Top 10 Essential Exit Interview Questions to Include
To help you get the most from your exit interviews, we’ve pulled together essential exit interview questions divided into categories for clarity. Below are the top examples to consider:
- What was the main reason for leaving?
- What factors influenced your decision to leave?
- What does the company do well?
- How could the company improve?
- Did you feel fairly compensated for your work?
- What benefits does your new company offer that the current company doesn’t?
- What prompted you to start looking for another job?
- Do you think management adequately recognized your contributions?
- What were the best and worst aspects of your job?
- What factors impacted your decision to leave?
Importance of Exit Interviews
Exit interviews are important because they offer deep insights into your workplace culture, day-to-day processes, and management solutions. They help you understand why people are deciding to leave your organization. While negative feedback can be hard to take, without an exit interview in place, your organization can miss out on vital opportunities to improve the employee experience and boost employee retention.
Additional Questions to Consider
Furthermore, consider including these additional questions during the interview:
- Why did you decide to leave the company?
- Did you get along with your direct manager?
- What did you think of the way you were managed?
- Did you receive enough training?
- What are the biggest risks for our company?
- How would you assess the quality of the training received?
- What improvements do you suggest to make this job better, more challenging, or more interesting?
- How would you describe your supervisor’s management style?
- How would you describe the management style of your division head?
- What do you like most and least about working here?
During an exit interview, you’ll typically ask the employee a series of questions about their job, their manager, the company culture, and other relevant topics. You may also allow your employee to share their overall thoughts and impressions of the company.
How to Create an Effective Exit Interview Survey Template?
Employee attrition is part of running a business, but it’s also a good opportunity for learning. By including an employee exit interview survey in your employee offboarding process, you can obtain candid feedback from exiting employees and gain insight into their experiences at your company.
Moreover, when you use the SurveyMonkey exit interview survey template, you can gather answers to a variety of questions, such as:
- How well-paid did employees feel?
- What was your relationship with your supervisor like?
- How well did you feel your work matched your skills?
The answers to these questions can help you focus on areas for improving the employee experience in your business.
Exit survey questions for exit interviews allow employees to provide feedback and offer recommendations for the company to enhance future processes. Hiring top talent is expensive, and obtaining honest employee feedback can help your organization improve for both current and future employees. Additionally, this meeting, part of the offboarding process, allows you to hear from individuals who are likely to be the most candid about their experiences with your company.
Employee exit interview questions may vary across different companies. However, the most effective types mix both open-ended and closed-ended questions. These survey questions invite employees to express their opinions about their time in the organization and help collect valuable insights. Here are some of the most useful and effective exit interview questions:
- What’s the reason for quitting this job?
- In your opinion, were you provided the essential tools and resources required to excel in your position in our organization?
- Did you get along with your coworkers?
- Did you get along with your manager?
Furthermore, interacting with your employees even after they decide to move on helps you understand their reasons and explore them further to mitigate future exits. It provides you with information necessary to implement changes. Employees have no reason to hold back during exit interviews; their responses are honest and candid. This process highlights issues that HR or managers may not be aware of.
Include an employee exit interview survey in your offboarding process to gain candid feedback from exiting employees and understand their experiences better. Employers can utilize the questions mentioned above to create an effective exit interview questionnaire or as a script when conducting in-person exit interviews.
Understanding the Impact of Exit Interviews on Employee Retention
Understanding the impact of exit interviews on employee retention is crucial for organizations. When used effectively, exit interviews reveal the true causes of employee turnover. They also inform targeted strategies to improve employee retention.
Exit interviews are a vital element of an effective retention strategy. They uncover the accurate causes of turnover and inform effective tactics to retain employees in a reliable way.
The 2017 Retention Report revealed that only 7.6% of companies shared the most common turnover profile or the same top reasons employees leave in the same order of priority. This shows how different the reasons employees leave are in each company’s workforce. It also demonstrates how easily leaders could misjudge the reasons for turnover in their company.
A common myth is that exit interviews simply capture the feelings of disgruntled employees. However, the truth is that former employees have valuable information to share that can help improve workplace conditions. In an analysis of over 17,000 exit interviews, 63% of former employees rated their employer as very good or excellent.
Effective exit interviews should be conducted externally by a third party. This approach helps remove biases and allows for conducting and analyzing high-quality exit interviews on a large scale. Following this impartial, qualitative-first approach to measurement is the best way to capture the truth.
More — +30 Effective Exit Interview Questions Every Manager Needs to Ask Departing Employees
Exit interviews provide invaluable feedback from departing employees. They help identify issues driving turnover, boost retention, improve work culture, and inform better talent strategies. Constructive insights gathered in a transparent setting steer enhancements aligned with worker aspirations.
Furthermore, identifying triggers of dissatisfaction allows organizations to implement targeted interventions. These interventions address compensation, work-life balance, career growth, and management relations, thereby enhancing talent retention. Collective feedback reveals recurring themes such as inadequate leadership development and inclusivity issues. This enables organizations to address systemic gaps and support employees better.
Even employees transitioning for personal reasons, leaving on good terms after constructive closure conversations, amplify positive workplace experiences through their networks. This can informally attract similar top talent. Additionally, exit interviews provide organizations with opportunities to offer counter roles or retention incentives to top performers. This helps prevent critical institutional knowledge loss and supports succession planning.
The general consensus with implementing exit interviews is that they help companies improve retention or produce useful information about workflow processes and management strategies. However, if your exit interviews aren’t producing any actionable feedback, it typically boils down to three reasons.
Exit interviews, when conducted with care, can provide a flow of thoughtful feedback and insight, contributing positively to organizations on multiple fronts.
