Talk before you walk

Resigning, redundant and dismissed employees all share one thing in common - they and their employers can benefit from a well-conducted exit interview.

Exiting is a process rather than an event, say human resources experts. And in the small revolving talent pool that is New Zealand employment, there are a lot of reasons to get that process right.

John Butters, principal consultant for Right Management Consultants, and Christian Dahmen, career coach and former HR director for Proctor and Gamble Europe, say the business principles behind exit interviews are simple.

"Employers conduct exit interviews to find out more about why a person is leaving and use that information to look for ways to improve their systems, processes, management and leadership," says Butters.

Dahmen says exit interviews provide a way for an employer to have a final constructive conversation with an employee, and develop strategy and change to retain talent.

"Exit interviews done well create ex-employees who are good brand builders and may eventually come back," he says.

Properly conducted exit interviews may also save employers money.

Last year, recruitment firm Drake International surveyed its New Zealand clients and found high employee turnover was costing New Zealand organisations millions of dollars in annual unbudgeted expenses. According to the research, departing employees cost employers between 30 and 200 per cent of the employee's annual salary.

"The success of exit interviews hinges on whether information about the departing employees is collected in a structured way and then channelled back into the business or simply forgotten," says Janet Manley, marketing manager for Drake.

Dahmen says closing this information-to-strategy loop is something New Zealand organisations don't do well.

"Organisations may find it easier to ignore information that reveals people and leadership, cultural misfit or career advancement problems," he says.

Getting the exit interview process right by ensuring it is used by the organisation is obviously a challenge. But so is ensuring its usefulness for the departing employee. After all, what's in it for the disgruntled employee who has resigned, been made redundant or dismissed?

Butters says employees who leave to travel, who seek a positive employment reference, who need to make a career transition, or who have emotional issues attached to exiting, can all benefit from agreeing to an exit interview.

"Unhappy exiting employees go through different stages of a grief cycle and a skilled exit interview can help them with that process," says Butters.

He says while employers are happy to talk to people who resign or are made redundant, dismissed people also have a story to tell.

"They can get to the point where they are ready to accept the dismissal and to talk about what happened and why. You just have to wait till the time is right," say Butters.

The timing of an exit interview is crucial to getting honest communication and it takes skill to get that timing right, say the experts.

"It depends a lot on why and when an employee is leaving. Four weeks is probably too long a time to wait with someone who is very hacked off and has left immediately," says Butters.

Dahmen says employers should place exit interviews close to actual exits and preferably even later.

"The employer can go to wherever the ex-employee is for an exit interview. If an employer loses a customer, they do not ring up the customer and ask the customer to come in," he says.

Drake's Manley agrees. She says the key is to have the right interviewer ask "knowledge-revealing" questions at the right time.

"All too often, we hear about exit interviews conducted on the employee's last day by the person's manager. This is bad practice," she says.

If organisations manage to time the exit interview right, the next challenge is to win the trust of the departing employee so honest communication happens and quality feedback is gathered, say Butters and Dahmen.

This is aided by selecting the right person to conduct the interview, assuring the departing employee their feedback will not be passed ad hoc through the organisation, and by giving employees the opportunity to check exit interview notes for accuracy.

"If the exit interview is run as an administrative job without dialogue, the organisation might as well not bother," says Dahmen.

"This is not a lower-level task to be done in a tick-box fashion. Even hotels are moving away from tick boxes on guest exit forms and asking open questions," says Butters.

This raises another point: are phone or written exit interviews inferior to face-to-face conversations? And what about software programmes, such as IPS Software's Exit Interview Management System which lets ex-employees complete surveys online then collates responses for the organisation?

Butters says people are more interested in talking than filling in questionnaires so phone exit interviews can work well. Written questionnaires and software often miss the "what's in it for the employee?" part.

Dahmen says people do not react well to "why" questions in exit interviews and employees should be encouraged to use anecdotes about their employment experience instead. Clearly, whoever conducts the exit interview has to have advanced communication skills and be in a neutral position regarding the employee's exit.

Butters says an exit interview can also be productive if an exiting employee becomes emotional.

"If they swear about a former colleague, you can repeat the swear phrase back as a question to encourage them to elaborate. And you can ask their permission to feed the information back to the person they are describing. Often they will then ask for the swearing part to be removed," he says.

Kevin Gaunt, chief executive of the New Zealand Institute of Management and former HR manager for Electricity Corporation of New Zealand and Carter Holt Harvey Wood Products, says the most important question employers can ask of an exiting employee is "when did you decide to leave?".

"If they say "I was sitting in last week's planning meeting and decided I did not want to go through another unfocused, waffly excuse for a strategy session with a whole lot of people I don't want to work with" - that's a heck of a lot more useful [to the employer] than if they'd said "I am leaving for personal reasons," he says.

In a safe environment, such honesty is no doubt more satisfying for the exiting employee as well. 

Importance of having a last word 

Why exit interviews matter

* They limit the brand damage and intellectual property issues caused by the loss of a key employee to a competitor.
* The more you know about why people choose to leave your organisation, the more valuable staff you will retain in the future.
* They leave the door open for a valuable employee to return.

How to conduct them

* Send selected staff on formal staff retention and exit interview training.
* Research this through HR and management consultants, or tertiary institutes.
* Use a third, impartial party rather than the immediate manager to conduct the exit interview. The immediate manager may be part of the problem.
* Support the exiting employee. They are leaving and no amount of defensiveness will prevent it.
* Use open-ended questions and encourage dialogue. Stay away from closed-ended questions and written responses.
* Ask the exiting employee to check your notes. Ask permission to pass on specific comments.
* When quality feedback is gathered, ensure it protects the confidentiality of the exiting employee. Collate results - and use them to effect change..
* Time the exit interview carefully. When is the employee best able to communicate honestly?