Exit Interview Importance

In my last blog, we talked about how the grass isn’t always greener when an employee leaves a company and about 28 percent of employees end up returning to their former employer.  It is important to know why an employee is leaving the company so conducting an exit interview with them is a critical piece of the offboarding process. In many cases, you’ll discover a great deal of good information. If possible, you want an internal HR professional to conduct the exit interview as the reason the person is leaving may be due to their direct boss.

The exit interview should entail a set of five to ten questions that you use consistently with each person who is leaving on good terms. Here is a sample list of questions that you can use as a starting point:

• What prompted you to begin looking for another opportunity? This helps identify underlying issues that may be driving turnover.

• What factors influenced your decision to leave the organization? HR uses this to understand whether the departure relates to compensation, management, culture, or career growth.

• How would you describe your experience working with your manager and team? This question can surface leadership or team dynamics that may need improvement.

• Did you feel you had the resources, training, and support needed to perform your job effectively? Responses help identify gaps in onboarding, training, or operational support.

• What did you like most about working here, and what could have been improved? This provides balanced feedback on strengths and weaknesses in the workplace.

• What suggestions would you offer to improve the employee experience for others in this role or department? This invites constructive recommendations that can guide organizational improvement.

• Ask them, if things change, would they be interested in returning in the future? This will gauge their interest level to return even before they have formally exited.

You may even want to consider a recruitment campaign for former employees. Email them every few months and tell them about job openings, exciting news about the company, and things like that. Considering the high cost of recruiting and hiring new employees it makes  sense to spend time and effort to re-recruit good former employees.

Some companies reach out to former employees a few times in their first six months after leaving. The employee may find out that the new employer or position isn’t what the employer portrayed during the interview. The boss may be a jerk, or the company might be going through a restructuring, and the job they were offered may be changing significantly or possibly eliminated. If you do a simple outreach campaign to employees in the first six months after their departure, you may get a few former employees who are ready to return. Their skills and cultural fit would still be great and there is little to no ramp up time to get them back to being fully productive in their role. All good reasons for looking at good former employees as a viable pool to recruit from.

Excerpt from People Are Your Profit By Mark Mitford, MA, MBA