Making the Most of the Exit Interview
Posted August 6th, 2012
Many companies do exit interviews. Exit interviews attempt to determine how the departing employee feels about the company, where he or she sees room for improvement. The exit interview is supposed to be a way for the company to make changes to improve worker retention, productivity and quality.
But often doing the interview well and getting the most from it is something many human resource departments are not sure how to do. What are the best questions to ask, the ones that will give you the information you need to make the right changes? And then how do you best make use of that information?
Human resource specialist Rick Galbreath offers some suggestions about good questions to ask during an exit interview.
One is what three things, if they were changed, would persuade that person to stay with the company. The initial response to this question is usually a rebuff – the employee will say that there really is nothing that the company could do to make him or her stay. If the person says this, rephrase the question to set up a hypothetical situation and ask them to pretend that there was actually a chance that the person might stay if a few changes were made. Galbreath says that this question alone has enabled him to retain about 10 percent of the people who have given notice. Problems that are bothering employees can be fixed usually without a lot of heavy lifting once human resources has been made aware of them.
Another question involves another hypothetical situation – asking the departing employees to pretend that they have bought the company, and what three changes they would make. Often this leads to suggestions about improving company operations and reducing waste.
Another question asks the person to think about the supervision he or she received, what its good points and bad points were. This will elicit information about managers who did not communicate well with their workers, or managers who were poor at supporting and developing their workers.
After the employee has left the company, Galbreath gives a short summary of their responses to the management people connected to the employee. He then makes a record of the key points of each exit interview and then shares this report with management each quarter to look at what trends there may be and to develop action plans on how to deal with the issues raised.
When you need help finding a person to replace an employee who has left, contact Bayside Solutions. We can help you find highly skilled professionals for critical positions within your San Francisco-area company. Contact us today!
