The Ultimate Guide to employee Offboarding with Exit Interviews

Do you know what could have been done to retain a departing employee in your company?

Yes, of course, you can conduct an Exit interview. The reason that companies should organize exit interviews is to gain valuable information from the employee which proves to be useful in all aspects of the company’s work environment, including aspects such as work culture, day to day concerns, processes, issues around management style, workplace ethics, and employee morale. The main aim of the exit interview is to get feedback from employee to improve the work culture of the organization.

What is an exit interview?

An exit interview is conducted when an employee is leaving a company after his resignation has been accepted or has completed a project assigned to him/her. An exit interview is conducted in order to maintain the top talent employees in Payroll software organization. Exit interview software has been developed in order to maintain the actual reason for leaving.

How are exit interviews conducted?

There are many ways in which an exit interview can be conducted each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

1. In-Person exit interview

In-person exit interview, an HRMS Software representative meets each terminating employees.

Advantage

Provides information regarding benefits.
Retrieve the company’s property during the interview.

Disadvantage

An employee cannot share negative information.
Can be too time-consuming.

2. Telephone exit interview

Telephone exit interview is conducted over the phone by HR or third-party consultant.

Advantage

Get more information on each question.
Enter data in the tracking system while conducting the interview.

Disadvantage

Can be time-consuming.
Expensive in the third party is involved.

3. Paper and Pencil exit interviews

Paper and Pencil exit interview is conducted by a form given to an employee on his last day or a mail of that form is sent to an employee.

Advantage

Takes less time to provide a form than In-Person or Pen and Pencil exit interview.
Can share the sensitive information that cannot be shared in person.

Disadvantage

Difficult and time-consuming to track data from the paper and pencil forms.

4. Online exit interviews

An online exit interview is conducted through a web interface.

Advantage

Information can be easily compiled and tracked.
Reports available with a click of a button.

Disadvantage

Can be conducted only if the employee has internet access.
May or may not have sufficient technical knowledge.

Why conduct exit interviews?

Exit interview helps to understand why exactly a person quits their job
Reason for the person leaving the job might be the fault of organization, leadership, work pressure or better salary at another place.

You get feedback

When an employee quits they have nothing to lose so they can give negative feedback, thus helps an organization analyze and improve the problem.

Employee leaves on a positive note

It is necessary to make an employee leave the company on the positive note that the organization really cares about them leaving the job and noting down the reasons.

You check the obligations

Exit interview in one of the best way to check the obligation between an employee and organization.

Save time

In order to save time for training a new employee, it is better to make an employee who is quitting the job make them understand their responsibilities and task.

Defining the areas of problems

During the exit interview make sure to ask questions that give a chance to understand the problem areas that require attention related to team communication.

Find ways to optimize employee retention
It is better to ask questions that can help understand what should be done to make employees stay in the company.

You check the organization aspects

An exit interview should include the questions related to the different level of organizational aspects or team related problems in top level management.

Which questions should be asked during the exit interview?

Why are you leaving your current position?

The reason for leaving may be different for every employee such as dissatisfaction with the job, falling out with manager or co-worker, choosing other carrier or shifting to another city.

Do You Think You Were Adequately Equipped to Do Your Job Well?
A lack of well-equipped resource can lead an employee to a work stress. This can help the company to invest in a resource such as training and development opportunities or software development.

What was your relationship with your manager like?
This question helps evaluate manager’s ability to interact effectively with his or her direct reports helping professional development of the employees.

What could we have done better?
This question helps to make your organization a better place to work that can help current employees happy and engaged.

What was the biggest factor that led you to accept this new job?
This question helps you can know who you are competing for talent, benefits, flexibility, culture or professional development opportunities.

What did you like most about your job?
This exit interview helps to expand the positive aspects of your company to keep the top level, talented employees.

What did you dislike most about your job?
The negative note helps the company to restructure their organization or improvement in assets if needed.

Did you feel you were kept up to date on new developments and company policies?
This exit interview question gives transparency and opportunity to find out whether your existing employees felt like they were being valued.

If you had a friend looking for a job, would you recommend our company? Why or why not?
This is an exit interview question that includes both the negative as well as a positive note of the organization that can help improve the skills of the recruitment department and organizational department.

Are there any unsolved issues or comments?
It gives the employee an opportunity to answer the true negative aspects of the company rather than leaving an online comment on a company profile.

A conversation that should be avoided during the exit interview

Targeted questions about specific people or issues should be avoided. General feedback from a supervisor, you should not insert your opinions into the conversation.

Office gossip should be avoided. It is never constructive and won’t be reliable information.

The conversation should focus on the employee’s experience. There should never be agreement or disagreement regarding the negative feedback of other employees.

An employee’s status and the performance within the company should not be shared even with a departing employee.

Never try to convince the employee to stay with your company.

Exit interview helps to improve the performance of the company, refine an employee retention and assists in reducing the financial turnover of a company.