What is an Exit Interview?
Do you want truthful input about your company’s processes, culture, management, and the business as a whole? For that aspect, don’t look at your current employees. Their responses may not be accurate ones by the urge to preserve their jobs.
Look, instead, at those employees who are leaving. There’s nothing they have to gain and nothing to lose.
Hence, it makes the exit interview process crucial and the need to make it structured.
In this blog, let me state some of the benefits of exit interview as an organization once can avail.
Benefits of an Exit Interview
Especially considering the relatively small-time investment (30 minutes to an hour is all it takes), there are plenty of benefits to conducting exit interviews:
Genuine Feedback:
The most obvious purpose of exit interviews is to gather feedback. Hopefully, employees feel safe providing feedback throughout their employment without worrying about it negatively impacting their jobs. But in an exit interview, the departing employee doesn’t have that concern and may feel more comfortable being honest. Encourage them to share this kind of
Friendly Parting:
Whether your employee is leaving because of their choice or yours, they’re still people who deserve respect.
Employment Wrap-Up:
An exit interview is a perfect opportunity to ensure employees understand any lingering obligations like equipment returns, non-compete agreements, intellectual property agreements, etc.
Q&A:
You might not be the only one with questions; your employee might have a few things they’d like to ask, too. Whether they’re wondering how to take care of the PF why they were passed up for a promotion last year, an employee exit interview can provide some clarity.
Private Venting:
People need to feel heard. If you don’t give your employees the opportunity to share negative feedback privately before they leave, they may find ways to do it more publicly after they’re gone.
Best Practices & Tips to conduct an exit interview
Schedule the meeting and communicate the purpose:
An employee’s last day is typically the best time to conduct an exit interview. In fact, it might even be a good idea to have it be the very last thing they do before heading on to their next adventure. It should be scheduled well ahead of the last day so your employee can be prepared. You should also provide an explanation or agenda of exactly what you’ll be discussing so that departing employees can prepare more thoughtful answers to your questions
Have someone other than the employee’s direct manager conduct the interview:
Your departing employee might not feel entirely comfortable giving open, honest feedback about all their experiences to someone who was likely very involved with those experiences.
Encourage openness by reinforcing confidentiality:
Even though they’re leaving, your employee will likely find comfort in confidentiality. Of course, they’ll want you to address their feedback. They should feel confident in providing feedback without jeopardizing their future.
Outline appropriate (and useful) questions:
Instead of rushing into the meeting and letting your intuition guide the conversation, take time in advance to outline the questions you’d like to ask. Knowing a bit about the employee’s specific circumstances might change what you want to ask.
Express excitement and support for their new opportunity:
It’s a bummer when top performers leave, but if you genuinely care about employees (and you should), you should be excited that they’re taking on new challenges. Where appropriate, express how much you and the company appreciate their contributions and how excited you are for their new journey.
Implement the feedback:
This is perhaps the most important tip of all. The information you gather in exit interviews won’t do you any good if you don’t do anything with it. Unlock the full value of exit interviews by carefully recording and implementing the feedback. Of course, not all feedback will require action (sometimes situations are isolated or temporary), but when you notice patterns or larger issues, create a plan to take action immediately.
A robust and efficient exit interview process creates the necessary source for companies to systematically learn about various aspects, from their most important and genuine human capital.
