When employees leave your organization, you might consider conducting exit interviews. While this seems to go against convention, it is actually a very good way to gain insight into your company. The purpose is to collect feedback from former employees on how they were treated while with the company and the business as a whole. Acquiring this information can help you to improve your organization in the future.
Here are exit interview tips to conduct a successful departure:
1. Encourage Honesty
Let the employees know that there won’t be any repercussions for speaking out during these interviews. Inform them that you won’t damage their chances of finding new jobs and will still provide positive references, if needed.
2. Provide a List of Questions
Allow the employees to prepare for the interviews by offering a list of questions beforehand. That way, the employees can come up with thorough answers and adequately express themselves. Providing the questions ahead of time also prevents the interviews from turning into interrogations.
3. Go In-depth
By asking open-ended questions, you can encourage the employees to go in-depth on certain topics. This also helps you to avoid yes or no answers and get real information. Once you get the employees talking about points of contention, more information is sure to come out.
4. Study the Employees
While you should definitely pay attention to the employees’ verbal answers, look at their nonverbal cues as well. Things like body language and facial expressions can help you to notice topics that make the employees tense. When you uncover these topics, it is a good idea to dig further into them to see why they are causing this tension.
5. Take Some Notes
There is no point in having this interview if you won’t be able to remember its most important moments. Therefore, you should take notes throughout and go over them afterwards. Include aspects like the tone of each employee’s voice and his or her body language when asked certain questions.
6. Remember the Sample Size
Just because one worker has concerns about a certain aspect of the business doesn’t mean that you should make changes immediately. While you should certainly look into these issues, avoid making a knee-jerk reaction based on the opinions of a single outgoing employee.
7. Share the Results
Once you have conducted a few interviews with outgoing employees, share this information with your stakeholders. Everyone in a relevant management position should have access to this data because it could show where problems within your organization are located.