An exit interview is a meeting with an employee who resigned to understand their reasons for leaving and gain knowledge about their employee experience.
What Is the Purpose of an Exit Interview?
The purpose of an exit interview is to gather information on what the organization could improve on or keep doing to retain and attract new and current employees.
More specifically, exit interviews can help uncover issues relating to HR, gain insight on the leadership style of managers, understand the motivation of employees, and learn more about HR benchmarks at other organizations, for example.
Why Are Exit Interviews Important?
Exit interviews are important to help organizations improve their management practices and increase employee retention. They also provide a good opportunity to end the relationship with an employee on good terms and make them ambassadors.
What Are the Benefits of Exit Interviews?
Benefits of exit interviews typically include:
- Ending the employment on good terms
- Helping set up an orderly departure
- Providing a good opportunity for the employees to give their honest opinion and feedback
- Learning why an employee decided to the leave the company
How to Conduct an Exit Interview?
The steps to conduct an exit interview typically include:
- Scheduling the meeting between the employee and an HR representative
- Encouraging honesty during the meeting
- Ensuring confidentiality
- Planning questions to ask
- Expressing gratitude towards the feedback of the employee
- Implementing actions based on the feedback received
What Questions Should You Ask During an Exit Interview?
Examples of questions to ask during an exit interview include:
- Why did you choose to leave the company?
- What position did you accept?
- Do you think your manager was fair?
- Did you receive enough feedback?
- Were your objectives clear?
- What was your favorite thing about your job?
- What was your least favorite thing about your job?
- Would you refer a friend to come work at our company?
- How can we improve our HR practices?
- Did we provide enough training?
- Did you feel valued?
- What conditions were you offered?
What Are Best Practices for Exit Interviews?
Best practices for exit interviews include:
- Scheduling the interview a week in advance
- Conducting the interview on the last day of the employee
- Choosing a confidential and comfortable location
- Not having the direct manager of the employee doing the exit interview
- Making the interview last no longer than 60 minutes
- Taking actions based on the feedback given by the employee
