Exit interviews are a double-edged sword: Your company desperately wants information from departing employees about how to improve, but employees have little motivation to provide complete, honest reasons for their departure.
You can promise up one side and down the other that you’ll keep individual answers confidential, but the person is unlikely to believe that his former manager won’t find out if he says, “I’m leaving because my manager is a jerk.” Jerk managers are jerks about lots of things — and they don’t take negative feedback well. Your former employees want to keep their good references, so they’re not likely to speak up.
So, if your employees aren’t likely to be entirely honest, should you hold exit interviews at all? The short answer is yes. The long answer is yes, but only if you ask for constructive criticism, understand how to use the information you’re given and focus on trends. Here’s a deeper look at how to ensure your exit interviews are effective.
To keep reading, click here: 3 Ways to Make Exit Interviews More Effective
Important points here. It’s crucial to have a balance in exit interviews – ones where you can get at least some of the information you need, while still letting the employee leave in a civil manner. Thanks for sharing your insight on this!
At my old workplace, the chief exec was sent a copy of all exit interview notes for reference. I’d left the role solely because of my awful manager. Who did awful manager report to? The chief exec.
If there was an exit interview equivalent to the court scenario of speaking only to confirm name and address, this was it.
The ex-manager was bullying and vindictive, and our field was small. I was never going to list them as a reference, but in no way did I want to give them any ammo to retaliate by badmouthing me at my old workplace, or to people in the industry. At least this way, there was minimum drama.
I like exit interviews and I always take them with a grain of salt. Most of the employees leaving will not want to burn bridges so they may not be as upfront about the real reasons why they are leaving. However, if you gather information about their next endeavor that usually gives some good information about what other companies are doing. If you have a lot of people leaving, then you should be able to gather some data and analyze it to see what improvements that need to be made to keep up with the other businesses out there.