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Have You Figured Out What To Ask The Employees Leaving Your Company
Let’s get right into the amazing top 10 exit interview questions that can help an HR representative, as well as the employers, get the most out of an employee before bidding him or her a farewell once and for all.
Why Did You Start Looking For A New Job?
What Led You To Accept The New Job Offer?
What Aspects Of This Position You Found To Be Most Complicated?
Is There Anything We Can Offer You So You Do Not Leave?
Can You Define Our Organization’s Culture As Per Your Understanding Of It?
Before Leaving, Did You Share Your Issues That Could Have Been Solved?
What Changes You Would Have Brought In This Company If Given The Chance?
What Do You Think Of Our Workplace’s Management?
What Goals and Objectives You Had In Mind When Joining This Place?
What Do You Think About Improvement Opportunities Available for Employees In Our Organization?
When you are conducting an interview, you are best aware of the employee you would be asking questions from. Similarly, you know better about their job role and the kind of feedback that they can provide you with. This is why, no one else can give you the most precise list of exit interview questions that you can ask from them, not even us.
Designing the employee-specific question that can give you better information of their seat and department is your job – and we fully trust your abilities to do that well. However, some of the most effective exit interview questions are mostly generic and can be asked from every leaving employee no matter what role or position they had in the company.
Below, we are sharing these questions with some additional details on why these questions matter and what kind of information they can help you recover. Here is to hoping that these details can help you rephrase and put forth your questions in a better way and also guide you in completing your exit interview checklist ahead of time.
Why Did You Start Looking For A New Job?
Being aware of the future plans of an employee leaving your organization is one of the exit interview best practices. In case the leaving member is joining a new organization right away, this question can help you explore a lot of reasons behind their departure. Asking the person why he or she started looking for the job they will be soon joining or what made them consider going for an interview at the new place while they were working with you is the best exit interview tactic.
The answer might reveal the shortcomings in your organization that affect anyone working in this position. Asking this question may also help you pinpoint the needs and expectations of someone being hired for this position next time and you can work towards these aspects in a way that ultimately helps your organization improve.
What Led You To Accept The New Job Offer?
This is another one of the effective exit interview questions that can reveal a lot about the problems that your organization might have for an employee. The answer to this question can also help you compare and contrast your organization with others in competition and can provide you with many chances to win the race.
If your employee is honest, they might reveal issues about your workplace that you otherwise cannot see. For example, they can tell you about how they are being paid more by another organization or how the workplace culture over there is more productive. Make sure to pay attention to the non-verbal communication cues so you can analyze the interviewee’s response better.
What Aspects Of This Position You Found To Be Most Complicated?
Here is your chance to hire someone more adept and professional the next time you start finding a match for the same position that is being left empty by your interviewee. You can ask them to tell you the difficulties they faced during their job and where they have to ask for help or assistance. If you are asking this question, you should have enough patience to bear with some long tales with a lot of useless information.
Also, you must have the ability to not let your facial expressions show disinterestedness in those useless details even for a while. Be patient and you will ultimately get to the answer you have been looking for.
Is There Anything We Can Offer You So You Do Not Leave?
Well, this is a critical question and should only be asked from an employee who was so good that their departure can cause your company some distress. This is quite a direct question but don't be ashamed to ask it because it can give you some more idea on an employee's demands that you can try catering to next time.
Also, if you don't have to retain the employee, you can simply tell them that you are hypothetically asking this question and that you are rather disturbed about your inability to offer them anything they want to keep them from going.
Can You Define Our Organization’s Culture As Per Your Understanding Of It?
This question must be there in your exit interview checklist if you really want some useful insights into your organization. A single exit interview might not help you understand the answer to this question in a manner clear enough for you to do something about it. However, you can surely get some useful insights after looking at the generic trends in this answer over several exit interviews.
The answer might tell you what your organization’s culture lacks and what must be changed in it. Based on the answers, you might want to take steps towards enhancing your employees’ morale and improving the overall culture of the workplace.
Before Leaving, Did You Share Your Issues That Could Have Been Solved?
Now, this is another one of the most useful exit interview questions that can help you self-reflect and see where things went wrong on your part. If your employee says that there was no proper channel for them to share their concerns, do investigate. You should be taking this as a red light and start working towards making a committee that can listen to people and solve their concerns, instead of forcing them to leave their job and find something else.
What Changes You Would Have Brought In This Company If Given The Chance?
Now, this is a very direct question. Hence, you should try asking it only when the interviewee is comfortable enough with you. Again, the point behind asking this question is also to get some useful insights into your company's culture and wherever the loopholes are existing that you can fix for your company's betterment.
In their answer to this question, the employee is indirectly or directly hinting at those pinching points that have been disturbing them all along. Your job is to take a clear note of those points and how the employee thinks those can be improved. Whatever their answer to this question will be, would be their real reason behind leaving the company.
If you do not want more talent opting out of your workplace and favoring others over it, you would like to keep a very clear record of this very answer. Again, we are suggesting that you take good note of the suggestions made. Also, you can try coming up with some solutions on your own and ask the interviewee what he or she thinks of them.
For example, if they have any issues with the payments and finances, you can ask them what they think about the employers providing them with paystubs for the record. They will surely approve of the suggestion made and you can start generating paystubs online with paystub creator from the very next day.
What Do You Think Of Our Workplace’s Management?
Management and the people involved in it play a very important role in an organization’s success. Unfortunately, at times these are the same people who can make an organization go from riches to rags too. However, you cannot inquire about the management directly because most of the people in an organization's management are of a higher tier.
Thus, an exit interview can help you get better access to the ground realities as far as the management and managerial issues are concerned. Your interviewee might reveal some dark secrets about the management and how it failed to impress them. Based on the responses, you can decide whether or not the organization has any chances of improvement and how you can take those.
What Goals and Objectives You Had In Mind When Joining This Place?
Again, be ready for long and useless tales that end in one or two impressive points. The answer to this question can help you see who was at fault and became a reason behind the employee not feeling fulfilled and satisfied with your organization and their experience working with you. In case they had very clear goals and aspirations and left for some other reasons, you can simply take note of whatever they said and try finding someone who has similar goals when joining the same position.
What Do You Think About Improvement Opportunities Available for Employees In Our Organization?
This is another useful question that can help you improve your organization by working on the workforce it has. No one other than the employee themselves knows what they need the most to be able to deliver their best in your organization or in their specific position. Give them the time they need to answer this question so you can have a detailed list of what kind of training, facilities, and opportunities you can arrange at your organization to best help the people become fruitful members of your workplace and help in its progress.
Tips To Ace That Exit Interview Easily
As someone in the position of affiliation with the company, you are naturally supposed to impact the interviewee in a way that hinders them from being blunt about their feelings. However, this is not something you want and hence, following the tips below can help you diminish your position or power as compared to the person being interviewed:
Do not let any of your words reveal your feelings about the particular person, leaving the organization no matter what.
Be very patient with the answers and give the person as much time as they may need to shape your thoughts properly.
Make sure no one except your and the interviewee are present in the room at the time of the interview. This helps them be carefree and blunt about whatever they want to say.
Take the interview forward very casually. Remember they are an Ex-employee now. Do not be too serious or inquisitive to scare them off.
Be a good listener and try not to use any filler words or interruptions when the other person is still in the middle of their answer.
Do not use evaluative remarks or counter-argument on the answers you get. They are of no use especially when the other person has already left the job.
Wrapping Up
People leaving an organization are often seen as a treasure - referring to the ‘until it’s gone syndrome’ here by HR. However, conducting an exit interview with them before they leave can provide you with honest feedback on the organization and how it can be improved. However, this is only possible if these people being asked are useful, interesting, and productive during employment.
Realistically speaking, most of the exit interviews are treated as a formality rather than being seen as a chance for improvement. Such a practice is fatal for organizations and may result in their failure even before you expect it. As someone running an organization or belonging to it, you are genuinely concerned about your organization and its reputation in the market.
This means you won't let any chance to improve your organization from going to waste, not even the one that comes as an exit survey. Hence, you should be fully prepared in your capacity when taking the role of an exit interviewer. By being fully prepared, we are not simply referring to your energy and passion for conducting the interview. Nor are we referring to merely collecting all the details from the answers that your leaving colleague provides you with.
Rather, the core of any productive exit survey is its questions and their quality. Among some of the exit interview best practices, the most important one is to take your time before the interview and design probing questions that leave your interviewee with no option but to give away complete and honest details. Good luck! And if you need to document your paystubs, you can always count on the paystub generator.
