Best questions to ask in an exit interview process
Discover key exit interview questions that can uncover valuable insights into the employee experience and aid future talent retention.
Every employer should be trying to gather honest feedback on their company culture, processes, and compensation strategies. Armed with this knowledge, they can optimise operations and keep more members of staff happier for longer.
It isn’t, however, always easy getting that honest information from current members of staff, who may feel reluctant to voice their true feelings. So how can you gather those valuable insights into the employee experience?
Look no further than the exit interview process.
In this article, we’ll be looking at some of the best questions you can ask departing employees to get the candid feedback you need to identify areas for improvement.
What is an exit interview?
An exit interview is a discussion between an employer and a member of staff who is preparing to leave the organisation, usually held during their last few days of work.
These sessions are designed to provide an opportunity for employers to ask about the employee’s experiences during their time with the organisation and their decision to leave.
The benefits of exit interviews
Exit interviews are crucial for employers, allowing them to gather valuable information around their workplace environment, tools, resources and management.
Conducting 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 engagement or progression opportunities.
- Reducing staff turnover: In a competitive hiring landscape, improving staff retention should be a priority for organisations. Identifying common themes in departing employees’ decisions to change jobs allows employers to make changes and devise strategies to improve employee morale and ensure top-performing team members remain within the organisation.
- Enhancing employer branding: A comprehensive exit interview process 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.
- Ending relationships on good terms: An exit interview can be a key part of giving employees a voice and encourages an amicable departure, potentially leaving the door open for the employee to return to the organisation in the future.
Best exit interview questions to ask
To get the most out of the exit interview process, employers need to ask questions that help with the gathering of actionable insights.
We’ve outlined some of the top exit interview questions you can use to better understand the experience of workers in your organisation.
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 the 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 here to your family and friends?
If an employee is leaving the company 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 a company’s culture from the perspective of its employees.
Responses to these sorts of questions can vary depending on an employee’s:
- Level of seniority
- Department
- Length of service
You may need to have further follow-ups or prompts for this question if the employee isn’t sure what you’re asking for.
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
- Leadership team
- Work environment
Although one employee’s feedback may not justify major changes, it’s still helpful to be on the lookout for trends and points identified by various employees.
6. How do 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 consider an employee’s time management skills 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, as it causes a lack of employee engagement.
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.
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 employees and reap the benefits of employee training in the future.
9. Did you feel your work was recognised?
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:
- Reward incentives
- Recognition
- Management training
Make sure to follow up to find out why or why not if employees don’t give a detailed enough answer here.
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. How long have you wanted 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 make 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, this shouldn’t be asked with a view to retaining staff. Any attempts to do so should happen before the exit interview takes place.
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.
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.
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.
Use an exit interview template
You don’t need to use all the questions listed above. Pick the ones that make the most sense to your organisation.
However, you should create an exit interview template which uses the same questions for each exit interview, to make sure the process is consistent and you’re gathering actionable feedback.
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.
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.
Be prepared for negative 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.
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 have shared and let them know their feedback is appreciated and taken seriously.