Famous Last Words
How do you get the best out of exit interviews?Like someone’s last words, people often look on what’s said at exit interviews as holding special significance. It is an employee’s final chance at a parting shot — to say what they really think without fear of internal repercussions.
You really do want an honest exit interview, but chances are the employee won’t be giving you one. Why not? Because doing so doesn’t benefit the employee in the slightest. From their point of view, the business didn’t listen when it mattered — i.e. while they were still working there. Plus, any dirt-dishing can still come back to bite them later on.
Simply, they have no obligation or motivation to give you the exit interview you really want.
Which means you need to give them one.
There are, broadly speaking, three kinds of people you will be exit interviewing. Those who are leaving on good terms, those who are leaving with grievances, and those in-between who are ambivalent.
The Good, the Bad, and the Shrug(ly), if you will.
The Good
Weirdly, these are probably the least useful people to exit interview. They were already sold on how the company runs, but they’re leaving for whatever reason — maybe an offer they can’t refuse, or a move to Australia.
Asking them about what they enjoyed most about their time will usually yield a bunch of gushing about their friends, but there may be a few especially successful policies to note because they have stood out enough to warrant mentioning.
More interesting is to follow up by asking what was their fly in the ointment, or biggest bugbear. It’s preferable not to ask generally what they didn’t like because you’ll probably get a brief list of trivial bits and pieces, like a lack of pencils or a really loud hand-dryer.
“The standard questions tend to yield a few canned answers.” says Sharlyn Lauby, of HR consulting firm ITM Group.
So phrase questions in a different way. “What was the biggest obstacle to your success?” for example, or, “What is the most detrimental part of the organisation’s structure?”. The more specific the question, the better your chance of pinning down a useful answer. Even questions like “What was the one thing you wish you could change?” is open to a number of silly cop-out replies.
Here a few sample questions of varying quality to get the creative juices flowing.
The Bad
These are your most volatile customers. But in a lot of ways, you really want them to spill their guts. Every insult could tell you something interesting.
While you don’t necessarily want to listen to a ten minute diatribe about so-and-so manager, coaxing out personal grievances in this way might burst the dam, and allow you to get some more useful info about the procedures and policies that irritated them.
Of course, nothing said here can be taken as gospel. But likewise, it is a rare opportunity to hear a lot of things that otherwise never get spoken. The real skill is picking out what is negativity for the sake of negativity, and what has objectively been a hindrance to their performance.
You may never be able to fix a personality clash, but perhaps they tried unsuccessfully to remedy the situation, and that could be a useful a useful thing to investigate further.
The bonus in getting somebody to open up a torrent of previously pent-up feelings, other than catharsis, is that immediately afterwards they are more open to discussing the things that they did like or found worked well.
They may feel a little guilty, or not want to seem completely one-dimensional after slagging off a thousand things, so the information on what were the little rays of sunshine in their working life will probably be accurate and from the heart.
Trying to ask this at the start of the exit interview would be doomed to failure, because it would seem like mockery, already knowing that they were leaving on bad terms. However, an apologetic and sympathetic attitude towards the end can work wonders.
The Shrugly
These are the least biased, but as they also have the most to lose by exit interviewing, they can be the hardest nuts to crack.
They have no investment in helping you out, and possibly fear that badmouthing anybody or anything can only hurt them in the future. That’s why finding out the bad stuff can be hard.
Depending on the person, you could appeal to their personality and good nature. That might involve pandering by making it seem like they are doing you a big favour. (Which actually, they are): “We’re desperate to try and improve x, and we’d really love your thoughts on it.”
You can always phrase things as intellectual hypotheticals, i.e., “If you were running the department, what things would you do differently?”
Steer clear of anything that sounds like it could be damaging to them. No matter how much you want gossip on somebody in particular, you want the employee to feel assured that their replies are harmless.
Karen Skillings, HR Manager at Munich Reinsurance America Inc., says she assures departing employees that their answers are confidential and can help the company make positive changes.
Getting what was good about their experience should mostly be a cakewalk unless they are supremely apathetic, in which case resort back to ego padding in the hopes of drawing out some semblance of an answer.
Just remember that not everybody will exit interview well, and you can’t win them all. But if you come prepared, you can learn a lot there that you can’t learn elsewhere. Just be ready to be extra nice and extra attentive. If you make the effort to put yourself in their shoes, they will respond to that.
Also, as Margaret Macaffee of IBM Kenexa helpfully reminds you: “A sensitively managed exit can also ensure that alumni become brand ambassadors who will speak highly of their former employer.”
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