I’ve spoken to a number of people recently who were leaving their organization – moving to another organization in a different industry, moving to another organization in the same industry, retiring, and leaving without a choice.
The common element for all? Reluctance to do an Exit Interview/not being offered one.
This is something I’ve thought about a lot since I was in the HR Unit at Regina Public Library but these recent conversations have put it back to front of mind.
I decided to ask my friend Chad (ChatGPT) to list some of the problems with Exit Interviews as they’re currently structured, ways to address those issues, and ideas to imrpove the process overall.
Here’s what came back…
Yes. The biggest problem with the traditional exit interview is that it treats departure as a single conversation with a single person. That creates predictable distortions.
A better system treats exit feedback as an organizational learning process. The goal is not “Why are you leaving?” It is “What can we learn from your experience here, and how can we make the organization better for the people who remain?”
Here is how I would break it down.
| Problem with traditional exit interviews | Why it happens | Ways to get better information |
|---|---|---|
| People don’t want to burn bridges | They may need a reference, work in the same professional community, or want to return | Use an independent interviewer. Make clear that feedback will be aggregated and not attributed unless permission is given. |
| People want to come back someday | They have an incentive to remain diplomatic | Ask about specific experiences rather than “What did you think of management?” Use anonymous follow-up surveys. |
| People don’t want to be “mean” | Criticizing real people feels uncomfortable | Ask about processes and experiences: “What made your job harder than it needed to be?” |
| People think nothing will change | They have seen previous feedback disappear into a black hole | Report back on themes and actions. “You told us X. Here is what we changed.” |
| The organization is defensive | Managers may immediately explain or justify problems | The interviewer should listen without debating. Analysis happens afterward. |
| The employee is afraid of retaliation | They may still work there during the process, or know the people being discussed | Separate the interview from the employee’s manager. Protect confidentiality. |
| The employee is leaving on good terms | They may genuinely have few complaints and therefore give little useful information | Ask what could have made the job 10% better, what frustrated them, and what they would warn a new employee about. |
| The employee is leaving angry | They may overemphasize the final incident | Ask about the timeline. “When did you first start thinking about leaving?” |
| The interview happens too late | By the final day, people have emotionally checked out | Collect feedback at several points: after resignation, shortly before departure, and several months later. |
| The employee is fired | They may never receive an opportunity to describe their experience | Consider a separate “departure experience interview” after termination, conducted by someone independent. |
| The organization only hears from people who agree to interviews | Participation is voluntary | Use a short standardized survey for everyone, followed by optional interviews. |
| People don’t know what is safe to say | They don’t know who will see the information | Explain exactly who receives what information and how it will be reported. |
| Questions are too broad | “Why are you leaving?” produces generic answers | Use specific prompts about leadership, workload, communication, culture, growth, compensation, tools, policies and customer experience. |
| People tell you what they think you want to hear | They recognize the organizational script | Ask for examples. “Can you give me an example?” is incredibly useful. |
| The interviewer’s relationship affects the answers | Employees may like or dislike the interviewer | Use a neutral interviewer who wasn’t directly involved in the employee’s work. |
| One person’s experience gets treated as fact | Exit interviews are anecdotes | Look for patterns across many departures and compare them with engagement surveys, turnover data, grievances, absenteeism and internal transfers. |
| The organization focuses on the stated reason for leaving | “Better opportunity” may conceal the actual issue | Ask what attracted them to the new job and what they would have needed to stay. |
| People blame the wrong thing | Employees may identify salary when the underlying issue is workload, leadership or recognition | Ask several layers of questions rather than accepting the first answer. |
| People don’t distinguish between organization-wide and local problems | A bad supervisor and a bad corporate policy can sound similar | Ask: “Was this specific to your team, your manager, your branch, or the organization as a whole?” |
| The organization asks only departing employees | Former employees may have a distorted view | Combine exit data with “stay interviews” for current employees. |
| There is no denominator | Five complaints sound significant without knowing whether 5 people or 500 people experienced them | Track themes against the number of departures and compare departments, roles and time periods. |
| Feedback becomes a personnel complaint | The interview turns into allegations about individual employees | Separate organizational learning from formal HR investigations. Trigger an investigation when appropriate, but don’t make the exit interview itself the investigation. |
| The employee edits their story because they’re emotional | Departure can be an unusually emotional moment | Give them a written opportunity to add anything afterward. |
| The organization assumes departure means dissatisfaction | People leave for retirement, family, relocation, career changes and many other reasons | Ask both “Why did you leave?” and “What, if anything, could have persuaded you to stay?” |
| Feedback gets summarized into meaningless themes | “Communication could improve” tells management almost nothing | Capture specific examples, frequency, affected groups and potential solutions. |
| HR owns the information | Employees may see HR as representing the organization rather than them | Consider an independent interviewer or external provider for sensitive environments. |
| Managers never see the feedback | The people capable of changing things don’t receive useful information | Give managers aggregated themes with examples, while protecting individual identities. |
| Managers receive raw comments | Anonymous comments can still be identifiable, especially in small departments | Report themes and carefully anonymized examples rather than verbatim comments when necessary. |
| The organization treats every criticism equally | Some complaints are isolated preferences while others reveal systemic problems | Assess feedback by frequency, severity, evidence and organizational impact. |
| Exit interviews become a compliance exercise | “We did the interview” becomes the measure of success | Measure whether feedback produced identifiable changes. |
I would actually change the concept
Instead of an “Exit Interview,” consider calling it something like:
“Employee Departure Review”
or
“Departure Experience Feedback”
That sounds small, but the framing matters.
An exit interview asks:
“Why are you leaving?”
A departure review asks:
“What should we learn and work to improve from your time here?”
Those produce very different conversations.
Use three different opportunities for feedback
I think this is particularly important.
1. When they resign
Keep it short.
Ask:
- What prompted you to start considering leaving?
- Was there a particular event or was it cumulative?
- What could we have done differently?
- What will your new organization provide that you aren’t getting here?
- What should we absolutely not lose after you leave?
This captures the decision-making process while it is fresh.
2. Shortly before departure
Now ask about the actual employment experience.
For example:
- What made your job unnecessarily difficult?
- What worked particularly well?
- What surprised you after joining?
- What did you wish you had known when you started?
- Where did our policies make sense?
- Where did they get in the way?
- What did your manager do that helped you succeed?
- What did your manager do that made your job harder?
- What would you change if you were running this organization?
That last question can produce remarkably good information.
3. Three to six months later
This is the interesting one.
Former employees are now outside the organization. They have experienced the new workplace. They have some distance.
Ask:
- Having now worked somewhere else, what do you appreciate more about your former workplace?
- What do you appreciate less?
- What differences have surprised you?
- Is there anything you understand differently now that you’ve left?
- Would you consider returning? Why or why not?
- What would have needed to change for you to stay?
That third interview may produce much more candid information than the traditional final-day interview.
Give people multiple ways to tell you
Don’t make the interview the only mechanism.
You could offer:
- Anonymous five-minute survey
- Confidential interview
- Written response
- Follow-up conversation with an independent person
- Optional conversation several months later
Some people will tell an interviewer something they won’t put in writing. Others are exactly the opposite.
And I really like your point about fired employees
[Edit: Thanks Chad! Please don’t kill me when Skynet becomes real.]
Organizations often have a bizarre blind spot here.
They may say:
“We conduct exit interviews.”
But their most dissatisfied employees may be the least likely to get one.
There are legitimate reasons to handle terminated employees differently. You don’t want an exit interview interfering with an investigation, grievance, legal process or termination meeting.
But after the employment relationship has ended, an organization could offer an optional independent “departure feedback” process.
The question shouldn’t be:
“Was the termination fair?”
That turns it into an appeal.
Instead:
“Regardless of the circumstances of your departure, what should the organization learn from your experience?”
You might learn something extremely valuable from someone who was unsuccessful in the organization.
One of the best questions is also one of the simplest in any Exit Interview:
Ask:
“What didn’t we ask you that you think we should have?”
Then shut up.
You can also ask:
“If you were the CEO for one day, what is the first thing you’d change?”
And:
“What is something we think we’re doing well that employees actually experience differently?”
Those questions get past the standard HR questionnaire.
Don’t just collect complaints. Look for “organizational friction”
This could become a particularly useful framework for an organization like a library.
Instead of categorizing feedback only as:
- Management
- Compensation
- Benefits
- Workload
- Culture
look for friction points.
For example:
- A policy that makes a simple task take 20 minutes
- A software system requiring duplicate data entry
- Three levels of approval for something trivial
- Poor communication between departments
- Training that doesn’t match actual job requirements
- A manager who unintentionally creates bottlenecks
- Employees not knowing who has decision-making authority
- A customer-service rule that makes sense on paper but creates bad interactions
Those are often much easier to fix than “culture.”
The really powerful part: close the loop
This is where most exit programs fail.
Suppose 37 employees leave over two years.
You discover:
- 18 mention inconsistent communication
- 15 mention workload
- 13 mention management practices
- 11 mention lack of development opportunities
- 7 mention outdated technology
You don’t need to fix everything.
But you can say:
“Over the past two years, departing employees consistently identified communication, workload and development opportunities as areas for improvement. We have made three changes…”
Then tell employees what happened.
That changes the psychological equation.
People are much more likely to provide honest feedback when they believe:
Feedback ? analysis ? action ? communication
rather than:
Feedback ? HR spreadsheet ? oblivion
One final idea I think is particularly valuable
Pair exit interviews with “stay interviews.”
Ask current employees:
“What would make you consider leaving?”
Then compare their answers with departing employees.
That gives you a fascinating dataset.
You can potentially identify problems before they become turnover.
The organization essentially moves from:
“Why did we lose this person?”
to:
“What are we learning from people who leave, and are current employees experiencing the same things?”
That is a much more useful purpose for an exit process.
I’d add one other thing that Chad didn’t cover. I feel that some of these ideas – around what information is gathered, how it is gathered and what is done with it – should also apply for people moving internally who might also like the opportunity to do an “Exiting One Position But Staying in the Same Organization” interview.
99% of the time, internal moves would have answers like “More hours and/or Higher pay”, “I wanted to be closer to home” and things like that. But sometimes it could also unlock issues that senior managers/HR might not even realise are issues – a particularly bad manager with lots of turnover, a position that keeps turning over because of how its structured or its workload, etc.
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