Exit interview – what is it and is it worthwhile?

An exit interview, i.e., a final conversation (or departure interview) with an employee who is leaving the organization, is one of the most effective HR tools for diagnosing the causes of turnover. A well-conducted exit interview provides data that can be analyzed to make business decisions and improve talent retention. The results of exit interviews help reduce turnover, improve engagement, and strengthen employer branding.

The process of conducting and analyzing exit interviews – why is it worthwhile?

The advantages of exit interviews include:

• Understanding the real reasons why employees leave – what your intuition tells you may be correct, but it can be difficult to defend in a business conversation. A well-designed exit interview survey (i.e., a fixed set of questions + space for comments) allows you to distinguish individual reasons from systemic trends and stop basing retention decisions on gut feelings.
• Identifying problems in management and organizational culture – the initial interview often reveals the true quality of leadership, consistency of communication, sense of fairness, overload, competency conflicts, and systemic problems. It is worth remembering that the experience of leaving allows you to assess the quality of leadership; in a Gallup survey, only 17% of those leaving rated their supervisor’s response as actively supportive.
• Improvement of HR and onboarding processes – a standardized exit interview questionnaire with the same questions will quickly identify gaps in the employee journey.
• Reducing turnover and recruitment costs – good diagnostics (and this is the role of the exit interview) shortens the path to actions that affect turnover and costs. Importantly, the market often does not collect this data at all. The very implementation of the exit interview process and analysis gives you an information advantage. In a Talent Evolution Group survey, 55% of people were not invited to a formal exit interview, and 38.2% were not asked for feedback when they resigned.
• Building the image of a company that cares about feedback – well-conducted exit interviews close the relationship in a professional manner and reduce the risk of bad reviews, while increasing the chance of success for alumni programs, recommendations, or returning employees (so-called boomerang hires).

How to conduct an exit interview? Survey or face-to-face conversation?

Or maybe it’s worth choosing a hybrid approach? Let’s analyze all the options.

Exit interview in the form of a survey – advantages

• Anonymity promotes honesty – for many employees, a survey is a psychologically safer channel than an exit interview. Especially in organizations without a mature feedback culture, exit interviews are often the first and only time the organization receives honest feedback.
• Easy data comparison – a uniform set of questions allows for the segmentation of results by role, business unit, seniority, or manager.
• Quick analysis of exit interview results – the survey provides immediate material for analyzing the reasons for departures and building cyclical trend reports.

The survey is behind us – so what are the arguments in favor of a face-to-face exit interview?

Final interview conducted in person – advantages

• The opportunity to ask for details – the survey shows “what,” but the exit interview allows you to understand “why now.” What events triggered the decision? 
• Building relationships and the quality of the exit experience – a well-conducted exit interview reduces PR risks, closes the candidate’s life cycle in the organization, and increases the chance that the soon-to-be former employee, despite their decision, will become an ambassador for the company.
• Better understanding of the context of key topics – a Talent Evolution Group survey of 1,500 former employees shows that during exit interviews, employees are willing to talk about the most sensitive areas:
  • salary – 73%,
  • organizational culture – 72%,
  • impact of work on wellbeing – 72%,
  • perception of the employer brand – 67%.

If the goal of the exit interview is to diagnose the organization, the hybrid model works best – first quantitative data (survey), then context (face-to-face conversation).

How to organize data collection during exit interviews?

To facilitate and structure the data collection process, it is worth employing technology. The survey module in HRcode facilitates personalization without losing data comparability, allowing you to maintain a fixed set of questions and supplement it with issues important to a given role or department.

You will see the data obtained in the form of an automatic report or dashboard. Trend analysis, and even heat maps and top reasons for leaving, will help you make decisions and defend them before the management board.

What to ask during an exit interview? List of questions

Here is a set of questions you can use in your exit interview survey or use to create your own structure.

Questions about the reasons for leaving

• What was the main reason for your decision to leave?
• What had the greatest impact on your decision?
• When did you first start thinking about changing jobs?
• Was there anything that could have persuaded you to stay with the company? If so, what specifically? (The value of this question increases when the answers are later compared with the costs of potential interventions.)

Questions about the position and development

• Were your responsibilities clearly defined and consistent with what was presented during the recruitment process?
• To what extent did your role allow you to utilize your skills and experience?
• How would you rate the opportunities for development and promotion within the organization?
• Did you receive sufficient feedback to help you develop?

Questions about atmosphere and management

• How would you rate teamwork?
• How was communication with your supervisor?
• How appreciated did you feel for your work?
• Did the management style in your team promote effective work?

Questions about tools and work organization

• Did you have the right tools and resources to do your job?
• How would you rate the company’s processes and procedures in terms of efficiency?
• What made your daily work most difficult?

The data collected from these questions will help you determine which topics are worth exploring further during a personal interview.

HRcode advice: conduct exit interviews with employees regardless of which party to the contract made the decision to part ways.

What to do with the data after the exit interview? Analysis and reporting

As with any survey, the value of exit interviews lies not in simply collecting responses, but in whether the organization can turn feedback into decisions and actions. Without consistent analysis, exit interviews quickly become nothing more than an archive of comments.

To prevent this from happening, it is worth starting by grouping responses by department and position. Criteria include, for example:

• organizational unit/department,
• role and position level,
• length of service,
• work mode (e.g., on-site, hybrid, remote).

This will allow you to see whether the problem affects the entire organization or a specific area, and whether it is the result of culture, structure, or management style.

The next step is to categorize the reasons for leaving. The data you have collected may reveal reasons such as:

• management and leadership style,
• internal development and mobility,
• remuneration and sense of fairness,
• workload and prioritization,
• culture of cooperation,
• work processes and tools.

As a result, exit interview results begin to show patterns. These are worth examining at quarterly and annual intervals. It is particularly valuable to analyze trends in the main reasons for leaving, identify high-risk segments, and attempt to identify warning signs that will allow you to prevent retention in advance.

Annual reports, in turn, allow you to assess the impact of corrective actions and examine correlations with turnover, absenteeism, and team performance.

Exit Interview and GDPR – what to keep in mind?

An exit interview is a process involving the processing of personal data. Employees should be informed (Article 13 of the GDPR) why we collect data (e.g., to analyze turnover trends, streamline processes, improve the work environment), how it will be used (e.g., in summary reports), and who will have access to raw responses and who will have access to summary, anonymized analyses.

The principle of data minimization (Article 5 of the GDPR) is also extremely important: questions must be relevant and limited to what is necessary. The greatest risk of the GDPR in exit interviews is entering into the realm of excessively private data of a special category. Exit interviews should not lead to the collection and recording of data referred to in Article 9 of the GDPR, i.e., on issues such as:

• health,
• political views,
• union membership,
• sexual orientation.

How can this be put into practice? If an employee discloses, for example, health issues as the reason for leaving, the safe approach is not to record this in notes/surveys, but to code the information under a neutral category (e.g., “personal reasons”) without details.

It is worth introducing instructions for managers (HRBP/People Partner) on what questions are acceptable and how to respond when the conversation turns to topics that should not be discussed.

Exit interview – HRcode summary

• An exit interview is a conversation/survey conducted when an employee leaves the company. With a fixed set of questions and trend analysis, it provides data on the reasons for turnover.
• Conducting an exit interview is already a powerful advantage. In a Talent Evolution Group survey, 55% of people were not invited to a formal exit interview, and 38.2% were not asked for feedback when they resigned, even though this is when employees are willing to talk about sensitive issues.
• A hybrid model of the process yields the best results. First a survey, then an interview, especially for roles that are critical to the organization.
  GDPR compliance must be built into the process, as exit interviews also involve the processing of personal data.
• HRcode supports the organization of the end-to-end process. The survey module allows you to personalize questions without losing data comparability, and automatic reports/dashboards facilitate communication with the business and the conversion of feedback into decisions.

Bibliography:

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/646937/enhancing-employee-exit-experience-worth.aspx;
https://www.talentevolutiongroup.com/talent-insights/blog/truth-behind-talent-retention/;
https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1845651/employers-missing-out-half-uk-employees-not-exit-interview-survey-finds;
https://manage2retain.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/The-State-of-Employee-Retention_2022-23_ResearchReport_hrdotcom_AllSponsors_FINAL.pdf;
https://hrlaw.pl/artykuly/exit-interview-a-przetwarzanie-danych-osobowych-pracownika-.