At Howarths we are advocates of organisations getting into the practice of conducting exit interviews for all staff leavers across the business, no matter what their role or how long they have been with you. It is always worthwhile to try and gain a true insight into the reasons why someone might be leaving and this is an excellent opportunity to do so.
What is an exit interview?
An exit interview is a valuable final stage of your employee’s time with your organisation. It normally follows a consistent format, involving a one to one meeting with your employee. As a rule, these meetings are conducted by the HR department, but for smaller businesses this can be done by anyone with management responsibility, who has been trained in this process.
Why are exit interviews important?
Aside from helping you to ensure an effective offboarding experience, the right exit interview questions and answers can provide you with valuable insights into what you are doing well and which aspects of the employee experience you may need to improve on.
Other benefits of this process could be:
– Identifying the core values that make up your company culture
– Help to identify company strengths
– Improve staff retention by creating an improved recruitment process
– Strengthen employee engagement.
Exit interviews can also help in terms of building a solid employer brand and which in turn helps to attract top talent to your business.
Conducting an exit interview
It is important to conduct an interview as soon as possible after you receive an employee’s resignation and it is important that you prepare in advance of the meeting. This includes scheduling a meeting at the right time to suit both parties, making it clear that the meeting with your employee will be confidential and some companies even chose to share the Exit interview question document with the employee prior to the meeting.
The Do’s…
– Do meet in person
– Do let the employee know why are conducting the exit interview
– Do ensure that the same questions are asked to all employees – consistency is key
– Do let your employee know that they don’t have to answer every question
– Do follow company protocol for any allegations of harassment or discrimination.
And Don’ts…
– Don’t ask them about specific individuals
– Don’t address any ‘office gossip’
– Don’t give them your personal opinion
And remember this is not the time or place to ask an employee to reconsider their resignation – this meeting is designed for listening!
For further advice and support on this topic please do not hesitate to contact a member of our Howarths HR Growth Team on 01274 864 999.
