Must ask Exit Interview Questions - eGuide for HR

These questions should be prepared as pre-planned and in the form of a structured interview, called conducting exit interviews. This way, the employers can draw honest feedback about their selves and the company culture in the eyes of existing employees. Employees decide to leave you due to development opportunities outside.

What Employers must know when their employee is leaving?

When departing employees have decided to leave, the employers must know:

• What was the job description of an existing employee?
• How was the employee experience?
• Were they good team members?
• How was the employee engagement?
• What level of job satisfaction was achieved? In other words, what was the level of employee satisfaction with your company?
• Why you could not achieve employee retention?

The aforementioned bearing in mind would help you to tailor exit interview questions well. The information may help you with the retention of your future employees.

Moreover, along with these, we have more to share with you. Yes, the following are exit interview questions that may help employers extract genuine and valuable information known as honest Employee feedback!

Question 1: Why do you want to leave our organization?

This query relates to the inner viewpoint of the leaving employee to know the reason behind her/his leaving the current job/employer/organization. Such question(s) help employers to improve areas if any, related to employee job satisfaction. This asking also uncovers the strength of the competitor(s) where the existing exiting employee is heading towards.

Question 2: Why did you start to see another job?

This question relates to the intention of the exiting employee and why one started to look for another job. This point is in the run to know the very cause behind leaving the current job and attracting another by the employee. This way it helps an employer to see any concern the exiting employee had with you and to rectify that to save other employees from exiting possibly.

Question 3: What influences you in a new organization most to leave us?

The questions like this are for the help of the existing employers to know how about the influencing most factor(s) being the cause behind the employee’s switching / leaving the job. These questions also uncover the facts about your competitors for attracting a valuable workforce, say talented employees. Question No.3 is again asked after two-bit similar questions to influence the exiting employee to tell the factors that remain which the exiting employee has not told you so far if any.

Question 4: What we could have done to retain you?

You being the employer-assisted, by this question in the exit interview of a leaving employee, about the policies or practices which are behind as a bone of contention for leaving employees, if any. After knowing the reason(s) in policies or procedures, if any, employers need to improve the same. This sort of point helps you retain your talented employees.

Question 5: What we would have done better?

The employer(s) insight about the always there remains room for improvement as big and open as largest, often known as Areas For Improvement (AFIs). When you know the areas for improvement, now it is time to ponder upon whether are they realistic. If the now-known AFIs are workable, it is time to accept the reality and changes to make in official practices.

Question 6: Would you consider working for this company again?

This question helps employers to have an idea about the climate survey of their organization and what the employees think of your office's culture and environment. Would the leaving employee(s) consider joining you again if get a chance in the future means that they have no concerns with you but they are only switching for development purposes of their own. This is positive that you will get a more experienced employee again having a different experience of the competitors’ organization(s) but it has a challenge in terms of the loss of the current talent.

Question 7: Do you think you were well equipped to do your job with us?

This question has two ways in it: first that the current employee is sufficiently equipped that is are the employees adequately skilled to do the job. Another concern addressed in this question is that the employees are given the required environment/equipment by the employer to perform the jobs properly. These kinds of knowledge extracted from the leaving employees help you to improve any technical or non-technical AFIs.

Question 8: Were you comfortable with your supervisor here?

This question asks about the outgoing employee’s comfort with the supervisor. It uncovers the attitudes AFIs of the supervisor(s) working with you. This way the supervisors’ training and development programs can be offered for improvement purposes.

Question 9: How do you find our company culture?

This question gives you awareness of your company's culture. AFIs can be identified in organizational culture and design: is it mechanistic having a strict chain of command or organic having the ease of command and controls? Through such sort of questions, the knowledge extracts can be implemented for the surface and deep AFIs in organizational culture and design.

Question 10: How your supervisor(s) would have been better?

This sort of question(s) helps you, being the employer, for the viewpoints of the subordinate on how a supervisor should be. The AFIs given by the subordinate should be looked into based on whether that is realistic or not. If the AFIs are realistic and can be implemented then you need to better the said.

Question 11: Did you ever talk to anyone inside a company about your concerns?

These species of inquiries discover the statistics that are of utilization for the employers in terms of the concerns the departing employee had. The concerns, if not talked about or discussed with anyone inside the company, would be worrying for the employer. However, such queries help you to know the conversation between the employees to take necessary actions as per your organizational needs.

Question 12: Do you feel you are important to us?

Such questions tell you the thought process of a leaving employee. When the thought process is revealed then is the time for you to tailor policies to make employees feel more comfortable and important about themselves being connected to your organization.

Question 13: Did your job description change since the beginning and now?

This question is about the job description changes by HR or Supervisors. If the answer is “no” to this question, then it is to think about why it happened. If the answer to this query is “yes” by the leaving employee, then you have to think did it disturbs the employee.

Question 14: What qualities should you look for in your successor?

These replies help you to look for the qualities in the new joining employee as a replacement for the withdrawing employee. If the qualities which were ignored by the employer as far as the employee is concerned, this helps you to give importance to those things which were missed before.

Question 15: Did you get ample training with us to perform your job professionally?

This helps employers to get into the gaps in the training programs if any. When gaps are known in development programs, it makes it easy to design the training.

Question 16: Did you get growth and development opportunities here?

This uncovers whether you have/had growth and development opportunities for the employees or not. Such sort of information reveals the exciting spaces to be filled in growth and development schemes.

Question 17: If you were given a chance to change something in our company, what would you change?

This type of information reveals to you the present-time openings for betterment or AFIs in other words. Employers have to look into the changes suggested, by the employee who has resigned and leaving your organization, that they are either workable or otherwise.

Question 18: Have you communicated clear goals, targets, mission, and vision of the company?

This information is valuable for onboarding that either you were / your Human Resources department able to communicate the clearer company goals, targets, mission - vision, etc. If the answer to this question becomes “no”, then there is the need to communicate clear objectives on the occasion of onboarding of new employees.

Question 19: What do you think we should change in our Training, Growth, and Development policy for employees?

This scenario of replies makes it clear for the employers to know the changes required, from the viewpoint of the employees, in the training, growth, and development policies for employees. Once you let the employer know the situational gaps in the said programs, it becomes easy for you to bridge those.

Question 20: Tell us your best day at the job with us and why?

If you know your employee’s biggest day with you, you will have a way to move forward to the existing track you are on as far as the employee's conducive environment provision by you is concerned. Otherwise, if no big day comes to the surface in the data provision of an exit interview, you will have a think tank to work on such things to make the employee day the best day for themselves.

Question 21: Similarly, what was your worst day here and why?

The worst day of the off-boarding employee, if any, would make it clear to you what employees make their day worse. Once the reason(s) behind the worst day is known to you, it is time to avoid those to sidestep any more worst days for your intact remaining/on-the-job employees.

Question 22: What part of your job do you like most?

This is related to the nature of the job as well as to the job description so far as the resigning employee is concerned, it is of utmost importance that what part(s) of the job within JD was the best suited for the employee. Once you are done with this information, you have a way to continue the assignments and jobs that the employees are easy with and they like that as well. This way employees’ performance can also be enhanced – a necessity of all employers/businesses worldwide

Question 23: What job part do you dislike the most?

When exit interview question no.23 is done, you have valid reasons to look into the JD of the employees for their dislikes or discomfort. If the uncomfortable part of the JD is not sufficiently important to change or those are not going to harm the organizational performance, then there remains a choice for you to make a few alterations for employees’ ease and comfort. This way the employers can increase employees’ job satisfaction, an important requisite in HR Management and Development.

Question 24: Did you receive proper feedback on your job / yourself to improve?

This question is related to performance appraisal practices in your organization. If the proper feedback on employees and their jobs is not provided, click the alarm button for the employers, as this may result in high turnover. If employee feedback properly and timely is given, the HR Turnover rates can be controlled and it can be an important tool to improve the retention of an ever-wanted talent.

Question 25: What would you do to improve the morale of the employees?

Employees’ morale, if not up, then is too an alarming bell for the employer. These informative questions disclose the facts about the employee’s viewpoint on the organizational existing morale. This helps you, being the employer, to boost the morale of the employees and how to do so as well as per the employee's suggestion.

Question 26: What part(s) of your job would you like would have been changed?.

This is again related to the Job Description. Here in the previous information if anything remained covered would uncover it. The JD alterations suggestions from exiting employees help you for improvement purposes without the involvement of existing employees avoiding chaos.

Question 27: Would you prefer, any of your friends or relatives looking for a job, to us?

This climate survey question’s reply helps you to know the existing conditions within your company. The conditions conducive or otherwise are revealed and hence you have the directions to rectify the policies/procedures etc. if required any.

Question 28: Would you like to add something else?

This is an open-ended question targeted to the leaving employee to add something else as vital for suggestive purposes.

Question 29: Would you like to add any specific examples during your tenure with us?

These examples uncover the events r examples that were specifically of importance for the employees: those may be of any nature that is positive as well as negative. These specific examples may also help you to know the black sheep within an organization if any.

Question 30: What is that one big reason again to leave us and join others?

This reiteration of the previous question may tell you what was concealed before in other questions. Often repetitive questions force the replier to tell something new – this is the HR Psychological technique of asking the same questions but differently.

Wrap-up

A few of the above-mentioned questions are direct and others are indirect. Some of the questions are reiterated/asked again and again with different perspectives. It is pertinent to mention here that we have covered many of the HR-related tasks behind the exit interview questions curtain. Those are:

• Job Description
• Employee Satisfaction
• Employee Retention
• Training and Development
• Growth Opportunities
• Organizational Performance
• Employee Performance and its improvement
• Policies
• Procedures
• Goals
• Objectives
• Mission
• Vision
• Employee
• Employer, Etc.

This is all to find out the real reasons behind the leaving employee resignation and avoid repeating mistakes, if any, on the part of the employer, for the win-win situation creation: other existing on the job and future employees’ retention and performance improvement purposes, consequently the organizational successful exchange of profitability.