12 Exit interview questions you need to ask employees
Discover key exit interview questions that can uncover valuable insights into the employee experience and aid future talent retention.
Every employer wants honest feedback concerning their company culture, processes and compensation strategies that helps them optimise their operations. However, getting that information from existing members of staff can be tricky, with employees often reluctant to voice their true feelings.
So, how exactly can you gather insights into the employee experience you need to drive improvements across your organisation? Look no further than the exit interview process.
In this article, we’ll be looking at the questions you can ask departing employees to get candid feedback you can use to identify areas for improvement.
What is an exit interview?
An exit interview is a discussion between an employer and an employee who is preparing to leave the organisation, usually held during their last few days of work. These sessions provide an opportunity for employers to ask employees about their decision to leave and better understand their experience at the organisation.
Why are exit interview important?
Exit interviews are crucial for employers, allowing them to gather valuable information around their workplace environment, tools, resources and management. In addition to this, an exit interview can help ensure that the relationship ends amicably, leaving the door open for the employee to return to the organisation in the future.
The benefits of conducting exit interviews
Hosting exit interviews with departing employees can provide several specific benefits to employers, including:
- Understanding employee sentiments: Exit interviews help employers understand the reasons why employees are leaving their organisation, such as the pursuit of a better work-life balance, salary or a lack of progression opportunities.
- Reducing staff turnover: Identifying common themes in employee’s decision to change jobs allows employers to devise strategies to improve employee morale and ensure top-performing team members remain within the organisation.
- Enhancing employer branding: A comprehensive exit interview provides employers with the insights they need to improve the experience they offer current and future employees, strengthening employer branding and aiding future talent attraction in the process.
Key questions for exit interviews that can help drive continuous improvement
To get the most out of the exit interview process, employers need to ask questions that help with the gathering of actionable insights. Below we’ve outlined exit interview questions you can use to better understand the experience of workers in your organisation.
1. Why are you leaving?
This is the foundation of all exit interviews and a great entry point for an honest conversation. How the employee answers this question will significantly influence on rest of the interview.
Sometimes this question alone may be enough for employees to open up. However, other employees may be more reserved in their responses and need further prompting.
2. Would you recommend working for this organisation to your family and friends? Why/Why not?
If an employee is leaving the organisation on good terms, they’ll likely answer ‘yes’ to this question. Alternatively, if the circumstances are not favourable, and the employee is leaving on bad terms, they’re much less likely to recommend the organisation as a place to work.
In either case, the most important thing here is to prompt employees to expand on the reasoning behind their answers. Getting employees to do so will provide valuable insights into the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses as an employer, both of which are valuable when it comes to ensuring an excellent employee experience in future.
3. How would you describe the culture of our organisation?
There’s an incredible amount of value in obtaining feedback on an organisation’s culture from the perspective of its employees. Remember, responses to these sorts of questions can vary depending on an employee’s:
- Level of seniority
- Department
- Length of service
4. What would you change about your job?
Instead of asking employees what they disliked about their role, this is a less confrontational and more constructive way of phrasing the question. Their suggestions here can help identify if there are feasible ways to improve this person’s role. It may be that the workload is too heavy, doesn’t match the job description, or there wasn’t room for progression.
In instances where an employee is reluctant to answer questions on this subject, it may be useful for the interviewer to use more relatable language. For example, asking ‘We all have things we’d like to change about our jobs. What would you change?’.
5. What would you change about the organisation?
Answers to this question can provide valuable insights into an organisation’s training, processes, culture and leadership team. Although one employee’s feedback may not justify major changes, it’s helpful to be on the lookout for trends and points identified by various employees.
6. How did you feel about your workload?
This question can help to establish if the workload for a particular role is too heavy and that there is a need to refine processes or even hire additional members of staff. Employers should take an employee’s time management skills into account when listening to their feedback. Where one may feel overwhelmed, another with better time management skills may cope fine.
7. What opportunities were you given to develop in your role?
A lack of career growth opportunities is consistently among the top reasons people leave their jobs. If an employee feels there weren’t enough opportunities available to them, exit interviews allow employers to find out what development would look like for them. For example, for some, this could relate to gaining a promotion, or for others simply being trained to learn new skills.
8. Did you feel you were given adequate training for the job? Why/why not?
This is a particularly important question for employees leaving within six months of starting a role. Employers need to ensure that they give employees every opportunity to flourish through structured training and equipping them with the right tools.
Answers to this question can help employers improve onboarding for new employers by providing insights into how their current process falls short.
9. Did you feel your work was recognised? Why/why not?
Employees often leave their jobs due to a lack of recognition or simply feeling underappreciated for the work they do. By uncovering this as a theme during exit interviews, employers can look to resolve these issues with new reward incentives, recognition and management training.
10. How was your relationship with your manager?
Research from Gallup shows that one in two employees leave their job because of their manager at some point in their career. While employees may feel uncomfortable answering this question, it’s important to reiterate that their feedback won’t affect their reference and will be anonymous.
To get the employee to open up more, an interviewer can normalise the question by saying ‘No matter who leaves the company, we always ask for feedback on their manager, including employees that have left my team’.
11. For how long have you been wanting to leave?
This question can help you understand the journey an employee has been on when they decide to leave. You might find that they have considered leaving previously but something kept them around longer.
If an employee has been thinking about leaving for a long time, you’ll want to understand why management didn’t pick up on this and what stopped them leaving sooner. You may uncover that it has been a quick decision triggered by specific organisational changes.
12. What could have been done differently to have made you stay?
This question can help employees summarise their overarching points and provide insights into how the organisation can look to retain talent moving forward. However, it shouldn’t be asked with a view to retaining staff. Any attempts to do so should happen before the exit interview takes place.
7 best practices for conducting exit interviews
While asking the right questions is pivotal to successful exit interviews, there are other elements that employers should consider during this process.
1. Communicate the purpose of the interview
Exit interviews can be uncomfortable for departing members of staff, so it’s important to reassure them that its purpose is to understand their motivations for leaving. Letting interviewees know that their feedback and honesty will be used to make positive changes within the organisation can also help to ensure they are engaged throughout.
2. Select the right person to conduct the interview
If an employee is leaving their role due to conflict with their manager, that same manager conducting the exit interview is an issue. As a result, a more senior manager or HR representative is better placed to conduct these interviews, particularly those with the power to suggest changes based on the feedback received.
3. Ask open-ended questions
Open-ended questions give employees the space to express their opinions and provide relevant and useful feedback. Asking suggestive questions that push the employee to respond in a certain way can damage the quality of the insights employers receive.
4. Book in a reasonable amount of time
An exit interview shouldn’t consist of an overwhelming amount of questions for employees. These sessions, whether conducted in-person or online, should ideally last between 30 minutes and an hour.
5. Document the conversation
Documenting an exit interview is vital to ensuring the insights gathered can be used to improve the employee experience moving forward. This should be done either by taking notes or, with the employees’ permission, recording the interview and transcribing it at a later stage.
6. Be prepared for negatives responses
It’s important to acknowledge that not all feedback from an exit interview will be positive from an employer’s perspective. As a result, the interviewer should be prepared to receive feedback that is difficult to hear and avoid being overly defensive in their responses.
7. End the interview positively
Regardless of how the employee has answered your questions, be sure to thank them for their time and the insights they’ve shared and let them know their feedback is appreciated and taken seriously.