Conducting an exit interview is worthwhile when your company takes seriously the information it garners from an employee who is leaving the job voluntarily. It not only offers your organization a chance to gain constructive lessons, but it is a tool for transferring knowledge that is walking out the door with the employee.An exit interview can also:
1. Help smooth over relations with a disgruntled worker on the way out and possibly avoid formal complaints or lawsuits.
2. Offer insight into the culture and function of the workplace.
3. Help maintain a positive connection between the departing employee and the company.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Use exit interviews as a learning tool

The practice of conducting meaningful exit interviews can send the positive signal that the organization wants to learn how it can improve and not lose other good employees.

I recommend: With the help of online manuals, draft a policy that you include in the company handbook that documents how exit interviews happen, when and by whom.

Hire experts to conduct your exit interviews

If you don’t have an in-house human resources department, your company can still take advantage of the fruits of exit interviews with departing employees.

I recommend: You can hire outside contractors to conduct exit interviews. Consult Work Institute’s checklist for outsourcing exit interviews. There are also outside entities such as Global Compliance that can perform the interviews by telephone, which may yield more candid information and can be conducted in the employee’s native language if necessary.

Don’t take exit interviews personally

Some experts recommend waiting five to seven weeks after an employee leaves to conduct the exit interview, and then to have it done by an outside agency. That way the lessons can come back to the company in a form that it might digest and learn from rather than personalize and reject.

I recommend: If you use a series of surveys taken throughout the employee’s life cycle through the company there is a greater chance it will be valuable. There are a number of purveyors of low-cost tools for the interview including online forms from Get Me Cheaper. The downside is that employee may feel less invested in offering meaningful information in this impersonal forum.  

Review interview basics

As with any employee interaction, the conduct of the exit interview must be done properly, even more carefully because the interviewee has less of a stake in the process as he is walking out the door.

I recommend: It’s always good to brush up on interview basics, whether from the Small Business Administration, checking approved questions from the Department of Labor.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Tailor the interview to find red flags of possible discrimination or other legal issues within the company.
• •  For competitive reasons, find out where your departing employees are going and what drew them there.
• •  Take the process seriously so that the company learns from the findings of the interviews.