Even when you think that your company is a great place to work, every now and then employees will leave, it’s a given. You should get some insights from people who are no longer relying on you for their livelihood by conducting exit interview rather than letting the departure go in vain.
By asking specific exit interview questions, you can know the areas in which your company needs improvement. Having a chat with the departing employees may help you further to improve your employee retention strategy.
Here are some of the exit interview questions that you should be asking as an employer:
Why have you decided to leave your current position?
This will give you the reason why the employee decided to start the job search and let you know about how you can improve this in future. You can take their feedback and work towards improving your company culture so that no other employee quits due to the same reason.
What triggered your job search or decision to leave?
This will tell you the employee took this decision due to a specific event. If so, you can know what to do about it so that it doesn’t sabotage other employees’ jobs. But to know this, you have to promise the leaving employee that his/her feedback will be treated as confidential and really valuable.
What does your new company offer that made you join?
You should know what your competitors are using to attract talent. If the answer to this question is higher pay, it’s time to increase the compensation package to retain valuable employees. If it is workplace culture, you should know that you have to abolish those office politics that are hampering employee morale and productivity.
What could we have done better?
This provides you an insight about your employees’ grievances and allows you take steps to keep your current employees engaged and happy. Correcting the past mistakes and improving the way employees at your company interact with their peers can significantly reduce the complaints and grievances.
Were you comfortable discussing workplace issues with your manager?
The answer to this question will let you know if the employer had a friendly manager. This will help you not only in finding a replacement for the employee but also plan something for developing managerial skills of his/her former manager. If you come to know that the manager simply ignored his/her issues, you can discuss it with the manager and assure it is not done with rest of the team members.
Did you think you were updated with company’s new developments and policies?
Transparency is important for any organization’s success and its workplace culture. Before the employee is out the door, you should ask if they felt that the management team needs to be more transparent with them. A lot of companies feel that they need to hide certain information from its employees, but they forget that many companies have grown by adopting open book management or radical transparency at their workplace.