Are your exit interviews providing enough value?
Asking the right exit interview questions provides human resources professionals with valuable feedback on why people quit. And what the company’s work environment looks like, and what changes you might need to make to prevent employees from leaving.
This will illustrate how your company can do better in the eyes of your workforce.
Exit surveys are an important part of any offboarding process. They help you receive constructive feedback from a departing employee.
This can provide useful information for improving the recruitment process, retention, and the overall employee experience.
Here are eight of the best sample exit interview questions to use in your exit survey.
1. Why Are You Leaving Your Position?
This is one of the first and most important, exit interview questions to ask. As an employer, you should want to know why exiting employees are leaving. This could be because they were offered a better position, or because they are unhappy with the one they’re leaving.
It’s important to get honest feedback here to understand what led the employee to leave the company. This can provide helpful insights on how to improve the retention of high-quality employees in the future. Especially in the case of the Great Resignation that has happened globally.
2. What Led You to Accept the New Position?
This will provide insights into what the exiting employee wants in their new role. The answer to this question allows you to compare your company with the preferred option. And check whether you’re offering employees enough benefits.
The exiting employee might point out something that your company is not performing well enough in. If this is true, it may also result in more of your current employees seeking new jobs for the same reason.
Keeping up with current workforce trends is imperative. This ensures that you are in the know in terms of what is important to employees.
3. Do You Have Any Feedback for Management On How We Can Improve?
Honest feedback is essential. When it comes to conducting exit interviews, you want to be able to gain as many insights as possible. This will show you how to improve your company for current and future employees.
Gathering feedback from exiting employees will help you find any potential holes in your management system that may need to improve.
This could include aspects like a lack of systems in place or insufficient recognition of employees. It could also be attributed to a paternalistic approach to managing.
Whatever the case may be, asking this question gives leaving employees an opportunity to bring important factors to your attention. This could improve your overall organizational standards of practice.
4. How Would You Describe Our Company Culture?
Your idea of the company culture may be vastly different for employees. Positive company culture is essential if you want to improve employee morale. And increase employee retention. Understanding the genuine employee experience is necessary for this.
Use the opportunity to ask for thorough feedback on the company culture. Asking this question could even stop an employee from leaving if you agree to make certain changes for the overall well-being of the workforce.
5. Did You Feel You Were Well-Equipped for Your Job?
Gauging how employees felt during their time at the company is the goal of employee exit interviews. It’s important to ask departing employees how well-equipped they felt they were for their job.
This can reveal actionable insights into what employees might feel is missing. Addressing this can boost employee engagement and enhance the employee experience. And it may improve productivity within your organization.
It can also benefit the company if the employee feels like training is required. This will bring fresh skills into your business.
6. Do You Feel Proud Of the Work You Achieved?
If you want to improve employee retention, then you’ll need to make sure your team feels a sense of accomplishment in their roles. Exit interview questions should aim to figure out how proud exiting employees are of their work and their job overall.
If they did not feel proud of their achievements, this could mean their colleagues might feel the same. Use this feedback to understand why this is and find ways to improve the work environment. This will make sure that all team members are feeling pride in what they achieve.
7. Do You Think the Company Supported Your Career Goals?
Careers should provide good development opportunities. If an employee is leaving your company because their career goals are not being met, then you should incorporate ways to change this for new/existing employees.
Gaining honest feedback from exit interview questions like this helps you determine what additional employee benefits are needed. Or what management practices you can add to improve the employee experience.
The employee’s answer might reveal that there are not enough growth opportunities within your company, or that employee engagement is low because there are no learning and development opportunities.
8. What Were Your Criteria for Choosing a New Employer?
During the exit interview process, you want to figure out why employees decide to work for certain employers. Exit interview questions like this can help you improve the hiring process by making sure your company offers benefits that might attract other employees.
This could include things like providing a good work-life balance and offering flexible work arrangements. And changing company policies, or offering a better benefits package to help you retain talent and improve things for your next hire.
Conclusion
Looking into an employee’s decision to switch jobs offers valuable information to any business. It’s important to understand why the employee decided to leave their particular position and how they feel about the company.
This type of constructive feedback from an exit interview survey can help companies improve their recruitment. It can also enhance the company culture and boost employee morale. Lastly, it can increase job satisfaction for the future candidate taking on a new role.
