When employees leave, employee exit surveys and exit interviews can provide a wealth of valuable feedback for your organization. This is useful for several reasons. Yet all too often, the exit interview remains a box-ticking exercise or a perfunctory courtesy conversation. Even though, all told, it also takes up quite a lot of time. What a waste! What is the alternative? Rather than asking only the usual organizational questions, identify the important topics for the exit interview in advance, including through the ‘eyes’ of the departing employee.
Why have an exit interview in the first place?
While organizations devote considerable attention to recruiting and further developing talented employees, departures often receive less attention. Yet almost every exit interview can yield important information for the organization. This offers opportunities to prevent unwanted turnover in the future and to part on good terms. After all, your paths may cross again later.
And do not forget the opportunities for ‘referral recruitment’! Around half of new employees join an organization through personal connections. So do not underestimate the power of ‘ambassadors’. Very often, these include former employees.
Choose the right approach
An exit interview offers an opportunity to collect feedback about the organization that is unrelated to the departure. Departing employees, in particular, are willing to speak openly about their experiences at your organization. This can be very useful for gaining a clearer understanding of the employee experience (EX). An exit interview can even bring problems within the organization to light that would otherwise remain hidden.
To quickly focus on the most relevant topics during an exit interview, the reason for leaving is, of course, an important consideration. If someone is retiring, has found another job or is reaching the end of their contract, this naturally prompts different questions. All the more so if someone is summarily dismissed. In that case, an exit interview is usually not held. But what if the employee would still like to have one with an HR professional? That can also be useful.
Ask the right questions in advance
A good exit interview that yields valuable feedback requires thorough preparation. Asking the right questions is a skill in its own right. Look beyond the standard questions from the organization's perspective. Above all, also consider the topics that matter from the employee's perspective! This is often forgotten, even though that focus can immediately steer the conversation in the right direction.
To approach this efficiently, it is valuable to give the employee a dynamic online questionnaire before the exit interview. This ensures that all relevant (comparable) questions are answered, allowing the interview to focus primarily on exploring the most relevant issues in greater depth. This certainly does not have to be limited to why someone is leaving or what they thought of their job responsibilities, employment terms or workplace relationships. By asking the right questions in advance, the employee will probably raise entirely different topics themselves. Let yourself be surprised.
Exit scan: a better conversation, sooner
customers who value good exit interviews. We developed an Exit scan for them after they suggested the idea to us themselves. It now helps them achieve better exit interviews quickly and efficiently, with greater attention to the employee's perspective.
HR professionals can use this to optimize their approach to exit interviews. They no longer need to ask many of the questions during the interview. This saves time. During the interviews, that time can instead be spent on topics that are truly valuable. Some exit interviews no longer even need to take place, at least not in the old way.
Working with the Exit scan also makes it possible to collect feedback in the form of trend lines. This allows the results to be translated into targeted actions for a better EX.
