What value does an exit interview hold for a manager and organization?

The Exit Interview rightly and sensitive applied serves as a good tool for any employer finding out their market standing. Individuals are not always leaving because they are unhappy with the employer. Numerous factors leading to such a decision and an employer can extract valuable information, such to be addressed when reviewing strategic documents, Business Plans, changing the organization and systems (e.g. Performance Management, Recruitment, Learning & Development, Harassment, Work-Life-Balance, Pay Plans, etc).
It has shown that Exit Interviews in form of a Questionnaire is more welcomed by the staff member separating than face-to-face interviews. In a simple way: Exit Interviews are a learning tool for an employer, handled sensitively and analyzed correctly.
It is not a tool to convince the separating staff member that he/she made a mistake leaving. One always has to see the full picture and not show 'hard feelings', as this can seriously damage the reputation of an employer. Remember: bad news always travels faster than good news.

Touch upon:
why are you leaving?
ask them to rate key items--for ex: rate from 1-5, where 5 is outstanding, your manager, the compensation, the benefits program, and your personal development (i.e., how strongly do they feel that the Company invested in their development).

If they are in work teams you should ask about team issues like trust, leadership, ways to improve the team, etc.

Lastly, make sure the Company's critical initiative items are covered such as: where you well trained on Six Sigma, were you informed about the upcoming RIF, etc.

Hope that helps.....

Great question, and one I asked myself, why many companies do not conduct formal exit interviews..
in the case of an employee being fired, there should be someone designated to discuss what could have changed the situation for the better...
in the case of someone leaving on their own decision, there is an excellent opportunity to learn the reason why and what could have change the situation for the better.

It is probably "assumed" that most Fortune companies conduct a formal exit process. You would be surprised by the names of those who don't and for that reason, as some companies do not have consistent and enforced policy when dealing with employees exit and should review the potential value that can be gained by this type of hr event... otherwise... management will assume that all is well and that the people are managed well.
In the new "social" world, companies run the risk of being known for their actions in a manner that may conflict with their business philosophy... if they have one.

So the top three interview questions.

What has prompted this event?
What recommendations could you offer to help us be better?
Would you be willing to share your observations with a third party?

They can be valuable if you know how to get the most out of them. If you focus on the reason they are going, it becomes a negative experience and pointless. So keep away from that approach.

Here are my questions:
What have you learned from working here and why was that useful? (this will be useful to understand what they have got from the job)
If you were recruiting your replacement, what qualities would you be looking for?
If you were recruiting your replacement, what words of advice would you give them?

I think it is always useful to conduct an exit interview unless someone has been terminated for cause and you are very clear about the cause.
I like to determine not just why they are leaving, but why they began looking. Many times a person gets a raise when they change jobs, that isn't why they began looking.
I ask for suggestions on what we could improve and whether or not they would consider returning.
You need to actually analyze the data you receive. Many people "leave" their manager. If we don't identify and track that we don't address the problem and it just continues.
Ex employees can be a great source of future employees- finding out if they would recommend us as an employer and why or why not is important.
Employees are "customers"- if you lost a critical customer would you want to know why?

It is sad that employees leave and then management wants to find out why. It might have been better to have ongoing communication and assessement within an organization such that personnel issues are headed off at the pass rather than a statistical exercise at the end. Others above have commented on the value of an exit interview and I agree that if an employee has elected to leave, it is better to find out why than not. But if an organization is not consciously communicating with employees and actually dealing with their issues, then the exit interview can only be a formality that did not prevent the exit of a valuable employee.

I think better questions to ask, as a CEO or HR manager are the following:

1. What is the culture of my company and how does it promote the needs of both the company and employees
2. If an employee is having a problem with his/her manager, how would I find out
3. Is everything I see about my company filtered through my managers
4. Have I provided a way for employees to contact me without fear of retribution
5. Have I acted on concerns expressed by employees in a way that the employee would consider adequate
6. Do employees and managers understand how decisions are made within the company and have a say in how those affecting their job are made
7. Do good "politicians" succeed within my organization.

I could go on and on with this from my own personal experience. I would conduct exit interviews, but I would use this question as a wake up call that many employees would elect to stay if their work environment met their needs. You are not going to find this out without asking; further you need to make it really easy to communicate issues that are not squelched by managers covering their behinds.

Rick, that is a good list. If an employer is serious about hearing from employees, they would use a 360 assessment to learn what direct reports think about their managers. That is the easy part, changing managers' behaviors is the hard part.

Bob, thanks for your comment. Changing the behavior of managers is more about culture than anything else which is why it is first on my list. Culture starts and is reinforced at the top of an organization. If the CEO insists on a two way communication stream in his/her organization and demonstrates that by behavior as well as talk, eventually the organization gets the message and reacts in a positive way. Managers will not survive that do not act within the overall communicative structure. However in my experience, having a postive culture is rately at the top of the "behavior" of CEO's and the result is high turnover and political surroundings.

"Bob, thanks for your comment."

You're welcome and it is my pleasure.

"Changing the behavior of managers is more about culture than anything else which is why it is first on my list."

Fred Nickols' article "Changing Someone Else’s Behavior" is helpful and can be read at http://www.nickols.us/changing.pdf

"Culture starts and is reinforced at the top of an organization. If the CEO insists on a two way communication stream in his/her organization and demonstrates that by behavior as well as talk, eventually the organization gets the message and reacts in a positive way."

I agree. The last lecture, on the last day of my MBA program, was about corporate change agents. Dr. Spector made the point that being a change agent is a tough job and often thankless and he noted that you should not try it unless the CEO appoints you to it and will stand behind you, how far behind is the issue. He said the first VP to get in your way should be fired by the CEO so that all others will know the change agent role is more important than any one employee.

"Managers will not survive that do not act within the overall communicative structure."

A welcomed change. The book "Reengineering the Corporation" (RtC) was a big hit but the one of the authors had to write the book "Reengineering Management" because the two authors of RtC forgot to include the impact on employees especially managers in RtC; employers lost many employees during their change efforts. I'm going to write the next book "Reengineering the Employees" (RtE) and RtE will be very short. What the heck, here it is "We can't reengineer people and employees are people so don't bother trying to do it."

"However in my experience, having a positive culture is rarely at the top of the "behavior" of CEO's and the result is high turnover and political surroundings."

In the article "Transforming the Engineer into a Manager: Avoiding the Peter Principle," Civil Engineering Practice, Fall 1989, the author, Dr. Neil Thornberry a Professor at Babson College, asserts that young engineers are judged on technical merit and accomplishment, and that promotions go to the technically proficient and verbally expressive engineers, while less technically proficient and less verbally expressive engineers wait their turn.

The Peter Principle is "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

Dr. Thornberry found that for a group of engineers the most talkative, competent engineer gets the first promotion into management. The second most talkative, competent engineer gets the second promotion into management. However, the third most talkative, competent engineer makes the best manager. Now let us presume that a growing company keeps promoting their most talkative competent engineers into management. What do we have? The best technical experts no longer doing the work and the best managers not in management and if they are in management they report to someone who is less capable of managing effectively--they talk too much and listen too little. No wonder so few CEOs have a positive culture.

Richard, excellent comments but then again I agree with you. Some employers find it is more useful to learn why their best employees stay rather than why others leave.

There is much to be gained from a properly conducted exit interview if a company chooses to use the information gained appropriately. Unfortunately, many companies deliberately misuse the information to the detriment of the exiting employee. If the exiting employee chooses only to provide generic answers as to why they are leaving, it could be out of self-protection.

Let me use a personal story as an example. I had been working as a consultant for a large international company happily for over a year. I was asked to work under a new supervisor on a special project. Not only did he have no clue what he was doing, he was verbally abusive (often loudly) and had me working on personal activities for him. I talked to the department head who was not interested and told me if I didn't like it I could leave. I chose to leave and the company insisted on an exit interview. I explained the circumstances and they even forced the supervisor to pay out of his own pocket for the hours spent on his personal activities. The interviewer seemed very caring and sympathetic to the situation. Interestingly enough, I heard through contacts that the supervisor was let go. A few months later, I was contacted by one of the contacts that he would like me to come back to work on another project. I agreed and had been working for several days when I was informed that because of my exit interview I was not eligible to be rehired as a contractor or even as an employee. I learned my lesson and although I have never had another exit interview, I would never say anything other than I found a better opportunity or some such generic answer.

I knew of one large company that used the exit interview to try to elicit information that could be used to sue exiting employees for anything that could even remotely appear to be breaches of contractural, non-disclosure, or non-compete agreements.

Great question Vanessa. I might ask open-ended questions that allow the person to talk in-depth about their experience at the company such as:

1. What are the reasons you're leaving the company?
2. What would you improve in the company?
3. What could we have done to keep you?
4. What advice would you give the company?
5. What did we do well?

Gail, thanks for sharing your experience.

"because of my exit interview I was not eligible to be rehired as a contractor or even as an employee."

That is in excellent example of why post exit interviews, by an independent third party 30 to 60 days after the employees leaves, make more business sense than an exit interview conducted by HR since HR cannot refuse to tie the comment to the former employee by name. RETRIBUTION is something former employees need to be aware of so they can avoid saying anything of value to their former employer. It is the CEO's job to fix poor management practices.

When done right, an exit interview can yield gold. The tricky bit is creating an atmosphere where the employee exiting feels safe enough to share the reason behind their departure especially if they were a good or top performer and well rewarded.

In many cases, exiting is a no-brainer, in other cases it can lead to a story that needs to be told and corrected.

What value do exit interviews deliver .... None. Once someone has made their mind up to leave, then it's all over. If they had an issue with pay or conditions, then they should have brought that to your attention earlier.

If an employee states that pay was the main reason, then they are just making the conversation easier for you and themselves. Pay is never the only reason in the same way that neither is price.

If people leave to develop their career, then this means that they saw their career somewhere else, or the opportunity simply wasn't with you. There is not a great deal you can do about that.

Personally, rather than spend time performing exit interviews, I would spend the time developing my team and recruiting instead.