12 Exit Interview Questions to Ask to Improve Your Business

When an employee decides to leave an organization, it’s important to understand why they want to leave and what their experience at the company was like. This is where exit interviews come in. These meetings allow you to collect feedback and get an idea of how the organization and its management structure are perceived by staff.

If you are in charge of these interactions, you may want an answer to the query: “What questions should I ask in an exit interview?” Exit interview questions must delve deeper into the employee’s time at the company and should be structured in a way that they can provide positive or negative feedback. Some common questions to ask in an exit interview include “why are you leaving the organization?” and “what do you think the company could improve on?”

This article will offer some more of the best exit interview questions, plus extra exit interview tips to help you get the most from the interaction.

What is an Exit Interview?

An exit interview is a meeting with an employee that is preparing to leave the organization. Its purpose is to discuss the employee’s experience at the company and understand their motivations for leaving. Feedback, both positive and negative, garnered from exit interviews should be used to improve management and HR strategies and plans for how the business is run.

Why Should You Conduct an Exit Interview?

Ultimately conducting exit interviews and using the feedback provided help improve management, recruitment, and the overall company. Exit interviews allow you to see what's going well at the organization and what could be improved. 

If an employee is leaving for another position, these interviews are most important as you need to uncover why another company became more desirable. Even when leaving for other reasons, like to take care of family or retire, exit interviews are crucial. 

Staff that leave, for whatever reason, are no longer as invested in the company. Therefore, these interactions are the best place to obtain honest and constructive feedback. 

By conducting exit interviews and acting on feedback, you can:

• Reduce turnover and recruitment costs.

• Improve productivity, efficiency, and output.

• Improve employee morale and satisfaction (which in turn help accomplish the two above points!)

• Attract more top-quality candidates when vacancies do occur.

Exit interviews provide feedback that helps improve management and company culture.

Exit Interview Do’s and Don’ts

When discussing how to conduct an exit interview, it’s crucial to know the primary do’s and don’ts to ensure you obtain the best feedback possible.

What to Do in an Exit Interview:

1. Ask the Employee If They Want to Participate

Exit interviews are optional, and staff can legally decline to be involved in them. Always ask if the employee would like to do an exit interview, and don’t push them if they refuse.

2. Provide a Variety of Interview Format Options

When an employee leaves the company, you want as much feedback as possible. Pushing employees to do a face-to-face interview can result in them not participating and you receiving no feedback. Therefore, provide options for answering questions, including a face-to-face interview, written responses, or a survey where they simply choose from “Extremely Satisfied” to “Extremely Dissatisfied” as a response.

3. Have Both Standard and Customized Exit Interview Questions

For every interaction, generate some standard exit interview questions and customized questions based on the employee leaving. To get the best results, you’ll need to ask different questions based on the employee’s department and role, career level, and reason for leaving.

For example, if someone is retiring, you don’t need to ask much about what you could have done to get them to stay. However, an employee leaving for a similar role is moving on because you didn’t meet all their career needs. In that case, finding out what you aren’t providing is critical in both retaining current staff and attracting new employees.

4. Include the HR Team

If you have HR personnel on staff, always include them in exit interviews. An HR professional has experience asking the right questions to get the information needed, knows the legalities of what can’t get asked, and is a neutral party that's not emotionally connected to the feedback.

For example, if the employees have negative feedback about their manager and the manager is interviewing, emotions could become involved. HR is less likely to be affected by this and will note all feedback, digging a little deeper if needed.

5. Emphasize That Feedback is Confidential and Won’t Have Negative Consequences

If employees think that giving negative feedback could affect them adversely, they’re less likely to be honest. For example, they could be concerned that if they say something negative, you'll provide a bad employer reference in the future.

Remedy this by telling them that they can provide the constructive feedback they feel they need to without consequences. If you don’t receive this possibly negative feedback, you can't make changes that will improve your organization.

Also, emphasize that their responses are confidential and won’t be widely shared. If used in management improvement planning, their responses will be anonymous.

Make it clear to employees that feedback is confidential and always ask if they want to participate.

What Not to Do in an Exit Interview:

1. Ask Leading Questions or Let Emotions Affect You

When asking exit interview questions, don’t ask questions that lead employees toward giving positive rather than negative feedback. You can ask about what they liked working for the company, as long as you also ask what the employee didn’t like about working there. But leave other questions open to receiving positive or negative feedback.

If you worked with the employee, for example, as their manager, and they provide negative feedback, don’t let it affect you. Take note and ask additional questions if needed to understand how you can improve.

2. Have No Intention of Using Negative Feedback Constructively

Don’t do these interviews only to hear praise. While it's good to know what you’re doing well, constructive negative feedback is more important and should be acted on to improve your overall brand. If you don’t plan on listening to or acting on negative feedback, don’t spend time conducting exit interviews.

3. Forget to Thank Employees or Treat Them Kindly Throughout the Process

Even if the employee provides mainly negative feedback, thank them for their time and be pleasant throughout the interview. If an employee is leaving due to feeling underappreciated and dissatisfied, increasing these feelings in an exit interview by being confrontational isn’t smart.

These days, it's incredibly easy for employees to leave feedback about working for you online. Negative online reviews can hurt your employer brand and make recruiting top candidates challenging. So keep that in mind when interacting with staff who are leaving.

Avoid asking too many exit interview questions that can only be responded to positively.

12 Questions for Exit Interviews

If you’re unsure of what kind of exit interview questions to ask, the following 12 questions are a great place to start and will help you obtain valuable feedback from staff exiting the organization.

1. Why Did You Start to Look for a New Job?

The response to this question offers an overview of what your company isn’t providing the employee. Alternatively, it could highlight that something outside of your control prompted the move, such as the candidate wanting a job in a different industry they're more interested in.

The employee may also say that they didn’t actively look for a new job, but a great position was brought to their attention that they couldn’t pass up. In that case, discussing what that job offers is critical in understanding what made that opportunity better than their existing position.

This question ultimately sets the tone for the interview.

2. What Factors Led You to Accept the New Position?

This question is similar to the previous one but could highlight some additional things the organization isn’t providing the employee. In the example of the employee wanting to move to a different industry, the employee may say that better pay and more flexibility were also factors in them accepting the offer.

3. What Could We Have Done to Retain You as an Employee?

The response to this exit interview question will help determine what the company can do to reduce its turnover rate. Some people will say there’s nothing you could have done to retain them, for example, they were happy at the company, but they’ve decided to move to another city so they can no longer work for you.

Others will have suggestions, which could include you weren’t paying them enough/meeting market rates, management needed to be improved, there weren’t any growth opportunities, flexibility wasn’t provided, and the like.

4. Did You Feel Well Equipped to Do Your Job?

Understanding if employees feel the work environment is set up to let them thrive in their role is important. If they think they didn’t have the tools they needed or had little guidance, you must fix this for those taking over the position. If you don’t remedy the problems, the employee that fills this vacant role will probably feel the same way and move on to another position quickly.

It’s important to unearth why the employee is leaving and if there’s anything you can do to retain them.

5. Have You Discussed Issues That Arose and Were They Addressed?

If an employee gives negative feedback, it’s crucial to ask if they discussed these problems with anyone and if they got addressed. If they didn’t discuss them, ask why. Not bringing up issues could suggest a culture where employees don’t feel they can come to management, especially with problems. This situation needs to get fixed!

If they did bring concerns up and they didn't get addressed, it’s also important to get to the bottom of why they weren’t addressed if you want to retain other employees.

6. What Could the Company Have Done Better?

Asking why the employee is leaving can highlight some of this, but this question allows the employee to be more in-depth. It also allows you to get constructive negative feedback from those leaving for reasons out of your control, such as because the employee is retiring.

7. What Did the Company Do Well?

Knowing what’s going well in the organization is crucial as well. By understanding what employees liked about their jobs, you can ensure that those elements are kept in place and use the information as somewhat of a solution for fixing other issues in the company.

For example, if an employee appreciated the ability to work from home when they pleased, ensure that this benefit doesn't get taken away from other employees. Additionally, if the employee in the exit interview says that they got on with their manager and liked their management style, you can see how this individual acts in the role and use them as an example for managers that receive negative feedback.

8. Would You Consider Returning to the Company? What Would We Have to Do to Get You to Come Back?

This is one of the exit interview questions that gets a response that shows exactly what the employee’s experience was like.

For example, very dissatisfied employees may say they wouldn’t consider coming back even if you made changes. Alternatively, those leaving for reasons unrelated to the company may show satisfaction by saying that if their circumstances change, they'd return. For example, “If I move back to this city, I’d happily come back to this company.”

The response to this question can also highlight how you may need to make changes to keep your current employees from leaving. For example, if an employee says they would come back if you offer remote working options, implementing workplace flexibility could be crucial to retaining current employees too.

9. Were You Satisfied with the Way You Were Managed

Poor management is a primary reason that employees decide to leave a company. Understanding if employees thought management was satisfactory or not is critical.

Emphasize that positive and negative feedback relating to management is welcome. Then, always work on improving the mentioned issues to avoid losing other employees because of these management problems.

Asking about what the company did well and what could be improved is crucial.

10. Were You Assigned Goals and Objectives? Did You Receive Feedback on Your Performance?

Whether an employee is an intern or in a management position, having KPIs and receiving feedback from higher-ups is crucial. When an employee leaves the company, ask if they received feedback on their work, positive and constructive and if they got assigned goals to achieve.

If they say no or that those things didn’t happen frequently, address this issue within the organization as soon as possible. If they say that they did have goals and received feedback, ask about their experience. Did they feel the feedback was fair and the goals helped them to grow? Or were goals too demanding or not demanding enough?

11. Did You Feel the Company Offered Sufficient Training and Development? What Could Be Done to Improve Employee Development Programs?

Many employees leave because they want to grow in their careers and improve their skill set. A lack of employee development opportunities at their current organization means those things can’t be achieved. Therefore, it’s crucial to get feedback concerning employee training and development.

If staff think development opportunities aren't sufficient, this likely plays into your turnover rate. In this situation, ask what could be done to improve employee development and keep those suggestions in mind.

12. How Would You Describe the Company Culture?

The culture you create in an organization is incredibly important. While you may think your company has one type of culture, for example, a culture of honesty and friendliness, only your employees can actually say what the culture is like and how they perceive it. 

By asking this question, you’ll get a better idea of if the culture you intend to have is present. If it is, that’s great, but if not, you must make changes to improve the company culture. Look for trends here too.

If most employees say that the company culture is open and honest and a few say it’s not, it’s likely to be an employee-specific instead of a company-wide issue. If everyone leaving the company says that the culture is bad, that’s an issue that must get fixed.

In Conclusion

By using these 12 exit interview questions, you’re guaranteed to obtain feedback that you can use to help grow your company and improve employee engagement and your employer brand.