Exit interviews let you learn why employees are leaving
By Jenny C. McCune • Bankrate.com

When employees go willingly into another company's cubicle, it can pay to ask them why.

Exit interviews can help save money since replacing a valuable employee can cost at least two times the departing worker's salary. Finding out why people are leaving also can provide insight on how to do a better job of keeping others from following colleagues out your door.

Consider it the equivalent of asking your boyfriend or girlfriend why they are breaking up with you. Where did you go wrong?

But a small business owner has to be careful.

"Many times, an exit interview can be a complete waste of time," says Sharon Jordan-Evans, president of Jordan Evans Group of Cambria, Calif. That's because soon-to-be former employees worry that divulging their reasons for leaving may hurt them in the long run.

"They won't tell you that they're leaving because their boss is a jerk or because there's no future here or that your workplace is a no-fun zone," Jordan-Evans says.

Instead, they rely on politically correct answers such as "I'm leaving because they're paying me more," "I'm resigning because it's a better opportunity," or the ever-popular, "It was just too good an offer to pass up."

But, says Jordan-Evans, "there are ways of increasing the odds of getting the truth."

Here are a dozen tips on how to make an employee's exit a learning experience for your company:

1. Find a trusted questioner: Have someone the departing employee has confidence in conduct the interview. "If there's somebody he really trust or likes, that can increase the chances that the exiting employee will be honest and forthright," Jordan-Evans says.

2. Build rapport during the interview: "Make them conversational so that people will open up," says Lynda Ford, president of the Ford Group, an HR and training consulting firm based in Lee Center, N.Y.

3. Keep it anonymous: This can be hard, if not impossible, in a small organization, but try to find a way that a former employee can spill the beans without feeling like he or she will face retribution, Jordan-Evans says.

"You don't want them feeling like they are talking directly into a PA system," adds David Lewis, president and founder of OperationsInc.com, an operational and human resources consulting firm based in Stamford, Conn. For example, try to aggregate several exiting employee's remarks to determine trends rather than focusing on individual interviews.

4. Hire a third party to conduct the interview: The Ford Group interviews ex-employees over the phone for their former employers. "It is really a smart way to go," Jordan-Evans says. She cites a giant health care organization based in Seattle that she's consulted with. When the company switched to a third party, it found a negative 70 percent correlation between what employees said during an internal company exit interview vs. being interviewed by a neutral third party. If your company can't afford to hire a company to conduct exit interviews, consider banding together with several other small companies in your area to make it affordable, recommends Ford.

5. Interview only your "keepers": Narrowing your exit interview focus will save you money and will likely be just as effect as a broader approach. "You don't have to interview everybody," Jordan-Evans says. "Just the top 10 percent, your top performers."

6. Time your interviews: Opinions differ on when is the best time. Some experts such as Ford recommend doing it as quickly as possible while memories are fresh. Jordan-Evans and others prefer giving the exiting employee some time to adjust to their new job and gain perspective before conducting the exit interviews.

7. Structure the process: You want to hear what a departing worker has to say, but establish a structure so it doesn't drag on needlessly. Just how long is long enough? "Fifteen minutes isn't enough and two hours is too much," Ford says. "Probably 25 minutes is a useful amount of time to gather information unless there is a red flag, in which case an interview could take an hour or longer."

8. Ask the right questions: Exit interviews should be kept to six or seven key questions. "You don't want to it to take so long that the ex-employee loses interest," says Andy Kindler, a partner with Oak Consulting Inc., an outplacement and HR consulting firm in Lisle, Ill. Kindler actually recommends having the ex-employee write down responses to questions rather than have an interview.

Here are some questions that recruiters, placement officers, HR consultants and HR officers say can elicit the best responses from workers during exit interviews:

• Why did you join this organization?
• What were your best experiences here? Your worst?
• What would make you return to our company?
• What message would you give to management upon your departure?
• If a friend asked you, would you recommend that they take a job here?
• Ask a "fantasy" question: If the CEO left and you took her place, what would you do?

9. Ask for examples: If a former employee says he or she was harassed, get details and examples. "You may find out that the employee believes he was harassed because his boss wrote him up when he was 10 minutes late," Ford says. "One man's harassment is another one's following policy."

10. Use their language in your report: Don't try to paraphrase or clean up a departing employee's language. You may end up skewing the message or adding your own thoughts by trying to summarize, Ford says.

11. Remind departing employees of non-disclosure obligations: This isn't so much to elicit information, but to remind ex-employees of their obligations. "Tell your people and also give them something in writing that reminds them that they cannot disclose trade secrets of the company," says John Di Frances, managing partner of Di Frances & Associates in Milwaukee, Wis.

12. Show exiting employees that your company cares: You may not be able to convince workers to stay, but you definitely want them to leave on good terms. Make sure each employee leaves with a good impression, demonstrated by how you treat them in the exit interview process. Show that you listen to them and that you do plan to do something based on what they say, Di Frances says.

Small companies suffering from high turnover may also want to institute an alumni club to stay in touch with parting employees. "You're asking them to stay connected," Jordan-Evans says. "You'll send them your newsletter, take them out to lunch occasionally and stay in touch." Jordan-Evans knows of a company in Silicon Valley that has instituted an alumni club and is finding that seven out of 10 of its departing employees are actually coming back to work for the firm.

"The thing that you have to remember is that even if the person is leaving because of more money, would they have taken the new job if everything else was wonderful at their current job? Probably not," says Lynda Ford.

Exit interviews can help you find that out and much more.

Jenny C. McCune is a contributing editor based in Montana.

-- Posted: July 31, 2002