Exit interview: tips, best practices, and benefits
Learn why you should conduct exit interviews, ask questions, use best practices, and use planning tips in this guide from SurveyMonkey.
Offboarding is a crucial part of the employee lifecycle. Exit interviews play a vital role in the offboarding process by adding value to an employee's departure from a company.
According to research from SHRM, only 54% of organizations conduct exit interviews. In this article, we’ll share why more companies should conduct exit interviews, share interview best practices to try, and provide example questions to ask departing team members.
What is an exit interview?
An exit interview is when an employer hosts an informative interview with an employee before they leave the company. In an exit interview, HR professionals ask why the employee is leaving, what could have made them stay, and what improvements they recommend for the company.
The offboarding process typically consists of announcing the employee’s departure, transferring knowledge to the team, revoking access to company accounts, gathering company equipment, and conducting an exit interview.
As the final step in the offboarding process, the exit interview helps HR teams better understand a departing employee’s motivations and thoughts on the company. Additionally, it ensures the relationship with the employee ends on good terms.
Why are exit interviews important?
Exit interviews bring a wealth of knowledge to help you understand and improve your employee experience (EX), company culture, and more.
Find and close employee experience gaps
As mentioned, exit interviews allow you to find and close employee experience gaps by gathering feedback from departing employees. This feedback can be helpful when implementing new initiatives or making changes to your employee engagement program. Asking the departing employee about what their favorite and least favorite parts of the employee experience at your company helps you determine what areas may need improvement.
For instance, a departing employee may share that they never felt cohesion between departments, making it harder to connect with colleagues outside their team. This may alert your company to emphasize cross-team collaboration and initiate better communication channels for coworkers.
Another reason to conduct exit interviews is to help maintain the employer brand. When employees leave your company, they bring with them their perception of it, whether positive or negative. By interviewing the employees before they depart, you can gather honest feedback about what they liked and didn’t like about your organization and identify any areas of concern that could affect your employer's reputation.
An example of this is if an employee said in an exit interview that they faced obstacles in their career development at your organization. After hearing this, you could take the time to address their feelings to prevent negative word-of-mouth. Use exit interviews as opportunities to better your organization for the sake of current and future employees.
Improve retention and reduce employee churn
Improving retention and reducing employee churn are both great reasons to take the time and effort to conduct exit interviews. Exit interviews help improve retention by calling attention to areas where employees may not be satisfied. Odds are that if one employee isn’t happy with a particular aspect of the organization, there are others who feel the same way.
Take departing employees’ feedback and consider that other employees may be feeling similarly. You can reduce employee churn and improve retention rates by utilizing candid feedback from these interviews to make changes.
Maintain a good relationship with the departing employee
Lastly, you always want to maintain a positive relationship with a departing employee. This goes back to the employee’s perception of your organization and protecting your employer reputation. You want to ensure departing employees feel heard and valued for their time at your company.
Use the interview to gauge the employee's feelings about your company and ensure you leave the conversation well. Your goal is to create advocates out of departing employees. This means, you will need to ensure that they are leaving on good terms rather than out of disappointment with your organization.
How to conduct an exit interview
How should you run an exit interview for your organization? We’ll walk through the process step-by-step to ensure you feel confident integrating this into your employee offboarding process.
To prepare for the exit interview, you will need to:
- Determine who will execute the interview: Typically, you will ask someone other than the departing employee’s direct manager to conduct the exit interview. This can be a member of the HR team or a third-party source. An HR representative or third-party source will execute the exit interview to improve company performance.
- Set when and where the exit interview will happen: Next, you must schedule the interview. Exit interviews can be completed in person or remotely via video conferencing like Zoom. We recommend scheduling at least a week in advance and conducting the interview on the last day of employment.
- Decide what to ask during the interview: When you schedule the exit interview, include an exit interview survey or list of questions for the interview. This will help the departing employee prepare for the interview and allow the interviewer to guide the conversation better. In the next section, we will share several sample exit interview questions to help you collect the feedback you need from departing employees.
During the interview:
- Keep it brief: An exit interview is typically on the departing employee’s last day of employment. Take the time you need to get through your questions with the employee, but try to keep it brief and respect their time.
- Keep things positive: When an employee voluntarily chooses to leave a company, it may be difficult to keep a positive mindset. Staying positive and professional is essential for conducting a good exit interview. Don’t make any unprofessional comments or have a negative attitude. The departing employee is taking time from their last day at your company to complete the exit interview.
Exit interview questions
Perhaps the most difficult part of conducting an exit interview is determining what questions to ask departing employees. There are hundreds of questions you could ask, but you’ll need to keep it to a reasonable number.
Here are eight top sample exit interview questions HR professionals can use as inspiration:
- Why are you leaving your current position? In an exit interview, it's crucial to ask departing employees what drove them to look for new opportunities. Their answers could reveal issues like non-competitive compensation or a toxic work environment, which HR needs to address to prevent further resignations.
- What did you dislike most about your job? Ask what they didn’t like about their role to improve future hires and make the job more enjoyable. Evaluate roadblocks and challenges to consider necessary changes. This feedback is invaluable for enhancing the experience of future employees in the same role.
- Did you feel valued and recognized within the company? If the departing employee answers "No" to this question, it's a problem. Employees feeling valued and recognized is crucial for employee engagement. If they don't feel appreciated, they are likely to be disengaged and less productive. Follow up with the question: "How could [company] have made you feel more valued and recognized during your time working?" This will help you improve the employee recognition program to ensure employees know their value.
- What did you like most about your job? This question focuses on the positive aspects of the departing employee’s job. Understanding which aspects of the job most interested them can help you determine what to emphasize in the job listing to attract qualified candidates.
- What would you like to see changed and/or improved upon at [company] in the future? This question allows departing employees to share feedback on improvement opportunities for the organization. Encourage honest and valuable feedback here, then use the feedback to improve company processes, policy, or workflow.
- Do you feel your opinions and input were listened to and acted on throughout your time at [company]? This question addresses how well your company takes and acts on employee feedback. The employee’s answer can help indicate how well leadership teams are using the feedback they receive from employees. If you consistently receive a negative response to this question, you might need to make adjustments to your feedback loop.
- In a typical workweek, how often did you feel stressed at work? Employee stress is never a good sign for employers. Workplace stress often leads to employee burnout and lower productivity levels. Stress can be due to a variety of factors. In fact, 39% of U.S. workers consider workload as the main cause of workplace stress. Asking this question will help you understand how to make the role less stressful for the next employee that fills it. You can gauge how stress impacted the departing employee’s work experience at your company and use this knowledge to improve workplace stress for other employees.
- How would you describe our corporate culture? Company culture is highly important to modern companies because it impacts employee engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity levels. Asking how a departing employee would describe your organization’s culture will inform you if your company’s values and goals are being lived out. You can learn what areas your company culture excels in and areas with room for improvement.
Open-ended questions allow departing employees to share their true thoughts, opinions, and experiences. This feedback can then be used by your team to enhance employee experience, reduce churn, and maintain the employer brand.
Exit interview best practices
Before you begin conducting exit interviews for your organization, let’s touch on some exit interview best practices you should follow for the best results. These best practices include:
- Ensure confidentiality: Confidentiality is important for employees, especially when sharing honest feedback about an organization they are leaving. They may have critical feedback that they will only feel comfortable sharing if promised confidentiality.
- Select the right candidates: Conduct exit interviews only for employees who have resigned voluntarily. Use a separate offboarding process for layoffs and dismissals. Conduct exit interviews with all resigning employees, not just top performers or long-time employees. You’ll collect more comprehensive feedback and allow everyone to be heard.
- Set expectations and explain the process: Inform interview participants of the purpose of the interview and how you plan to use their feedback. Encourage them to share honest feedback.
- Share and review exit interview data with the stakeholders: Look for trends and experience gaps in your interview’s responses. Compare this data to employee exit survey responses, performance reviews, or other internal metrics. Observe any roadblocks other employees may face and act on feedback to make changes.
- Continuously improve your exit interview process: Ask employees how you can improve the exit interview process. Implement feedback and make adjustments periodically to improve your onboarding process for employees.
Better offboarding for all with SurveyMonkey
Exit interviews are employee lifecycle. Exit interviews and exit interview surveys are crucial methods for collecting feedback and building better offboarding processes that benefit you and your employees.
Learn how SurveyMonkey can help you improve your exit interviews today.
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