The Other Side Of Exit Interviews

By Author: Naman Vohra
Total Articles: 133
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Want to reduce talent acquisition costs? Or is it actually the replacements that you want to get rid of?

There is no doubt about the fact that exit interviews can be an effective way of getting into an exiting employee’s mind to fetch valuable information pertaining to organization, it workplace environment and its process. However, the problem lies in the objective with which an exit interview is conducted.

It is important to lay down clear objectives before one goes ahead with finding solutions. When an organization is looking forward to reduce the replacement costs, exit interviews can definitely come to its help.

At the outset, exit interviews help in gathering answers from various exiting employees on a variety of questions, all directed to one objective-understanding the gap, filling of which will reduce the employee attrition and, hence, the replacement costs.

However, just conducting an interview with exiting interview is not enough. The interviewer has to be really skilled so that the interviewee feels comfortable with him and gives him correct answers. Even the questions have to be put ...
... in a way that makes the interviewee candid.

This skill has to be coupled with the right timing of such an interview. During the notice period or when an employee is in a process of exiting, his state of mind is way different from the same person’s state of mind after a ‘cooling-off’ period. During the exiting phase, an employee is over whelmed with reasons of leaving the organization, which may give a biased and unclear picture to the interviewer. Also, exit interview during that time may not reveal anything valuable as the employee at that time is more concerned about his relieving letter as his full and final settlement.
The fear of an inconvenient exit can stop the employee from participating in the interview wholeheartedly.
Once the ex-employee has been given his reliving letter and his account is settled, and when he has spent enough time away from the organization, the ex-employee does not mind giving out true information. This is the time when an interviewer can get vital information with little efforts.

•The reason of leaving the organization
•If better job opportunity is the answer, then what exactly did not match up to his expectations
•Any glitch in any of the processes he was involved in. if a flag was raised, was it entertained sufficiently or not
•Anything about the working environment. Information about the reporting manager, colleagues, etc.

These are just few and basic examples of what all information can be attained through exit interviews. The information collected from many such employees can help in better analysis and more accurate result and exit trends.

Naman is associated with one of the leading retail background screening company that specializes in Exit Interview Survey