Exit Survey

While losing great employees is tough, it’s also an inevitable reality of running a business. Given this, we’ve designed an exit survey which you can use when someone leaves the business to ensure you, 1) provide them with an opportunity to be heard  2) identify any issues that need to be addressed 3) create a database of insight to access in relation to turnover and engagement. This isn’t only for employees who voluntarily leave the organization but some common sense applies when asking someone that you’ve let go to provide ‘honest’ feedback on what they think.

Customizing your survey

We wanted to make sure the survey had enough content to cover all bases while providing the transitioning employee the opportunity to share any concerns or ideas they might have. Upon leaving, people can tend to be upset or disengaged. To address this, we want employees to have a great experience upon leaving the organization.

Food for thought

• Don’t just send out the survey. It’s incredibly important that you engage your exiting employee to understand their motivation. A face to face interview is the best method to engage where anything that needs to be cleared up can be done safely.
• Capturing exit survey data is a great initiative for both the exiting employee and new hires. You can potentially correct any misperceptions that an exiting employee has to prevent the same occurring with future new hires/ employees.
• Our exit survey has been designed to link to key elements of engagement to ensure it is actionable. If you are wanting to add more questions, consider running an in-person exit interview to gain some qualitative insights. Furthermore, your employees are going to be impressed that you wanted to check-in to see how they are doing.
• As mentioned above, if the turnover was involuntary, an exit interview done face to face or online may be interpreted as insensitive. Use your common sense when seeking feedback from employees and if they are upset or angry, it’s better to not pursue them.

What to do with the results?

The exit interview serves multiple purposes, the first is to gain critical insight into the sentiment of employees that are leaving the organization. The second is to provide the exiting employee with a sense of completeness. Information gleaned from the survey results will help improve culture and engagement as key pain points will be highlighted. In addition, if the pain points highlighted are addressed before the exiting employee leaves, they will carry positive sentiment to the marketplace.