HR Basics: The Four Benefits of Conducting Exit Interviews

Exit interviews are often overlooked, but they can be very valuable to your business.

It’s a time to learn and reflect on your company as a whole and also learn about individuals and how they interact with one another. Sometimes you will confirm that your company is heading in the right direction and your management is performing favorably, but more than likely you may find areas that need improvement.

Exit interviews take time and effort to be done right, but information from departing employees can be invaluable. You will need to be mindful that the departing employee might be a bit unhappy with their employment ending, but you should be in a position to gain some unbiased feedback.

Four things to consider

Here are four benefits of exit interviews:

They’re cost effective — Doing assessments and research on your busnesses’ strengths and weaknesses is costly and time-consuming. Exit interviews are easy to conduct and take little time and minimal investment.
You get more accurate points of view — Many companies will conduct surveys throughout the year on company morale and engagement. This is a great tool; however, the data could be inaccurate. Some employees may fear being completely honest due to the possibility of backlash. Exit interviews allow departing employees an opportunity to share their thoughts without fear of retaliation.
It’s an opportunity to uncover the real work environment — Many questions in an exit interview pertain to working environment. It can be very hard to get a true sense of how employees feel about the work environment while they are employed by you. You might assume your employees are happy if there are not complaints but your management might not be creating the environment you want for your employees.
They can increase retention — Once you identify and correct any negative trends you find, you should be able to increase employee engagement and satisfaction. Happier employees will lead to less turnover, saving valuable time and money for your company.

Exit interviews are vital for an accurate assessment of employee views. This information can be used in many ways to improve your company.

This was originally published on the Genesis HR Solutions blog.