What is an exit interview?
An exit interview is a survey conducted with an employee or individual that is leaving a company. It's aim is to determine what organisational factors influenced the person’s decision to leave, which could then be changed or improved to raise company performance and lower turnover. Exit interviews also give insights into what the company is doing well.
What sorts of questions are asked in an exit interview survey?
Some examples of typical question areas include:
- Why are you leaving the company?
- What could the company do better?
- What is your opinion of management?
- What is your opinion of the company culture?
Are exit interviews important?
Exit interviews are incredibly valuable as a means to gain real insights into the inner workings of a company. A leaving employee, compared to a continuing employee, will provide honest and real feedback as they have little to lose. They also often want to vent on the reasons that led them to go elsewhere. A Harvard Business Review study showed that 75% of companies conduct exit interviews.
Are exit interviews required by law?
No, an exit interview isn't required by law. Employers do not have to conduct them, and employees are not required to complete them, unless they have signed an employment contract that specifically states otherwise.
What are the benefits of exit interviews?
Lower turnover
One of the main benefits of lowering turnover is in reducing costs. According to research carried out by Gallup, "The cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee's annual salary". Other research in 2014 by Oxford Economics and Enum found that the average cost of turnover per employee (earning £25,000 a year or more) is £30,614. These facts show that turnover costs are significant, and reducing them can free up large amounts of capital for investment or increased profitability. As well as cost saving, lowering turnover also helps to maintain service levels, productivity and morale within the company.
Increased productivity and engagement
The results of exit interviews can be used to drive change and improve processes in the company, leading to a happier and more productive workforce. This can also improve employee engagement, which can lead to more innovation from employees.
Guage the effectiveness of management
Exit interview results can help the company to identify and support positive managers as well as identify toxic ones.
Retain valued employees
Positive changes brought on by exit interview findings will reduce the likelihood of top performers deciding to leave.
Learn about competitors
Companies can take the opportunity to ask leaving employees about the salary and benefits at the company they are moving to, in order to determine whether their own offerings are competitive.
Positive offboarding
Exit interviews show leaving employees that the company can accept criticism and is committed to improvement. This leaves a good lasting impression and creates the possibility of the employee returning or recommending the company to others.
Handle grievances privately
A disgruntled employee can be given the opportunity to vent their frustrations and grievances privately to the company, which could satisfy them enough to not feel the need to do so publicly, preserving the company’s reputation.
How and when to conduct an exit interview?
An exit interview survey can be conducted face-to-face with a member of HR, or can be simply sent to the employee for their completion. It's a quicker and easier process for both HR and the employee to simply send out a survey, which is likely to result in a higher participation rate. If conducting the exit interview face-to-face it's recommended to still work from a standardised survey questionnaire in order to ensure key topics are covered and the results can be easily compared between employees.
An exit interview survey should be sent out or conducted as soon as possible in order to give the employee maximum opportunity to complete it. The employee is likely to be busy with handing over work and tying up loose ends on top of their usual responsibilities. The employee is also likely to become less engaged as they get towards their leaving date, which may impact the quality of their feedback.
Should exit interviews be conducted with terminated employees?
Although this is debatable, we don’t believe it’s useful to gather opinions from employees who are leaving involuntarily. Reasons include:
- Terminated employees are often upset or angry at their termination and can be overly negative in their feedback.
- They are unlikely to want to participate in an exit interview. This means if they do complete a survey, it could be completed quickly and not thoughtfully or accurately.
- The opinions of terminated employees are of less importance than those of valued employees.
- Employees who are leaving voluntarily are likely to have strong reasons for doing so, which can highlight company weaknesses. The same can’t be said for those leaving involuntarily.
In conclusion, including the results of exit interviews from terminated employees can skew overall results and harm the quality of data-driven insights.
Analysing the results of exit interviews
By using the same exit interview survey for all employees, you will collect a standardised set of results data for comparison. If answers consistently show the same sorts of criticisms for particular questions, this strong consensus can act a signal that change is required. When change is implemented, exit interview results can then be compared in future to see if the changes have had the desired effects and reduced criticism from leavers.
The results and analysis of exit interviews should be shared with senior management to instigate the organisational changes that they imply.
Can software help to manage the exit interview process?
Yes, good specific exit interview software like ExitAdmin can make designing, sending out, tracking, and storing exit interview surveys much easier. Our software also automatically presents the results of all exit interviews in charts and tables, which can be filtered to show insights from different employee demographics and time periods. If you feel our software could be useful to your organisation, please request an online no-obligation demo so you can see it in action.