When it comes to getting honest feedback, exit interviews are your best friend. Many employees feel intimidated about providing constructive criticism because of how it might affect their career potential. Once someone decides to leave your organization, you have an opportunity to get genuine, relevant feedback that can improve your HR practices and spur your company’s growth. 

Do You Conduct Exit Interviews With Voluntary Terminations? 

At Asure, we’ve learned the importance of exit interviews firsthand. Our recent 2024 HR Benchmark Report demonstrated a strong correlation between conducting exit interviews and experiencing faster revenue growth as a company.

We asked 1,065 companies about important HR practices. Then, we inquired about their company’s growth during the preceding year. We discovered there was a 14-point spread between the number of fast-growth and zero-growth companies that used exit interviews. 

When we looked at companies that had less than 25 workers, this spread jumped to 27 points. 

53% of zero-growth companies with less than 25 workers used exit interviews.

80% of fast-growth companies with less than 25 workers used exit interviews.

The Importance of Conducting Exit Interviews 

The idea that exit interviews correlate to company growth isn’t intuitive. After all, the employees providing these interviews are already leaving your company, so they’ll no longer be personally contributing to revenue. However, these interviews provide a number of important benefits for everyone who remains. In a recent interview with Mission to Grow on “Post Employment – HR’s Role After the Job Ends: Managing Post-Employment Effectively,” Asure’s vice president of HR compliance, learning, and development, Mary Simmons, provided some insight into the importance of exit interviews. 

According to Simmons, “Retention is very expensive, so you want to do an exit interview so that you know why they’re leaving. That exit interview might teach you some compliance stats. You might have a manager speaking inappropriately, and they don’t want to talk about it until after they resign because they’re scared or nervous.” 

Some employees leave for a better salary or benefits. Other workers resign from your company because of policy issues, harassment from a manager, or lack of promotion options. No matter what the reasoning is, you need to know about it. Employees are often more open to discussing issues when they know they’re leaving, so this is your opportunity to gather important information about your employee retention and what your company can improve on.

Discover Issues 

More than half of workers reported either low pay, disrespect at work, or lack of advancement opportunities as major or minor reasons for leaving a job. In fact, a Gallup poll shows that 42% of employee turnover is preventable, but many companies ignore these turnover-related issues.

The best way to find out about problems is to ask about them. Exit interviews are an opportunity to learn about key issues at your organization that your current employees may feel uncomfortable talking about.

Get Constructive Feedback 

Unfortunately, many workers are uncomfortable bringing up problems with HR or managers. Even if they are willing to talk about concerns, they’re unlikely to be brutally honest since they want to keep working for your company. Exit interviews allow you to get honest, constructive feedback that your remaining workers are too intimidated to provide. 

Improve Salary and Benefits Feedback

There are many different questions you should talk about during an exit interview. Salary and benefits are a good topic because you can ask the employee if they are leaving for a better salary. Then, you can use this information to compare how your company is performing against the competition. 

Sometimes, it’s impossible for small businesses to increase the amount they’re spending on salary and benefits. However, there are a few benefits that are free to offer. In addition, some employees are unaware of their current benefits or how much these benefits cost. Giving your workers a total compensation summary on a regular basis is a good way to help them know how much money your organization is actually spending on them. 

If communicating benefits is the issue, you could even devote a part of your employee meetings to talking about the benefit of the month. You can cover the benefits available, how to access them, and any associated costs for the worker. Some workers are simply unaware of the benefits they can get, so you may want to provide employee education on these topics.

Retain Future Talent

If someone is taking part in an exit interview, they aren’t going to stay at your company for long. However, exit interviews can help you retain future talent. When you understand and address the cause of your employee turnover, you can improve your retention rates. 

Additionally, your exit interview may reveal that there are changes you can make to get the employee to stay. For example, if the exit interview reveals that the employee only left because managerial advancement isn’t a possibility, you can reach out to them when those openings do exist. Good employees are hard to find, and your former employees already fit into your culture. 

Understand the Employee’s Departure

Often, employees don’t give specific reasons about why they left. They’ll simply let you know when their last day is. The only way to understand why an employee wants to move on is to ask them. Then, aggregate all of this information into solid, anonymous statistics so that you can get a better perspective on why people are leaving your company. 

Top Questions to Ask During an Exit Interview 

To make the most of your exit interviews, ask a variety of questions. Once you get an answer, follow up so that you understand their answer and give them an opportunity to expand on it. For more information, check out our guide to conducting exit interviews.

1. What were your reasons for leaving? 
2. How could we have done better? 
3. What was your favorite part of working at our organization? 
4. Were there any company policies you struggled to understand?
5. What were your primary factors in picking another job? 
6. If you had to describe our company culture to a friend, what would you say? 
7. What does your new employer provide that we don’t? 
8. Were policies and communication from our organization clear and easy to understand? 
9. What kind of changes would need to be made to your job to get you to stay? 
10. How would you rate the feedback you were given by your direct manager? 
11. Would you consider working for our business in the future? 
12. Was your workload too heavy or light? 
13. How often were you given performance feedback? 
14. How would you rate your team’s collaboration? 
15. Were you given enough training to do your job effectively? 
16. Are there any new employee benefits that you think should be offered? 
17. Do you feel you were given all the guidance and resources needed to succeed?
18. What made you search for a new position? 
19. How do our benefits and salary compare to your new job? 
20. Would you consider returning to work here in the future? 

What Do You Do with Information from Exit Interviews? 

Once you have completed the exit interview, the next step is figuring out what to do with the information. In most cases, it is a good idea to aggregate all of this data so that it is anonymous. Then, use the data to form a picture of your company’s overall performance. 

First, consider why people are leaving your company. See if there are actionable steps you can take to solve the problem. You can also reach out to an HR consultant to get ideas about ways your company can improve its retention rate through exit interviews, stay interviews, and post-employment practices.

Exit interviews are an opportunity to address problems before they become widespread and affect your company’s brand. Plus, performing exit interviews and acting on the feedback can boost your organization’s morale and retention. 

Learn More About Conducting Exit Interviews in Your Organization

Conducting exit interviews is only the first step. If you don’t know how to aggregate and understand the data, your company will struggle to act on this important information. With the right exit interview strategy, you can improve your employee turnover and morale.

To learn more about exit interviews and post-employment HR practices, reach out to Asure’s team of small business HR experts today.