Feedback is important. And for businesses, one of the most important sources of feedback is from employees who are leaving.

Using exit interviews effectively can hugely improve your company culture, increasing staff retention and overall satisfaction.

But what should you be getting out of a successful exit interview? Alex explains in this video.

Transcript

Hi, it’s Alex Handford here, co-director of Blues Point IT Recruitment in Burton on Trent. And today, I wanted to talk to you about exit interviews.

So, business leaders need to understand why a person has decided to leave their business. In order to do that, an exit interview is carried out.

We know, statistically, companies that have a structured exit interview process in place have higher retention rates, higher levels of motivation, higher productivity. Those three things mean you’re at a distinct advantage over your competition.

So what are the things you need to consider when going through an exit interview process?

Point #1

So point one should be are you salary and benefits still competitive and able to attract the best talent?

Money isn’t always the main driver as to why somebody’s decided to move on but it does play a key factor in their decision so  if you can’t compete in terms of salary and benefits, are there other things you can offer that will help you retain the best people?

That could be work life balance. Are you offering flexible working hours? Are you offering the opportunity to work from home? These could all make a massive difference to somebody’s happiness in their role.

Point #2

Point two is how effective are your management team? Remember, people leave people, they don’t leave companies. Obviously, they leave ineffective managers.

So do the current management have the right behaviours to manage, engage and build trust and loyalty in the team?

Have they had any recent management training? Do they need management training?

And we find a lot of the time that managers, they learned their management style from their previous manager. That may have been 5, 10 years ago. And the way the world’s changing, it’s unlikely that that management style, practice, is going to be effective in today’s work place.

Point #3

So the third point is: are their skills and talents valued in their current work place?

People obviously want to be given the autonomy to solve problems but also given support when required. They want to have feedback that’s given to them on a regular basis from the business, from external parties, if that’s part of their role. So they know that what they’re doing has a meaningful impact.

That builds engagement, motivation and loyalty.

Also, how regularly are they being given constructive feedback?

If it’s just a yearly appraisal, I’d say that’s far too long. What we should be doing is opening the channels of communication, so maybe a monthly, or bi-monthly review where the manager and the employee sit down, they have a discussion about how things are progressing, setting goals.

It’s constructive, professional feedback.

Point #4

And finally, you’d like this person to leave the business and be an advocate for your business in the wider world.

So keep it professional. Thank them for their hard work, for all their efforts over the tenure.

Ask them how they think things could be improved. Remember there are no perfect companies out there, and no perfect people.

This person will go out and, hopefully, they will recommend you as an employer of choice in the wider community.

I hope you found that of interest, on how to think about an exit interview and what you should be getting from one.

If you do have any questions, it would be great to hear from you. And bye for now.