Letting go of valuable employees can be hard to let go but it will give you a chance to learn about their experience during their time working with you. Employee exit interview can reveal detailed insights that you wouldn’t have uncovered. A competent staff will be more than willing to have an honest discussion about you, your company and the workplace culture.
To get the best out of the interview with your soon to be ex-staff, here is a list of exit interview questions that you should exercise during the session.
1. Why did you choose to resign from the company?
Every employee has a good reason to leave the organization, and there some of those who chose to quit as they are dissatisfied with their job or other valid reasons. Most answers would often be about life-changing events such as career advancement, choosing to take care of their children from home, going back to studying, or perhaps their spouse’s job requires them to relocate to a different place. Through this question, you will able to note down a good number of reasons why employees are deciding to leave. It helps you to better understand your employees and planning essential changes to reduce the number of staff departures.
2. Have you accomplished your professional development and career goals together with the company?
Employees who have felt they have achieved something during their time at the organization are satisfied with their jobs but those who don’t will feel like they are just a piece of gear in the machine. They would really want to know what they did matters to help to drive their personal and company goal. Through this question, you will get to see what you can do to help other employees to grow professionally in term of personal development or their career goals.
3. What did you enjoy least while working with the company?
It is significant to know the which aspect of your organization require improvement. Take the initiative to look into the concerns that were addressed by employees that opted to resign. Their perspective may also be helpful in setting up the future establishments in the company for future employees. Take for example, if the person felt that the work environment is not feasible for the people in the organization. You should look into the solutions to balance back the working environment to prevent future discrepancies among the employees.
4. What did you enjoy most working in this company?
The responses from this question will allow you to see what truly motivate employees to keep working in your company. Insights such as employee engagement and professional growth are essential information that will help broaden up your view on what are the positives that you can do to make it even better for new and existing employees.
5. What could we have done to be better to serve everyone in the company?
This question will address what they feel dissatisfied with his/her job and the key pointers that you can pick up to make the right changes for the future of the organization. It will show you certain things that you were not fully aware off and also help with diving down into the issues that the employees are facing.
While it is highly important to address all the challenges and concerns that were pointed out. You should be careful not to incite any form of negativity during the interview process:
1. Avoid asking targeted questions about certain people or issue and avoid inserting personal opinion into the interview.
2. Try not to dwell in office gossips, the information is not constructive and not reliable.
3. Do no comment anything that is considered as slanderous. Instead, listen without agreeing or disagreeing with the employee point even if there are negative things being voiced out.
4. Never take it as a personal issue. Remain professional and ensure the interview is entirely work-related.