Exit interviews: to know more about departure employees

Exit interviews are used as a mean to better understand the reasons behind employees resigning from the job and jump to the new one. While employees' retention and reducing organizational turnover costs are given importance, more and more employers have started using this method.

The typical exit interview involves the employee's direct supervisor, HR manager, or both, questioning the employee to know his or her motives for leaving the company. The idea is that the insights gained from the exit interview can be used to improve the chances of retaining current employees as well as new hires in the future. The approach sounds great conceptually but while implementing one faces many shortcomings.

This is the primary downfall of relying on the information gathered in an exit interview. It is, by human nature, difficult to tell another individual the reasons for leaving the job. Because of this many resignees give vague or roundabout answers when asked about the reason for resigning from the job.

Tips for Conducting Exit Interviews:

• Have clear, specific and measurable objectives. Do not leave them open ended and general.
• Prepare Well. Treat each exit interview separately. There are no standard questions. Ask questions specific to the resignee, their job and their experience in your business.
• Be prepared. Write down your questions before you start. During the interview if required then you can also add some immediate questions. Don't rely on your memory. Record each and everything answer.
• Use Precise Questions.
• Be Careful of Extreme Responses.
• Focus on what does he find attractive in the new job. Focus on gaining information you can use to improve things.
• Seek positives before negatives. Be as positive as possible. Balance "What's wrong" with "What's right". Avoid presumption.
• Don't ask only for "Why". As they encourage speculation and opinions. To furnish facts start your questions with "how", "what", "when", "which" and "where" ......... even "who".
• Explain the purpose of the Exit interview to the outgoing employee. Otherwise Self-fulfilling prophesies are common in exit interviews.

An exit interview is not the time to convince the employee to stay. Do not use it for this purpose. Once an employee submits a resignation, they are left - emotionally and mentally if not physically.

Thus in all, Exit interviews can provide useful and valuable assistance for managers. Good exit interviews require absolute clarity of objectives, an enhanced level of interview skills and total objectivity from the interviewer. With all these present plus a cooperative, positive, honest and well informed resignee, the exit interview is a sound tool.

CIQ Career Intelligence helps you with exit interviews, outplacement of workers, EAPs Employee Assistance Programs, mediation, career transition, career management & staff redundancies solutions in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, and Melbourne.