21 Best Employee Exit Interview Questions to Ask

Employees may choose to voluntarily quit their jobs in a company for several reasons. However, a Gallup survey states that 42% of employee turnover is preventable.

Having the right conversations with employees can help them change their decisions. If not, the company can talk to the departing employees about what could have been done better to persuade them to stay.

Employee exit interview questions are the best way to understand why employees leave the company and how the company could have retained them with better initiatives.

In this post, we will look at how companies and HR professionals can use exit interviews to ensure a smooth transition with their departing employees, while also asking the right questions to gather meaningful feedback.

What is an Exit Interview?

Exit interviews are formal or casual sessions that enable HR business partners to engage with exiting employees one last time. They usually happen on the last day of an employee’s tenure after completing all the required offboarding formalities.

Exit interviews mainly aim to understand why employees quit their jobs, how the company could have better supported them in continuing their work, and how the company can improve for future hires.

An exit interview must include common concerns and specific questions about an employee’s reason for leaving. Some organizations conduct exit interviews online and offline, floating surveys with common questions, and conducting detailed sessions with HR professionals to understand the root causes of issues.

Why Exit Interviews Are Important

No employer wishes to see some of their best performers and star assets leave the company. Turnover results in huge losses for companies regarding the time and resources spent on hiring, training, upskilling, and engaging employees.

Exit interviews provide a convenient platform to understand how the company could have done better to retain employees or how it is faring with its existing retention initiatives.

Here are some reasons why companies must conduct exit interviews to improve their employee retention:

1. Understand manager-reportee relationships: A survey states that 7 out of 10 employees quit their jobs due to bad managers. These revelations typically emerge during an exit interview, as doing so during the notice period could worsen an already poor relationship. This feedback from exiting employees can help companies identify such managers and train them to handle their team members better.
2. Measure the success of engagement initiatives: A Gallup study shows that highly talented but least engaged employees had the highest turnover in the organization. A detailed analysis can show how such employees lacked the right opportunities for growth and upskilling, making them pursue better opportunities.
3. Discover opportunities for better employee retention: Some employees may voluntarily quit their jobs for personal, family, or health-related concerns, such as tending to their loved ones, childcare, travel challenges, higher education, and more. Companies can analyze common reasons for such turnover and plan to accommodate genuine employee concerns for retention.
4. Analyze the company’s overall culture: Sometimes, rigid and less-flexible company policies can make employees feel burned out, leading to less harmony in their work-life balance. Exit interviews are the best forum for discussing how the company can alter its rigid policies.
5. Improve compensation and benefits: Yet another common reason employees switch jobs is because of higher pay packages and indirect compensation benefits. Revealing the same during exit interviews allows companies to match their packages to meet industry standards and provide a competitive edge to their peers.

How to Conduct an Effective Exit Interview: Best Practices

Now, you must have a fair idea of how exit interview questions are significant for a company to analyze and realign its employee retention initiatives. Let's see how to effectively conduct the exit interview so that employees share their honest opinions and constructive feedback post-offboarding.

1. Schedule at the right time

Exit interviews are best held after all or most of the resignation and offboarding formalities are completed. In most cases, the employees serve a notice period after resignation, during which they can smoothly hand over their roles and responsibilities to other team members and sever ties. So, the last day in the company or a day before farewell can be a great time to have honest conversations with the employee.

2. Choose the Right Interview Professional

The person conducting the exit interview must ideally be neutral and aware of the employee’s team and group, but with no direct connection to the employee. In most cases, the HR business partner associated with the employee’s team conducts the interview.

Such professionals are aware of the team’s dynamics, the nature of the managers and leads, and the work they do. Avoid conducting interviews with the employee’s direct managers or leaders, as this can dissuade them from revealing their honest feedback.

3. Ensure a Confidential and Non-Confrontational Tone

Although companies do not want employee turnover, they must not force their opinions and aspirations on employees who wish to leave. Exit interviews must involve more talking from the employee about their experiences and expectations, with limited interference from the interviewer.

Also, the interviewer's tone must be friendly and curious to understand how the company could have done better to meet the exiting employee’s retention needs. A demanding or authoritative tone to understand the reason for exit can make employees anxious to reveal honest reasons, fearing their answers may affect their future.

4. Ask Structured and Open-Ended Experience Questions

Exit interview questions must be a good mix of open-ended and structured questions. It is good practice to begin the interview with open and generic questions that allow employees to share their experiences and opinions in an honest manner.

Similarly, interviewers must try asking relevant and structured questions to understand their decisions and conclusions in-depth. A good blend of questions in the exit interview removes any concerns of humiliation or embarrassment for employees on their last day(s) at work.

5. Provide a Clear Explanation of Purpose and Outcomes

The main purpose of exit interviews is to understand how the company can perform better to prevent similar situations in the future and focus on retention. Exiting employees have the right to know how their feedback matters to the betterment of their company.

Conveying the clear purpose of the interview and asking certain specific questions helps employees share their honest opinions and feedback during exit interviews. Employees ought to know how the company plans to accept and implement their feedback. Such initiatives help existing employees maintain amicable ties with the company for future opportunities.

6. Use Analytics or Automation Tools to Streamline the Process

Although it is mandatory to have exit interviews as direct face-to-face conversations, part of the process can be made online. For instance, companies can conduct feedback surveys for employees to fill out their responses to generic questions with options.

This data and interview snippets can be fed to AI recruitment tools and other analytics platforms to analyze reasons for retention. Insights from this analysis can help companies hire the right employees in the future and prevent costly hiring mistakes.

21 Exit Interview Questions to Ask Employees

The right blend of questions in the exit interview can provide helpful insights for companies to refine their hiring and retention strategies. Here is a compilation of the best exit interview questions that are suitable for all levels of employees who are leaving the company.

For the ease of interviewers, we have grouped the questions under different categories to get a good blend of exit questions for your candidates.

Reasons for Leaving

Exit interviews must start with questions to analyze an employee’s reasons for leaving. In most cases, their immediate managers and team leaders would have discussed their reasons for leaving and what could have been done to retain them.

However, employees' responses to their immediate managers may not be truthful. This is why these questions should come from a neutral person, preferably an HR business partner. Employees can answer them honestly, knowing their responses will not delay their exit.

Here are some ways to ask employees about their reasons for leaving.

• Why did you choose to leave the company?
• Was there a specific event that triggered your decision to leave?
• Did your manager have a discussion with you regarding the various retention options?

Experience With Role and Responsibilities

Interview professionals must analyze how an exiting employee felt about their professional journey in the company. Questions about the experience they gained from their current job show a lot about how the company provides opportunities to learn and grow.

Feedback from the employees helps companies reframe their job roles, refine training and upskilling programs, and monitor team dynamics. Here are some questions that help employees share more about their roles and responsibilities in the company.

• Did your job align with your initial expectations?
• Were you given adequate tools, training, and resources to meet your goals?
• Did you receive consistent support from your team and your manager?
• Did your job role change over time? Explain more about your transition.

Management and Leadership

An important set of exit interview questions must cover the employee’s relationships with the company and leaders. Feedback from these questions provides clear insights into corporate relationships and how employees were recognized and appreciated for their work.

• How would you describe your relationship with your manager?
• Did you feel supported and heard by different levels of leaders?
• Were you given due credit and recognition for the work you did?

Work Environment and Culture

The next set of questions should move from one’s job experiences toward engagement with the company and its culture. This set of exit interview questions is crucial to understand if the company’s culture and policies are reasons for triggering employee turnover.

Moreover, HR professionals are the best people to ask such questions, as they can directly understand the impact of a company’s policies on individual growth and engagement.

• Did you feel respected and included in your team?
• Were the company’s policies clear and consistently followed?
• How would you describe our company’s culture and employee friendliness?

Forward-Looking Feedback

Following the questions that target the employee’s experiences and journey in the company, exit interviews should have a session specifically dedicated to collecting constructive feedback from employees.

The interviewers must use a friendly and assuring tone when asking for suggestions regarding how the company can better help its future employees.

• How can we improve in retaining people in the future?
• What advice would you give to someone replacing you in your team?
• Would you recommend our company to others in your circle?
• Would you prefer returning to our company in the future?

Personal Reflection and Final Thoughts

Conclude the exit interview by allowing employees to reflect upon their memorable moments, takeaways, challenges, and lessons learned. This segment must ensure that employees are completely honest and candid about sharing their experiences.

Keep this session filled with open-ended questions and supportive clauses, assuring the employees of a great future ahead.

• What are your good and bad experiences while working here?
• Did you ever feel frustrated or burned out at work?
• What were some of your cherished moments that made you feel proud to work here?
• Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

Exit Interview Tips for Employers

In addition to preparing a list of good exit interview questions, employers must follow some best practices while conducting exit interviews. Here are some proven tactics that help employers get the most feedback from their exiting employees.

1. Avoid any form of criticism of the employee’s reason for leaving.
2. Never involve an employee’s immediate manager or team members in the interview.
3. Do not interrupt employees when they share their experiences and engagement with the company.
4. Maintain the privacy of the exiting employee while analyzing and providing feedback to company leaders and managers regarding the reasons for the exit.

What to Do After the Exit Interview?

The data collected from exit interviews provides fruitful insights to help companies analyze the reasons for employee turnover. That is why most exit interviewers use AI tools to note employees’ responses and provide proactive analytics on the company’s policies and engagement initiatives.

Data from feedback surveys and exit interviews is used to check whether the company has been hiring the right people. If not, the company must devise new hiring strategies and ensure that similar hiring mistakes are avoided in the future.

Furthermore, employee satisfaction levels from exit interviews can be used to analyze the company’s culture and engagement initiatives. If more turnover arises due to disengagement and a lack of indirect benefits, companies must look for ways to motivate employees beyond their pay package.

Companies can also promote professionals to conduct stay interviews just like exit interviews during an employee’s tenure in their job. This involves asking questions similar to those in an exit interview to monitor employee satisfaction levels and avoid possible turnover.

How Revaluate180 Supports Positive Offboarding Experiences

Companies often find it challenging to navigate sudden employee turnover. Similarly, employees may find it difficult to sever ties when switching companies and handing over responsibilities.

Revaluate180 helps both companies and exiting employees traverse smoothly throughout the offboarding process. Our expert team ensures your employees get a friendly offboarding experience while maintaining your company’s reputation to attract future talent.

Our severance process involves helping employees focus on individual well-being while realigning their personal values so that they can progress to subsequent stages of their careers.

We conduct individual sessions and interviews to help employees discover their meaning outside their current workplace, while having friendly relations with their past employers. We generate curated individual feedback reports and brief employees on how they can develop themselves to be always ready to grow in their careers and personal lives.

Final Thoughts

No company wishes to see its best hires, for whom it has spent considerable time and resources on hiring and recruitment, suddenly leave. However, conducting exit interviews can help companies analyze the reasons for turnover and prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

Exit interview questions and their responses are a great way to understand how employees are satisfied with their jobs and engage with others in the company. Feedback from employees and their reasons for leaving can help companies reform their compensation packages, company policies, and employee engagement initiatives.

The best time to conduct exit interviews is a day before or on the employee's last working day. Keeping the exit interview toward the end gives sufficient time for employees to relieve themselves of their responsibilities and have a smooth handover from their job.

Most importantly, it is necessary to have a neutral person conduct the interview without any judgments and ask a good blend of exit interview questions.

Contact us today for any assistance with smooth severance and offboarding in your company, while collecting insights for better hiring and engagement strategies in the future.