How to Conduct an Exit Interview: Gathering Valuable Insights from Departing Employees

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<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
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<li>Exit Interviews can give you crucial feedback about your organisation.</li>
<li>Have one person do the interview, preferably on the employee’s last day and offsite.</li>
<li>Try to make the employee feel relaxed so that they’ll be open with you.</li>
<li>Discuss their experience with the firm in chronological order. Explore their reasons for leaving and areas in which they think your organisation could improve.</li>
<li>Act swiftly on any credible critical feedback that you receive during the interview.</li>
<li>Focus on the remaining employees to prevent the situation escalating.</li>
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Exit Interviews are an important part of the recruitment process even though they take place when someone is leaving! These meetings are held with departing employees to hear about their experience working for the business. 

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How to Hold an Exit Interview

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When

• Schedule the Exit Interview on the employee’s last day of employment. 
• If you hold it later, the employee has little reason to turn up and might have forgotten important details. 
• If you hold it sooner, the employee may worry about saying something that their boss might hold against them.

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Where

• It’s best to hold Exit Interviews offsite.
• Departing employees will feel more relaxed and be most candid if you hold the conversation outside the workplace. 
• You’re less likely to be interrupted.

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Who

• To make things feel less intimidating, it’s best to have just one person carry out the interview. 
• The employee’s manager is often a good person to do it because they should know the most about the job and the employee. 
• But if the employee’s manager is a contributing factor, then someone else should do the interview – a more senior person, someone from HR or even a non-executive director or outside HR consultant.

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What to Ask in an Exit Interview

Start by making the employee feel comfortable:

• Reassure: The employee won’t open up if they feel tense so reassure them that what they say may be treated as confidential (“may” gives you an opt-out in the rare situation that you do need to pass something on).
• Empathise: Show empathy and say that you’re sorry they’re leaving. Tell them that you want them to be honest and say what they’re really feeling.

Now discuss their experience working in your company in chronological order:

• Before they joined your company: Ask them about what they were expecting when they accepted the job and where the reality fell short.
• The job: Ask them what they liked and disliked, and what barriers there were to them doing their job well.
• The company: Ask them how they think the company treats its staff and how it could do better.
• The customers: Ask them how the firm could improve in serving its customers.
• The competition: Ask them in what ways the company’s competitors are doing things better.
• Reasons for leaving (if not redundancy): Explore their reasons for wanting to leave and how they hope things will be better in their new job.
• Priorities: Ask them what the most important thing is that the company should work to fix.
• Final thoughts: Ask them to share any other views that they might have about the company. Were there times when managers’ behaviour upset or frustrated them? What should managers improve on?
• Highlight restrictive covenants: Although these restrictions - such as  prohibiting employees working for a competitor, poaching other employees, or disclosing confidential information - aren’t always easy to enforce, it’s a good idea to remind employees of them during the Exit Interview. Often that alone encourages compliance.

There’s a detailed Script for Exit Interviews available.

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After the Exit Interview

What to do with the employee’s feedback:

• Having held the Exit Interview, you might find yourself relieved that the employee is going! 
• But the interview might reveal uncomfortable truths about your organisation. Don’t ignore these! Use these insights to improve your workplace.
• When someone leaves, other members of staff may be made aware of problems in your organisation and might themselves start looking for other opportunities. For this reason, it’s important that you act on any substantive issues that came up during the interview, particularly those to do with the treatment of staff.

Call the employee after a month (if they resigned and you want them back)

• It’s painful to lose someone good, but there may still be scope for salvaging the situation. New staff sometimes end up regretting their decision to leave their old firm and may feel that the new job hasn’t lived up to their expectations.
• Call departing employees a month after they leave. Tell them how much their old team is missing them and see if there’s anything that you could do to bring them back.

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Additional Resources

• Recruiting Book; The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Employees.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Discover the Power of Exit Interviews: Gain Insight to Improve Your Workplace.
• Downloadable script; Script for Exit Interviews.
• Article; Exit Interviews: The Unexpected Goldmine for Business Growth!