How to Conduct an Exit Interview: 7 Top Questions [Form Template]

To determine what causes employees to leave — and to create a better, happier employee experience moving forward — it's critical you conduct productive exit interviews.

In this post, you’ll learn everything you need to know about exit interviews, plus the best questions you should ask. We’ll also go over an exit interview form template that you can copy and paste into a document and reuse for future interviews.

退出采访的目的是什么？

The purpose of exit interviews is to get valuable insight from employees who are leaving your company. When conducted correctly, these interviews tell you what, if anything, could improve about yourcompany culture。然后，您将能够改善前进的前进，并大大减少员工流动。

为什么退出面试很重要？

根据一项研究人力资源管理协会（SHRM），平均而言，公司的薪水为六到九个月的公司，为他们bob全站app定位和培训替代者。因此，如果离开的员工赚了6万，那可以在招聘和培训费用中到达3万至45K之间的任何地方。

Undoubtedly, a high turnover rate can hurt your company financially. Additionally, a high turnover rate can lead toless productive teams, and lower employee morale overall.

幸运的是,您可以通过使用降低流动率feedback you get from exit interviews. Many employees who are leaving can help you determine areas for improvement and provide valuable feedback. Additionally, it can be helpful to identify consistent patterns of discontent to figure out larger organizational issues.

For instance, let's say you hire a new marketing director, and a year later, you see a severe increase in turnover rates. Out of 15 employees, only seven from the prior year remain. Undoubtedly, this change impacts your team's productivity and morale, and leave you nervous about the future of your department.

那么，您如何弄清楚到底出了什么问题，或者您的营销总监如何​​提高其绩效以确保对团队的更高工作满意度？

答案是为每个离开的人进行退出面试。您会发现您的营销总监在做错了什么，并帮助他们提高领导角色。

您还将改善士气，因为您会向员工展示您关心他们的经历。您不仅要让人们离开 - 您想知道为什么他们要离开并阻止其他人做同样的事情。

为了确保您在退出面试期间提出正确的问题，请查看您在下面应该提出的问题以及在答案中寻找什么。

1. How long have you been considering leaving our company?

这是一个简单的问题，它将告诉您这是轻率的决定还是随着时间的流逝而发生的决定。如果看起来很突然，那么这很可能是由某个事件引起的，您将能够更好地量身定制问题，以获得员工决定背后的动机。

What to Look For

Look for a time range. A year versus a month is a big difference. Determine whether any major company changes happened at the time they considered leaving — an acquisition, a change in management, and so forth.

2. How did the job match expectations?

这项工作可能完全满足了员工的期望，或者当他们考虑职业生涯的下一步时，这并不是他们所寻找的。无论如何，这个问题将帮助您确定在职位发布和公司形象中可以更清楚的地方。bob全站app

What to Look For

Listen for “I thought I would be doing more of X” or “I was looking more of an X type of company.” This will help you better refine your job postings and the way you represent your business online. If an employee was looking to work at a startup and you’re an enterprise firm, you’ll want to screen future candidates for these expectations.

3. What reason primarily describes your reason for leaving?

这是生活方式，职业改变或其他地方更好的机会的变化吗？虽然最后一个选择似乎是最常见和最有用的答案，但生活方式的改变（例如成为全职父母）可以告诉您您可以在哪里改进。

For instance, you could offer paid parental leave so that your employees no longer have to choose between their jobs and their children. Or if they’re switching careers, you could offer more interdepartmental mobility to current employees, so they don’t feel stuck in one role.

What to Look For

Dig into the specific reason for their leaving without letting the employee dive into anecdotes or frustrations. Focus on what attracted them to the new opportunity, new career, or new lifestyle, and use those answers to figure out what you could offer your current employees.

4. If you have accepted a new position, what is most attractive about your new role?

This is a fantastic follow-up to the last question if the employee has already accepted an offer elsewhere. It also helps you dig further into what convinced them to leave the company and see where, if anywhere, you may fall short.

What to Look For

Listen for standard answers such as “pay,” “benefits,” “industry,” and “location.” Only note those that you can improve. For instance, you can’t really move offices or change your industry.

5. What did you like most about your job?

Give yourself a chance to breathe — and your employee, too — by focusing on the positives. That way, you don’t accidentally overhaul the things that work. If the employee answers that they loved the people they worked with, for instance, continue attracting top talent to your firm.

What to Look For

Listen specifically for the people aspect and the project management aspect of this answer. If the employee loved the projects they were working on or the people in their team, you’re doing the core things well. If they only mention surface-level things, such as the snacks or the free parking, you’ll want to revise your recruiting strategy.

6. What did you dislike about your job? What would you change about your job?

This is your opportunity to truly dig into what prompted the person to leave as it pertains to their role. Employees will likely “skirt around” the true reason here — or they may launch into an anecdote. Either way, listen carefully, and remember that this is only one employee’s experience. Only when you see repeated patterns do you need to take action, which is why it’s important to ask the same questions every time.

What to Look For

寻找暗示团队中人们的答案，因为正如古老的俗话说，人们不会退出公司 - 他们退出经理。如果他们不直接提及一个人，请聆听表明员工在该团队中工作的情感词，这将显示团队在经理下的运作方式。

7. How would you describe the culture of our company?

With this question, you can identify the gaps between your employees’ experience and the culture you aim to promote. Hopefully, you’ve already defined anorganizational culturethat upholds your values. (Pro tip: If you’re in need of inspiration, you can take a look at our文化法规and steal some ideas from there.)

What to Look For

Don’t look for direct antonyms to what you’ve defined as your culture, because employees won’t be as up-front. They might use seemingly positive terms, such as “fast-paced” or “structured,” but these may hint at a high level of stress and a sensation of immobility. Listen carefully for these seemingly positive adjectives.

不要让它停在这里。为了确保您采用最佳实践来获得员工的最佳反馈，请查看我们的退出面试表格模板。它包括更多的退出面试问题，可以帮助您了解员工为什么要离开。

离职面谈的形式Template

Once an employee has given their resignation letter, you'll want to send them a form with some (or all) of the following questions. Give them time to submit their answers through the form before meeting with them to discuss their answers, face-to-face.

以下是您需要包括的退出面试表的一些问题。只需将它们复制并粘贴到您喜欢的文字处理器中。

How to Conduct an Exit Interview

Now that it’s time to conduct the interview, you’ll want to take the following steps to make sure the conversation is productive, amicable, and neutral.

1. Send the exit interview form to the soon-to-be ex-employee.

First, send the person who is leaving a form or document with your standard questions. This would happen the same week that they put in their resignation letter — ideally within one to two days. They should already know a form is coming their way, because you would have expressed that verbally.

2. Choose an interviewer and set up the meeting.

After you've given the employee time to thoughtfully respond, it’s time to choose an interviewer and set up an in-person meeting.

The interviewer should be an unbiased third party, such as a staff member from your HR team. Don’t set up the exit interview meeting with their manager or with anyone whom the person has worked with before. This may impair their ability to be honest during the interview.

3. Ask the same questions in every exit interview.

Ensure you ask the same questions in each exit interview so you can gather actionable data and insights.

Prepare a handout for yourself that prompts you to jot down similar notes for every person you or your HR staff member interviews. If all of the notes are highly disparate or seemingly disconnected, it will be difficult to glean insights and improve moving forward.

4. Keep the tone of the conversation neutral.

In person, do not ask targeted questions regarding specific people or departments — keep your questions general and don't input your own opinion into the conversation. Don’t prompt the employee to over-share about their frustrations with the job.

This is not constructive to you as a company. Rather, you want to find out areas of improvement in more general terms, so that you can create company-wide change.

如果员工只提供个人轶事，那只会帮助您为他们创造更好的体验。问题是他们已经离开了。您想找出的是如何改善住宿的人的员工体验。

5. Distill the answers into insights.

Identify patterns you see from different exit interviews, and use that data to draw conclusions on which feedback you should use to improve the employee experience moving forward. As mentioned, take similar notes for each exit interview. To make it easier, you could use a调查软件bob电竞官方下载that helps you collect the employee’s written answers.

Exit Interview Best Practices

Ultimately, an exit interview doesn't just help you understand why your talent is leaving — it also helps you ensure you can implement strategies or cultural changes to improve the satisfaction of employees who stay.

However, it's not always easy to discern what a highly productive exit interview looks like.

要了解有关退出面试最佳实践的更多信息，我与HubSpot的人力资源合作伙伴Winston Tuggle进行了交谈。这是他建议的一些最好的做法。

1.始终问相同的问题。

When it comes to exit interview best practices, Tuggle suggests, "For conducting productive exit interviews, I think one key is asking the same questions of all people who leave. This structure allows us to codify the exit responses so we can extract actionable data around why people are leaving, and how we can improve the employee experience.

We do this by having a standard exit interview form that leavers submit, and then have an unbiased third-party follow up in-person to go deeper on the answers the person filled out in the exit interview. Exit interviews aren't necessary unless you plan on using them to gather as much data as possible that can be coupled with employee survey data to understand the employee experience."

2. Understand the “why” behind the person’s resignation.

Tuggle also notes, "[It's critical you understand] the 'why' behind someone leaving ... to gather trends over time. As an HR team, it helps us to not overreact to one person's experience and conversely helps us identify trends that we can proactively address before they lead to more unwanted attrition."

3. Explain the purpose behind the exit interview.

It's important you explain the purpose behind the exit interview to each employee before you begin. You might say, "We hope to use your feedback to continuously improve our culture and business processes, so we are interested in your honest opinion on how your experience has been." That way, they don’t feel they’re taking part in a conversation that won’t be used to create change.

4. Ensure interviews stay confidential.

You'll also want to make sure your exit interviews are confidential between the HR team and employees. While data or general insights can be used to improve employee experience and should be shared with leadership, your employee needs to know their exact complaints won't reach their old manager or coworkers.

5.感谢员工的时间。

最后,一定要感谢你的员工the time to provide feedback during an exit interview. While one individual likely can't pinpoint issues regarding an entire team or department, you'll likely see commonalities over time that can help you determine how you can improve your workplace for the long-run.

Exit Interviews Will Improve Your Company Culture

Exit interviews are the key for improving your business from the inside out. Knowing what makes some employees leave can help you keep the employees you already have. As a result, you’ll improve your company culture, reduce turnover, and boost productivity — leading to a better and better workplace over time.

编者注：该帖子最初于2019年1月发表，并已更新以进行全面性。