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One of the most important functions of human resource management is handling the departure of an employee.
When a worker leaves, they are taking vital information with them -- not to mention the power to influence your brand's reputation with those who are curious about your business. That’s where an exit interview becomes extremely useful.
Once the employee has decided to leave, you might not think that talent management is important anymore -- after all, the talent is not going to work for you anymore and may even be going to a competitor. But that employee may be able to help you in ways you can't even imagine.
A well-run exit interview can help you learn far more about your workforce than even the best employee evaluation, so it's important not to waste this opportunity. We've drawn up a five-step process with critical exit interview tips to ensure that you don't.
An exit interview refers to a survey with an employee who is leaving a company to explore reasons why the relationship is ending in order to identify possible improvements to the organization.
An exit interview could provide vital information that an organization could use to implement changes that improve the efficiency of operations or introduce incentive programs to improve overall employee happiness, and therefore employee retention.
The exit interview is part of the off-boarding process, and it serves as the final action before the relationship between employer and employee is severed -- making it an essential part of strategic human resource management.
An exit interview is a golden opportunity to glean important insights about your organization, from how it is run to how employees feel about you.
If you do exit interviews right, you will be able to make important changes to how your organization does workforce planning that will yield benefits years down the road -- and slash turnover rate. Here are five key steps you should take when conducting an exit meeting.
Don't just wing it in your exit interviews. Do your homework, which means coming up with a carefully considered list of exit interview questions, which could also serve as an exit interview template with minimal modifications.
This list of questions should dive into everything your organization needs to know about that employee's departure: how they feel about the time they worked for the company and what could the organization do better, both in terms of making their workers happy and being more productive.
Tips for generating questions
Creating a list of questions is not as easy as it sounds, but these three tips can help you:
If you can avoid it, it's best not to ask all of the questions for the first time at the exit interview itself. That limits your opportunities to ask the critical follow-up questions that could yield the most valuable information of all.
By asking the employee to fill out a short exit interview form in advance, you’ll get answers to the most basic questions, allowing you to focus the interview on diving deeper into their responses.
Tips for drawing up a questionnaire
A questionnaire will help the exit interview go smoothly. Here’s a couple things you can do to make it as effective as possible:
An exit interview should never feel confrontational or negative. You're parting ways, so it's important to let bygones be bygones. Remember, they are taking time out of their schedule to give you vital information that they absolutely are not obligated to give you, especially considering you no longer pay them.
And many departing employees find exit interviews intimidating. So bring a positive energy to the interview, and you're more likely to elicit better feedback from the individual rather than clipped, perfunctory answers.
Tips for keeping it friendly
The exit interview itself should be the easiest part of the whole process. Here’s what you can do to ensure that:
It's important that you be respectful to your departing employees -- mostly, because it's just the right thing to do. But there's also a small business recruiting reason: if they feel respected, they may encourage their friends, family, or future colleagues to consider working for your company.
Make sure every departing employee is spreading the word far and wide about what a great company yours is to work for. Hopefully, you’ve treated the employee well so far, otherwise, you may just be doing damage control at this point.
Tips for closing the interview
When it comes time to say your goodbyes, here’s how to make a clean, comfortable break for all parties:
Now that you've finished the exit interview, it's time to take advantage of all this new information you've collected. Do this as soon as possible after the interview, when it's all fresh in your mind. This may be the most important step, because without it, the exit interview was really for nothing.
Tips for taking action
Once the exit interview is over, the hard work begins to put this information to work for your organization. Here’s what you should do right away:
The Ascent has many reviews of the best HR software options, which can help you with the exit interview process. These software solutions have HR functions that can help you manage the entire employee experience, and human resource planning in general.
You can also use this software to track HR metrics and people analytics that you can use to supplement the information you uncover during an exit interview.
For example, if workforce analytics shows that employees struggle with filing a certain complicated report on time and your worker discusses that in depth at the exit interview, you can use that information to justify making a concerted effort to simplify those reports.
The key is to choose the right software, and that will differ depending on the organization. So be sure to try out a few options before settling on which one your company will use.
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