Exit interviews give organizations a meaningful insight to the grass root level and what concerns them the most. If conducted properly, these interviews can provide consequential information about termination trends and help identify and control persisting issues proactively.
Most companies believe there should be set of questionnaires to ensure a standard process across all parting employees. While standardization can help collate data on various areas of concern, the power of asking open-ended questions cannot be underestimated.
An in-person exit interview aimed at asking open-ended questions to drill down to the main factors driving termination can become a powerful instrument to reveal the hidden stories. Management can leverage this to understand the psyche of the employees and also estimate the overall organizational climate. These target driven exit interviews need expert interviewers asking a set of problem driven questions. It’s more of an art to be able to get the extract the real problem areas from a series of interrelated questions.
The aim is not only to get meaningful information on what triggers termination. Most organizations believe employees who are terminated involuntarily are more candid than the counterparts who take a voluntary termination.
Much of the behavior can be explained by the age old practice of not burning the bridges when you leave. A well structured exit interview can help identify blind spots and take appropriate action while there is still time.
Shweta – Great post. One of the best questions I’ve heard asked during an exit interview is “what will you miss the most about our organization?” This really helped companies to understand key elements of the employee value proposition so they can strengthen their relationships with current employees.
One of the most powerful things that I have seen is to do follow up a few months after the person has left. It should be long enough that the person can have some perspective on the things that they miss from the old employer and still during the honeymoon of the new employer. So three to six months feels about right for that.
Once they are settled in their new place of employment. Former employees may feel more at ease about their feedback to be more direct and honest.