Exit Interview Questions for Employees That Work

Do you want frank comments about your company’s culture, morale, management, and overall operations? Don’t rely on your current personnel to provide you with this information. The desire to keep their job may affect their responses.

Instead, pay attention to the employees who are departing. They stand to gain nothing and have nothing to lose.

Is it Really Important to Ask Exit Interview Questions to Employees?

While negative feedback might be difficult to accept, employees who are prepared to offer their true opinions can be essential tools for your company’s improvement. After all, the goal of an exit interview is to collect candid feedback that your company can use to make improvements and improve the employee experience.

Unfortunately…

Poor exit interview questions and methods frequently obstruct this open and honest discussion. As a result, businesses are missing out on opportunities to improve employee satisfaction and retention. However, if you ask the right questions and approach the conversation correctly, you can uncover nuggets of helpful information in an employee’s responses.

Exit Interview Questions You Should Ask

During an exit interview, the questions you ask should elicit honest and detailed responses from the employee. Regardless of the reasons underlying the employee’s leave, ask them with an open mind, and don’t be afraid to ask follow-up questions for clarification. RisePath enlists some suggestions for your exit interview questions template for employees. This collection of exit interview questions has shown to be the most effective.

Now it’s time for the 15 Exit Interview Questions…

Reasons for Departure

1. Why did you decide to start looking for a new job?
2. What would you alter about the organisation if you had the chance?
3. Have you spoken to anyone else at the company about your concerns?

Experience

1. Were your job objectives and responsibilities crystal apparent to you?
2. Did you feel like you had all you needed to accomplish your best work here?
3. How did you feel about the way you were managed?
4. Did your boss and co-workers provide you with regular, constructive feedback?
5. What features or programmes did you think the organisation lacked?
6. What would you say our company’s culture is like?
7. What was your favourite aspect of working here?
8. Is there anything we could have done differently to persuade you to stay?

Looking Forward

1. What do you think the biggest dangers are for our company?
2. What advice would you provide to your colleagues? To the board of directors?
3. What changes would you make to make this a better place to work?
4. Would you return to work here if the opportunity arose?
5. Would you advise others to apply for this position?

The Exit Interview: How to Do It

Whether you ask all of these questions or just a few, it’s critical to approach exit interviews with the correct mindset and a clear plan of action. Exit interviews, according to a review, rely on two factors to be successful:

1. The employees’ candour and honesty
2. The willingness of the company to change

Let’s start with honesty. For a variety of reasons, employees who leave your company may be unable to articulate their actual feelings. Employees who leave on a bad note may be hesitant to provide feedback since they have a “good riddance” mentality. Others may be concerned about severing ties with past bosses. Are they really going to tell you they’re leaving because they don’t like their boss? Most likely not, because they’re looking for references.

One of RisePath‘s upper managers gave us some of her greatest advice for conducting such interviews:

1. Make the encounter as enjoyable as you can.
2. The candidate should have the impression that you are focused on their personal development rather than the company’s.
3. Assist the interviewee in feeling entirely at ease and encouraged to give honest feedback without fear of consequence.
4. Be thankful for the viewpoint and the connection. This is not a departure interview for the professional relationship, despite the fact that it is an exit interview. You never know who you’re going to work with next.
5. For the time being, treat them as if they are an expert in your field. Listen with sincerity.

It’s up to you and your company to take action once you’ve set the correct tone and encouraged candid employee feedback. When asked for instances of specific actions done as a result of a departure interview, fewer than one-third of CEOs could come up with one, according to a survey. As a result, “about two-thirds of existing initiatives appear to be primarily talk with no constructive follow-up,” according to the report.

While it may not matter to past employees what measures your firm took or did not take in response to their criticism, it very certainly does to current employees. If a person leaves your firm due to a specific issue (toxic culture, lack of learning and development chances, non-challenging work, etc.), it’s likely that another employee who remains is also unhappy. It’ll only be a matter of time before the employee goes, after giving their reasoning to their coworkers, unless you address these issues. If your company develops a reputation for being careless, you may find yourself trapped in a cycle of employee churn.

Listen carefully during exit interviews, study the outcomes, and search for tendencies to break the cycle and enhance retention. Is this anything that several people have complained about? Make a note of it and talk to your present staff about how you might improve their experience.

Conclusion

Employee exit interviews were created to be a useful tool for helping businesses improve. You can rediscover the actual worth of a great interview by asking strategic questions and approaching people with the proper attitude. To get the most out of your departure interview, try some of these questions next time.