Does your organisation arrange exit interviews for every employee who quits?
Do you believe your employees are honest with you when they bid farewell?
Have you been struggling to find out the real reason behind frequent resignations?
Well, conducting exit interviews with departing employees is crucial for an organisation. These conversations help an employer identify and address company weaknesses and areas for improvement.
However, it is obvious that employees usually try to leave an organisation on good terms. This leads to lies and dishonesty during these interviews.
In fact, according to a poll we recently started on our LinkedIn, around 68% of employers believe that their employees are dishonest during their exit interviews.
But what if we told you there's a way to uncover the reality?
Let’s hold on right there and go step-by-step.
This blog is to introduce you to the exit interviews and their objectives and shed light on why employees sometimes keep it under wraps. Also, discover how enlisting the help of a third party can change the entire picture for you.
Exit Interviews Overview
An exit interview is a conversation between an employee and an employer when they decide to bid adieu. This is when the employer tries to gather feedback, experience, and other information.
An HR professional or the manager usually holds these interviews.
What makes exit interviews important?
Well, this is an opportunity for the employer to understand the hidden loopholes within his team. Employees are asked to offer suggestions for improvement or if there is any particular reason that made them resign.
As a result, the organisation can make sure that they work on those areas of improvement. But, this is only possible if the leaving professional is truthful. If they decide to hide what troubled them throughout their time in the company, these interviews lose their importance.
Objectives of Exit Interviews
Exit interviews serve various purposes within an organisation. Here are some of the key objectives:
Gathering Feedback
One of the significant reasons why exit interviews are a must-have is to gather feedback from an employee. This is where an HR executive or the manager tries to get honest and constructive feedback.
This majorly includes reasons behind resigning, work experience, concerns, and more. This feedback helps an organisation significantly in the long run.
Identifying Loopholes and Patterns
Most of the time, people tend to let go of issues while they are working in an organisation. However, if an employee quits and is having one last conversation, they tend to share more.
Exit interviews are a way to identify any gap or certain pattern that the teams have been using. Once the seniors become familiar with that, it gets easier for them to fill these loopholes and work on them.
Enhance the Work Culture
Without honest feedback from the team members, leaders of an organisation mainly operate on two basis. One is on the basis of what they see, and the other is guesswork.
Now, here is something to understand. Every professional working in an organisation tries his best not to show his flaws in front of senior management. This is why it is almost impossible for the executives to identify internal issues.
Exit interviews help them identify these. As a result, the seniors ensure they take relevant measures to enhance the work culture and improve the workplace.
Identifying Training Needs
Feedback from exit interviews can highlight areas where additional training may be needed for current employees.
As the interviewer learns about the uncovered issues within their organisation, they try to identify the core reason behind them. Eventually, this leads to helping them identify the need for any sort of training program, such as work-life balance training, leadership executive programs, and more.
Simpler Performance Evaluation
Another objective behind an exit interview is to collect as much data as possible from each employee. Ensuring that you have access to the records of each conversation helps the organisation in the long run.
How?
Information from a few interviews helps the organisation's leaders to know the areas of improvement.
As a result, they set a plan in place and, therefore, set a benchmark.
Eventually, it becomes easy for an employer to compare the performance and see if the issues have been resolved.
Are Employees More Honest to an External Exit Interviewer
Paint this picture: You have worked with XYZ company for 3 years. Over these years, you have made some great relationships with your acquaintances. Be it your manager, your team member, or someone from another department, you have had at least one conversation with everybody.
However, due to some recent conflicts within the team, you decided to leave and look for a better opportunity. It is almost your last working day when your manager and HR executive arrange an exit interview with you.
Now, let us ask you a question.
Would you be honest with them when they ask you what is the real reason behind your decision to leave the company?
Let us make it easier for you.
Imagine the same scenario as above. However, this time, the employer decides just to have a final, decent conversation with you and lets you leave.
After a month, you get a call, where you are then asked the reason behind why you left your previous company.
Which of the two scenarios do you think you will provide a more honest answer?
When we asked the same question on social media, the majority of the people chose scenario 2.
Why?
Well, the basic understanding behind this is the fact that people often try to maintain good relationships with their employers. However, once they are out of the office, they tend to share the real reason, that too, with someone who they believe is harmless.
This is why the need for external exit interviews has risen over the last few years. More and more people are hiring professionals who are trained and skilled for the job.
Wrapping This Up!
Learning about real-time experience and honest feedback from an employee can be beneficial for a company. This is why exit interviews should be a part of the process.
However, in order to ensure complete honesty, an employer needs to find the best practices. One of which is hiring an external team of experts who can connect with the employees and look for the real reasons behind attrition.
OriginBluy offers exit interview services to organisations in need. Our trained experts follow a strategy that works for the client and gets them the unspoken answers.
If you are also trying to enhance the work culture in your organisation and want to ensure your employees’ happiness, get in touch with us, and we will help you identify the issues and offer programs that can help.
Authored by Gouri Maheshwari. To learn more about Originbluy, send us an email at gouri.maheshwari@originbluy.com.
