exit Interview Questionnaire You Can Use Today

So, which questions should you ask during an employee exit interview? This structured exit interview questionnaire will help you to address all the important topics and obtain relevant results that you can then meaningfully evaluate.

If you are well prepared, you will be able to go into the conversation confidently, avoid heated discussions, or superficial verbal sparring. In short, everything will work out perfectly.

Analyze And Act On The Feedback

How to Conduct Exit Interviews That Enhance Employer Brand ...

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is not leveraging exit interviews to their advantage about two-thirds of existing exit interview programs have minimal follow-up plans. Aggregating exit interview responses can provide you with extremely useful data to improve your employer brand, reduce turnover and boost your employee retention rate.

However, you need to analyze the data first. From there, engage your people, HR and executive teams to strategize improvements. Failing to utilize your employees feedback makes exit interviews a time-sucking formality, not an important opportunity to learn from your people. Not only that, but youll likely continue to lose great employees and fail to attract new talent.

Don’t Miss: How Can I Watch Meghan And Harry Oprah Interview

Pinpoint Opportunities For Employee Development

A study from Glassdoor Economic Research found that employees are about three times more likely to leave for a new employer than to stay and move into a new role at their existing company. Simply put, job title stagnation hurts employee retention. And its particularly important for Millennials. Exit interviews can give you valuable information to help prevent more of these motivated employees from jumping ship.

What Are The Benefits Of Conducting Exit Interviews

Especially considering the relatively small investment , there are plenty of benefits to conducting exit interviews:

  • Genuine Feedback: As mentioned above, the most obvious purpose of exit interviews is to gather feedback. Hopefully, employees feel safe providing feedback throughout their employment without it negatively impacting their jobs. But the great thing about a departing employee is they dont have much to lose by speaking their mind. So, ask the tough questions.
  • Amicable Parting: Whether your employee is leaving because of their choice or yours, theyre still people who deserve respect. An exit interview might not be able to correct every less-than-satisfactory experience, but it can certainly help.
  • Employment Wrap Up: An exit interview is a perfect place to ensure employees understand any lingering obligations like equipment returns, non-competes, intellectual property agreements, etc.
  • Q& A: You might not be the only one with questions, either your employee might have a few things theyd like answered, too. Whether theyre looking for answers on setting up COBRA insurance or why they were passed up for a promotion last year,, an employee exit interview can provide a lot of clarity.

Recommended Reading: How To Impress At A Job Interview

Tips For More Productive Exit Interviews

  • Exit interviews should only be conducted with employees voluntarily leaving the company, no layoffs or terminations.
  • Conduct interviews with all departing employees, regardless of title or level, but allow employees to decline the interview if they wish.
  • Dont assume you know why the employee is leaving. Offer the interview as a platform for them to speak openly.
  • Interviews need to be strictly confidential and employees need to be assured of this confidentiality.
  • Send out a standardized survey or questionnaire ahead of time. Questions can cover compensation, perks and benefits, office environment and culture, management, and growth opportunities. Use that survey to guide the conversation during the interview.
  • Ask for ideas on how the company can improve. You can use open-ended questions like, I wish the company would have ____________
  • The survey results and interview notes should be organized with key takeaways and trends. This information should be shared with senior management. Its a vital tool for self-evaluation, and should guide strategic planning, recruiting, and retention efforts.

How To Share Exit Interview Results With The Business

The Exit Interview

Any feedback from the exit interview should be put to good use and shared with the wider business. What you want to achieve from the feedback will determine who you share it with. Remember, feedback should always be delivered anonymously or in aggregate form, and the employee should be made aware of this ahead of the exit interview.

Sharing with HR

Exit interview information should be shared with HR in all its entirety since its HRs responsibility to notice trends and spot any areas of concern that need escalating. Having access to all the information allows HR to create an organised and visual representation of the feedback that can be easily accessed at any time by authorised personnel.

Sharing with management

Certain aspects of the interview feedback will need to be shared with the management team. Employers should avoid openly discussing any feedback that relates to another member of the management team this should be done privately. Any points shared with the wider management team should aim to collaboratively correct any cultural, structural or procedural problems.

Sharing with individuals

Sharing with the wider business

You May Like: How To Prepare For A Vet Tech Interview

Strengthen Your Employer Brand

The act of asking departing employees for constructive feedback shows employees that you value the insight theyve gathered in their time with you, and demonstrates your companys interest in improving. It also allows you to gather information about branding efforts that might have fallen short, or where actions are out of alignment with stated values. You can use information about the factors they appreciated to strengthen your communication to candidates, and share with other team members as you celebrate your culture.

To get your exit interview program up and running quickly, use a thoughtful approach that easily identifies all the reasons why an employee is moving on. Glassdoors Effective Interview Templates provide a quick-start list of good exit interview questions. And the eBook also shares best practices for putting your program in place.

We all know that in this good economy with low unemployment rates, retaining our employees is more important than ever. And by getting those candid out-the-door answers to key questions, we can vastly improve career development practices, strengthen our company culture, and uncover other issues that may be affecting our ability to retain employees.

S For Conducting An Exit Interview

There may be many reasons an employee leaves an organization, from finding another role that suits them better to experiencing a hostile work environment. Many companies seek to understand why an employee chooses employment elsewhere, and an exit interview can uncover these details. An exit interview can also benefit an employee, giving them the chance to speak openly about their experience.

In this article, we describe what an exit interview is, provide steps on how to conduct one, share some effective exit interview questions, explore the dos and don’ts of conducting exit interviews and delve into how you can process the employee feedback you receive.

Read Also: How To Successfully Interview Someone

Make A List Of Questions To Discuss

We think its a good idea to prepare a list of questions in advance for face-to-face exit interviews. Instead of closed discussions with yes or no responses, ask open-ended questions that begin with “what,” “how,” or “why.” To establish consistency, ask the same questions at each exit interview.

Establish a standard written questionnaire that will be utilized for all departing staff. Questions that require a rating or score are useful for aggregating data and making assessments from one year to the next. Be sure to balance rating questions with open-ended ones.

Foster Innovation By Soliciting Ideas For Improving The Organization

How to Conduct Effective Exit Interviews  Delivering WOW ...

EIs should go beyond the individuals immediate experience to cover broader areas, such as company strategy, marketing, operations, systems, competition, and the structure of his or her division. One emerging best practice is to ask every departing employee something along the lines of Please complete the sentence I dont know why the company doesnt just ____. This approach may reveal trends.

Read Also: What Questions Are Asked In A Customer Service Interview

Employee Leaves An Organization On A Positive Note

Even though there might be some problems in a company which made an employee leave it, it is extremely important to make sure that they leave the organization on a positive note. The exit interview will help you with that: you will show a person that the company really cares about the reasons why people leave it.

Explain How Employee Responses Will Be Reported

In addition to assuring confidentiality, describe how you will communicate the employees feedback to management. Explaining that data is presented as aggregated responses or anonymously will further reassure departing employees and encourage them to provide honest feedback during their exit interview without fear of repercussions.

You May Like: How To Get Ready For Interview Questions

Making Exit Interviews Count

In the knowledge economy, skilled employees are the assets that drive organizational success. Thus companies must learn from themwhy they stay, why they leave, and how the organization needs to change. A thoughtful exit interviewwhether it be a face-to-face conversation, a questionnaire, a survey, or a combinationcan catalyze leaders listening skills, reveal what does or doesnt work inside the organization, highlight hidden challenges and opportunities, and generate essential competitive intelligence. It can promote engagement and enhance retention by signaling to employees that their views matter. And it can turn departing employees into corporate ambassadors for years to come.

Unfortunately, too few leaders pay attention to this tool their programs fail to either improve retention or produce useful information. The authors believe this is owing to poor data quality and a lack of consensus on best practices. They suggest six overall goals for a strategic exit interview process and describe tactics and techniques to make it successful. Among their recommendations: Have interviews conducted by second- or third-line managers. Make exit interviews mandatory for at least some employees. And because standard interviews enable you to spot trends, but unstructured ones elicit unexpected insights, consider combining the two approaches in semistructured interviews.

Idea in Brief

The Need
The Opportunity
The Challenge

The 18 Best Exit Interview Questions That You Should Know

How To Conduct An Exit Interview

Need some help with some useful exit interview common questions? Here are some of the most meaningful questions which you can present before your departing employees:

  • How would you describe your working relationship with your manager?
  • According to you, what could your manager do to improve the company culture?
  • What was the best thing about your day-to-day duties?
  • Is there something in your job description that you’d like to change?
  • What did you appreciate the most about the company culture?
  • Which aspect of the company culture can be improved to create a better workplace?
  • Did you have sufficient resources and support available while doing your job?
  • Was your job description correctly explained during the hiring process?
  • Were you aware of the level of expectations from you?
  • Did you receive enough constructive feedback that helped you in your day-to-day activities?
  • How can you describe your experience with the companyâs employee feedback process?
  • Did you feel engaged in our company?
  • Did you clearly understand and feel a part of the achievement of the companyâs goals?
  • Did management help you in achieving your career goals?
  • What are the essential qualities you think the company should seek in your replacement?
  • Do you think anything should be added or removed from the job description itself?
  • What would make you consider working for this company again in the future?
  • Would you recommend our company as an excellent place to work with your friends and family?
  • You May Like: How To Crack Technical Interview

    Ask The Employee To Complete A Written Survey

    Consider asking the exiting employee to complete a written survey before your meeting. This will provide them with the opportunity to think about their responses in advance. You may find that the employee is actually more open in a written survey because they feel more comfortable. Plus, when you are able to read their thoughts prior to your meeting, you can develop questions that guide the conversation.

    Uncover Issues Relating To Hr

    Companies that conduct exit interviews almost always pursue this goal but often focus too narrowly on salary and benefits. To be sure, people need a certain level of financial compensation to remain with an organization, but unless their salary is out of alignment with their peers, money doesnt usually drive them out the door. Plenty of other HR practices can play into an employees decision to leave. One leader from a food and beverage company told us that exit interviews inform his companys succession planning and talent management process.

    Also Check: How To Discuss Salary In An Interview

    Exit Interview Process Checklist

    • Ask the employee if theyd be willing to participate
    • Offer the employee a variety of ways to feed back: in writing / a phone call / face-to-face
    • Schedule the meeting in the diary
    • Ask the employee to complete an exit survey beforehand
    • Produce a structured list of questions for the face-to-face meeting
    • Give the employee the opportunity to view / complete the questions prior to the exit interview so theyre not caught off-guard
    • Conduct the exit interview in a private room
    • Store and record the feedback confidentially
    • Use the feedback to determine action points for the business

    Benefit : Seek Patterns In The Exit Interview Data

    Conduct Exit Interviews Whenever Possible

    Don’t just conduct these interviews for the sake of it. An effective exit interview process doesn’t try to reverse the resignation. It works to seek out the patterns for why good employees leave. These same patterns will help you outline the retention strategies to reduce further turnover in your company.

    Don’t Miss: How To Pass An Interview

    Benefit #: Enhance Recruiting

    Exit interviews are extremely useful not only for retaining but also for attracting employees.

    They provide employers with a unique opportunity to find out what swayed their employees to accept a job offer from another company.

    By using the obtained information, employers can adjust and improve their employee value proposition and use it as a magnet for attracting new talent.

    Who Should Conduct Exit Interviews

    The best practice is to have your Human Resources specialist conducting the exit interviews. Human Resources professionals are usually trained in conducting interviews and have the right skills and appropriate experience.

    However, small companies usually dont have a dedicated HR professional who could conduct an exit interview. In this case, the company should appoint someone other than the leaving employees direct supervisor to conduct the exit interview.

    The supervisor’s relationship with the employee often influences the leaving employees willingness to give honest feedback.

    For example, a bad relationship with a supervisor might be the reason why an employee decided to leave the company.In the case when a supervisor and employee have a great relationship, a leaving employee can restrain from providing honest feedback in order to ensure that their relationship with their supervisor will end on a positive note.

    Finally, here is my most important tip for choosing the right person to conduct an exit interview in your company:Make sure that the person you choose to conduct an exit interview is perceived by a leaving employee as fair, objective and interested to hear what the employee has to say.

    Also Check: What To Ask A Company In An Interview

    The Basics Of Exit Interviews

    Most exit interviews are conducted in the privacy of an office or spare room. Generally they are one-on-one discussions between the leaving employee and employer or a HR staff member. For the purpose of privacy, if HR conducts the interview they may collect results from multiple exit interviews and share the feedback anonymously with the employer.

    Unlike a job interview or intervention, the employee in question is not competing with other candidates or being investigated for misconduct, so you dont need to follow a formal structure or checklist. By keeping the process casual and relaxed, this will help the employee feel at ease and be more willing to provide honest feedback.

    Try having the exit interview leading up to the employees last day. But dont suggest having the interview on their actual last day. At this point, the employee may be stressed and will want to bid farewell to close friends and colleagues.

    We Need To Talk 6 Reasons Why You Should Conduct Exit Interviews

    The Most Important Question in an Exit Interview | The Engagement Studio

    Andy AndrewsRecruitment Trends

    Exit interviews are THE tool for getting honest feedback from employees. For that reason alone an exit interview ought to be a fixed part of the offboarding process. The employee is asked the reasons for the termination and about subjective impressions and suggestions for improvement. Ideally, the interviewer follows a structured guide with standardised questions and takes notes. The employee should not fill out the questionnaire themselves.

    Don’t Miss: Should I Email After An Interview

    More articles

    Popular Articles