8 Best Practices When Conducting Exit Interviews
Exit interviews are a great way to hear from employees about what your agency can do better and identify any concerns that need to be addressed. During the exit interview, the employee will have the opportunity to make suggestions on how to improve their role, agency operations, and staff development.
Through the process, agencies can gather insight into potential drama between employees, perception of responsiveness to employee feedback, and whether the employee felt supported in their role. Most importantly, an exit interview allows you to determine if the departing employee intends to sue the agency.
1. Conduct the Interview Without the Supervisor
We’ve all heard the adage “people leave managers, not companies”. For this reason, you should conduct the exit interview without the supervisor present. This will give the employee the chance to openly share feedback and potentially expose a bad manager. If you have an HR department or an HR person, that person should conduct the formal exit interview. If not, you could also use an outside consultant. A word of caution, the use of outside consultants in a smaller agency (less than 20 people) may come across as insincere. In this case, a member of the senior leadership team should conduct the exit interview.
The agency owner should also take the time to have a less formal sit down with departing employees to wish them well, hear about their experiences working at the agency, and let them know that they plan to stay in touch with them as they are now agency alumni.
2. Review Employment Agreements with the Employee
Some agencies have non-compete clauses or obligations around intellectual property in their employment agreements. Personally, I’m not a fan of non-compete clauses as this limits the employee’s ability to make money based on their craft. I do however recommend language in employment agreements around intellectual property and employee non-solicitation. It’s fine if one person wants to leave your agency, but you don’t want someone taking your team from under your nose.
If someone wants to leave your agency because they can make more money elsewhere, let them go. People don’t generally leave jobs for more money. Instead, this is often an excuse to avoid addressing the real reason for their departure.
If you have a written employment agreement, the exit interview is the perfect time to review the agreement and discuss or clarify any post-employment obligations.
3. Provide a Reference
Many of us have been on the other side of exit interviews. We all remember thinking that it’s best to keep our opinions to ourselves and not burn any bridges. Our industry is small, and people generally don’t want to say anything that can come back to bite them in the future. However, this can greatly reduce the effectiveness of exit interviews if the employee is afraid to openly share feedback.
You can mitigate that concern from the beginning by letting the departing employee know that you will be providing a reference letter for future employment opportunities. This way, they know they will receive a reference letter no matter what they say in the exit interview.
4. Ask Consistent Open-Ended Questions
A checklist of questions is a great way to make sure each employee receives the same treatment during exit interviews. It also helps ensure that you cover all of the important issues. If a theme emerges during the interview process, the interviewer should ask follow-up questions to clarify or dig deeper. Some examples include unrealistic workloads (too many nights and weekends), non-competitive pay (can make the same amount elsewhere for less work), or incompatibility with a supervisor (Jerome is a jerk!).
These comments could be an indication of a problem that needs attention on your part. For example, you could improve employee retention by restructuring workloads, revisiting compensation, or having a candid conversation with Jerome.
5. Don’t Save the Exit Interview for the Employee’s Last Day
There is usually a lot of anxiety on the last day of employment as it marks a period of significant change for the employee. The last thing they want to do is sit down and have a conversation about their time at your agency. Instead, conduct the exit interview two to three days before their last day. Save the less formal discussions with the agency owners or leaders for the last day when you welcome them into your agency alumni club.
6. Implement the Feedback
There is no point in conducting an exit interview if your agency doesn’t plan on doing anything with the information. Perhaps nothing needs to be done and that’s fine as long as that determination is a result of reviewing the exit interview notes. Or, maybe the feedback is a wake-up call to address issues with understaffing, project workflow, or agency utilization.
The most important thing is to have a standardized exit interview process where someone is capturing detailed notes. Identify someone on your team to run point on deciding what needs to be done based on feedback. Their role should include synthesizing feedback, sharing with the appropriate people, identifying trends, and deciding what action (if any) is required.
7. Protect Confidentiality
Agencies should emphasize their commitment to keeping feedback from exit interviews confidential, if possible. However, in some cases, disclosure may be unavoidable if there are claims of legal misconduct.
When conducting the exit interview, meet with the employee in a private office where the conversation cannot be overheard. Many agencies that I work with (generally less than 30 people) are too small to share exit interview feedback across the agency without betraying the reasonable expectations of privacy. If this applies to your agency, the best approach is to share changes made because of exit interviews during agency offsite meetings or State of the Agency meetings. This will demonstrate to employees that their concerns are being heard and acted upon.
8. Don’t Wait Until Employees Are Leaving
While exit interviews can yield amazing insights about your workplace, you don’t have to wait until an exit interview to see how things are going for the employee. The questions you ask in an exit interview can be visited periodically during employee engagement surveys or employee check-ins. This allows you to make changes and address any concerns before they decide to find another job.
During employee check-ins (which should be informal conversations), encourage the employee to share their thoughts and concerns so you can create a healthy workplace. If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it’s the need to check up on and support each other in genuine ways.