Qualtrics Blog

Employee exit interviews are an important part of HR management and monitoring employee retention and satisfaction. Just as it is important to hold a sales interview to find out why you did not get an account, it is important to understand why an employee leaves and what information you can use to avoid future employee losses.

Avoidable losses result from employee job dissatisfaction, poor management practices, the lack of advancement opportunity, and sometimes personal harassment by or conflict with a co-worker or manager. A recent employee retention survey suggests that nearly 70% of employees leave their jobs because they do not feel valued!

Another purpose is to help employers avoid litigation down the road, caused by illegal activities or by "disgruntled" employees.

Employee exit interviews can change the climate of the organization by changing management style, making changes that reflect employee opinions, and creating value recognition programs where needed. One key to increasing the employee’s opinion of the organization is in the management of expectations. Realistic job expectations are important and management should focus on creation of proper expectations.

Employee exit interviews provide a window to view and benchmark employee expectations regarding:

· Job responsibilities and performance
· Employee job orientation and training
· Mentoring programs
· Working conditions
· Opportunities for skill development career advancement
· Training and development programs
· Supervision and Management
· Work Satisfaction
· Workload Distribution and Schedule Flexibility
· Salary
· Benefits
· Organizational Culture
· Organizational and Work Group Communication

Employee exit interviews should focus on retention by identifying the reason the employee is leaving and also determine if the company’s level of performance or the employees’ unfulfilled expectations are at issue. Just as consumer retention views fulfillment from products or services as “delightful” or as a “failure”, employment environments similarly delight or fail.

Failing environments with low levels of employee retention reflect low levels of job satisfaction and come at a great cost to the organization. Not only is it expensive to hire and then train new employees, but can have a negative impact on productivity and morale.