INTRODUCTION

Exit Interview

An exit interview is a survey conducted with an individual who is separating from an

organization or relationship. Most commonly, this occurs between an employee and

an organization, a student and an educational institution, or a member and an

association. An exit interview is the most accurate instrument in assessing the issues

that drive an individual to leave an organization. Few other tools illustrate why the

individual is separating, what he or she valued while at the organization, and what

aspects of the organization need improvement in order to increase employee

engagement, performance, and loyalty. An organization can use the information

gained from an exit interview to assess what should be improved, changed, or remain

intact. More so, an organization can use the results from exit interviews to reduce

employee, student, or member turnover and increase productivity and engagement,

thus reducing the high costs associated with turnover. Some examples of the value of

conducting exit interviews include shortening the recruiting and hiring process,

reducing absenteeism, improving innovation, sustaining performance, and reducing

possible litigation if issues mentioned in the exit interview are addressed. It is

important for each organization to customize its own exit interview in order to

maintain the highest levels of survey validity and reliability.

The exit interview fits into the separation stage of the employee life cycle (ELC). This

stage, the last one of the ELC, spans from the moment an employee becomes

disengaged until his or her departure from the organization. This is the key time that

an exit interview should be administered because the employee’s feelings regarding

his or her departure are fresh in mind. An off-boarding process allows both the

employer and employee to properly close the existing relationship so that company

materials are collected, administrative forms are completed, knowledge base and

projects are transferred or documented, feedback and insights are gathered through

exit interviews, and any loose ends are resolved. This process could be long and

arduous but with new exit interview management systems, all tasks and activities can

be automated to ensure nothing has been missed while saving time and money.

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Exit interview in business

Exit interviews in business are focused on employees that are leaving a company or

when employees have completed a significant project. The purpose of this exit

interview is to glean feedback from employees in order to improve aspects of the

organization, better retain employees, and reduce turnover. During this interview

employees will be asked why they are leaving, what specifically influenced their

decision to leave, whether or not they are going to another company and what that

company they are going to offers that their current company does not. Businesses can

use this information to better align their HR strategy with what employees look for in

an organization and enact programs and practices that will influence top talent to stay

at the organization.

In the past, exit interview data was being collected by the organization but not much

was being done in terms of interpreting the data and making it actionable. Today there

are metrics, analytics, benchmarks, and best practices that help organizations make

sense of and use the data towards proactive organizational retention programs.

Recently an array of exit interview software has been developed and popularized.

These programs facilitate and streamline the employee separation process, allow

surveys to be completed via the web, make separation and retention trends easy to

identify, and amass actionable data which can increase organizational effectiveness

and productivity. Additionally, some of these programs make it possible to quantify

data gleaned from the surveys to more accurately understand why employees are

leaving the organization.

Common Exit Interview Questions

Common questions include reasons for leaving, job satisfaction, frustrations, and

feedback concerning company policies or procedures. Questions may relate to the

work environment, supervisors, compensation, the work itself, and the company

culture.

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Examples:

"What are your main reasons for leaving?"

"What did you like most/least about the organization?"

"What, if improved, would have caused you to stay at the organization?"

"Would you recommend the organization to others as a good place to

work/study/join?"

Exit Interview In education

Exit interviews in education are conducted with students who have graduated from

an educational institution. These interviews are meant to gather information about

students’ experience while attending that institution, what they benefited from, what

was missing, and what could be improved to enhance the experience of the next

generation of students who attend that institution. This type of interview can also

point to areas in which the institution should invest more or less resources to enhance

a student’s learning and development experience.

Exit interview in Associations

Exit interviews in associations are administered to members who decide to end

membership with an association. These interviews provide feedback to an association

regarding what caused the member to leave, what can be improved, and how

resources can better be allocated.

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Methods of exit interview with advantages and disadvantages

1. Voice - In-Person or Telephone

Pros:

Capture complex ideas through follow-up questioning and tone indications

Probe, clarify and ask for examples

Structured question order

Administered by a professional

Cons

Possible interviewer bias (especially if internal)

Possible interviewee bias (especially if internal)

Most expensive option – interviewer time

Difficult for employee to verbalize constructive critique, particularly face-to-

face

Low participation for telephone exit interviews due to caller ID and voice mail

Information must be entered into tracking system for trending

A voice interview can be conducted by an internal agent (i.e. an HR

department) or an external agent (i.e. HR exit interview consulting firm).

2. Paper

Pros

Allows convenience for those who do not have easy access to the internet

Ensures total anonymity

Cons

Takes longer to receive feedback

Concern for literacy of respondent

Information must be entered into tracking system for trending

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Web - Exit Interview Management Systems

Pros

High reliability, flexibility and privacy, as it is completed by the respondent

Exit interview is easily accessible at the convenience of the respondent

Feedback is received quickly

Low administration cost

Data automatically tracked

Reporting information accessible in real time

Cons

Not accessible to those who do not have internet

Concern for literacy of respondent

Concern for technical knowledge of respondent

3. IVR (teleprompt)

Pros

Accessible by average phone

Cons

Has fallen out of favor due to the cost effectiveness of web based options that

yield data at similar or higher quality

Difficult to get rich data

Difficult to adjust or change

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Why Is Employee Retention Important?

Employee Retention is vitally important in sustaining an effective workforce as well

as being cost effective to a company’s bottom line.

Well trained, experienced employees are the foundation to any workforce. Employee

turnover costs companies thousands of dollars in lost productivity, replacement costs

in the hiring, and training of new employees. Reduced levels of customer service

within services industries can also be an outcome. Often, employees leave with years

of knowledge and experience that simply can’t be easily replaced overnight.

Additionally, morale suffers when the workforce lacks stability and continuity, which

may in turn cause more exits.

Why Conduct Exit Interviews?

Performing Exit Interviews allow the company to:

Identify negative influencers of turnover including job factors, company

practices, programs, policies, and relationships.

Pinpoint specific issues or events contributing to turnover/ retention

Identify drivers of employee retention

Identify areas for improvement of retention

Track trends over time

Provide sufficient information and insight to create solutions around issues

identified through the Exit Interview process

What Questions Are Typically Included?

- Reason(s) for leaving

- Current employment status/ Information on current job/ Salary differential

- Method used to find a new job

- Influencers in accepting new position

- Most liked aspect of their former job

- Biggest challenges of their former job

- Suggestions for improvement

- Manager-related questions

- Diversity and inclusion-related questions

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- Obstacles for success in former position

- Circumstances under which they would return

- Closed-ended question which are key to:

• Track and monitor trends over time

• Compare perceptions of exited employees with current employees

Employee Turnover

 Employee Turnover or staff turnover or labour turnover is the rate at which

an employer gains and losses employees. Simple ways to describe it are "how long

employees tend to stay" or "the rate of traffic through the revolving door". Turnover is

measured for individual companies and for their industry as a whole. If an employer is

said to have a high turnover relative to its competitors, it means that employees of that

company have a shorter average tenure than those of other companies in the same

industry. High turnover may be harmful to a company's productivity if skilled workers

are often leaving and the worker population contains a high percentage of novice

workers.

Employee turnover is the process of replacing one worker with another for any

reason. A turnover rate is the percentage of employees that a company must replace

within a given time period. This rate is a concern to most companies because

employee turnover can be a costly expense, especially for lower-paying jobs, which

typically have the highest turnover rates. Having an employee leave a company, either

because of his or her choice or after being fired or otherwise let go, might require

various administrative tasks to be performed and severance pay or other payments

made to the employee. Replacing the employee might require such things as

advertising the open position, using a so-called head-hunter or other service to find

potential job candidates, bringing in candidates for interviews and eventually training

the new employee.

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Importance to Businesses

Companies often take a deep interest in their employee turnover rates because

replacing workers can be a costly part of doing business. When a company must

replace a worker, it incurs direct and indirect expenses. All of the tasks that must be

performed during the process cost money, take time or do both. In addition, there can

be a loss of productivity during the time after the former employee leaves and the new

employee has been fully trained. For some companies, replacing employees also

could make it difficult to retain clients or customers with whom those employees

worked.

Types of staff turnover

Involuntary

Involuntary turnover occurs when employers terminate an employee or ask an

employee to resign. The latter may ultimately be considered voluntary turnover;

however, the initial decision is to effect an involuntary turnover. When employees are

terminated for violating workplace policies, poor performance or business slowdown,

the departure is considered involuntarily. Some instances of involuntary turnover may

cause trepidation among remaining employees. Employees who witness regular

involuntary turnover or terminations might be concerned about their own job security.

Other employee terminations may come as a relief to remaining employees, whose

morale and productivity suffer when poor performers affect the workplace climate.

Voluntary

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Voluntary turnover occurs when employees leave of their own volition. Employees

who resign, retire or simply leave the organization for other reasons are counted in

turnover analyses as voluntary turnover. Attrition is often part of the turnover

analysis. Human resources experts define attrition as a decrease in the workforce for

voluntary departures. The difference between attrition and voluntary turnover is that

employers do not replace employees who leave by virtue of attrition. While some

instances of voluntary turnover may occur because employees are dissatisfied, a

number of employees resign for reasons unrelated to working conditions. Examples of

voluntary turnover for non work-related reasons are employees who leave their jobs to

travel with spouses, or students who leave the workplace to return to school.

THE POST-TURNOVER SURVEY

Many organizations employ a post-turnover survey as a substitute for, or as a

complement to, the conventional exit interview. Several advantages are cited for the

use of questionnaires. The lapse of time will encourage former employees to make

more rational and honest assessments of the employer and supervisor particularly if

offering opinions from the security of a new position. If surveys are conducted

anonymously, both the employer and the employee are relieved of the pressure of a

face-to-face confrontation. The use of questionnaires enables the organization to

sample consistently rather than depend on evidence produced by the sporadic

statements of individual employees (Your- man, 1965). An effective cover letter can

promote participation by stressing the survey objectives as improved employee

performance and job satisfaction and by underscoring the anonymity or

confidentiality of the responses.

The issue of exit interview versus post-turnover survey comes down to a choice

between objectivity of data versus response rate. The effective design of the

questionnaire in terms of choice of questions, layout, and language; the ease of

completion and minimizing of time commitment; and the identification of the former

employee with the objectives of the survey can help to maximize response. Many

organizations now rely completely on the survey method and have cancelled exit

interview programs. Skilled interviewers, able to persuade departing employees to

talk honestly about their experiences and decision to leave, are not always available.

The unwillingness or inability of personnel managers to follow-up on information

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received in the interview and to communicate the findings to management

compromises the entire process. The questionnaire results similarly should not digress

into a record-keeping device, for if they do not prompt corrective measures, such

surveys quickly become viewed as another futile personnel gimmick.

Causes of employee turnover

In order to know the cause of excessive employee turnover, the causes of

dysfunctional and avoidable turnover should be known. Few reasons for dysfunctional

turnover may be:

Compensation package differences

Job and employee skill mismatch: the job may be less or more satisfying and

challenging according o the employee.

Inferior facilities, tools, etc

Less recognition

Less or no appreciation for work done

Less growth opportunities

Poor training

Poor supervision

Less work and life balance practices

lack of job challenge

unfair or unequal treatment

Poor supervision -weak interpersonal relationships

Unsatisfactory salary -inability to perform duties effectively

Moving/graduating spouse

Return to school

What Is Turnover Rate

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Turnover rate is a calculation of the number of employees who have left the company

and it is expressed as a percentage of the total number of employees. Although

turnover rate is usually calculated and reported as a percentage per year it can be for

different periods.

How To Calculate Turnover Rate3

You calculate the turnover rate by dividing the number of employees who left by the

total number of employees at the beginning of the period. This number is expressed as

a percentage. You can calculate voluntary turnover, involuntary turnover, and total

turnover.

For example, a company has 100 employees at the start of the year. During the year

six employees quit and nine get let go in a layoff late in the year. The voluntary

turnover rate for the year would be 6/100 or 6%. The involuntary turnover rate was

9/100 or 9%. The total turnover rate would be calculated as 15/100 or 15% because

the six employees who left voluntarily and the nine who were laid off are added

together.

What Can You Do About Turnover?

For involuntary turnover, the best thing you can do is manage the company well so

you don't have to do layoffs. Certainly there are things that happen unexpectedly that

put your company into financial difficulty and a possible solution for that is to lay off

employees. First, you need to work harder so there are fewer of these "unexpected"

problems. Second, layoffs are a short term fix, detrimental to the company, and

should be the last resort.

To reduce voluntary turnover you make the pain of leaving higher than the pain of

staying.

The greatest single influence on employee satisfaction is their direct supervisor. So if

you are in upper management, make sure your supervisors are well trained.

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