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June 9, 2003

Using Former Employees' Opinions Effectively When Designing HR Programs

When employees leave an organization, they take with them a wealth of opinions about its strengths and weaknesses. A growing number of organizations use exit interviews to capture this data. Exit interviews, like opinion surveys, are a powerful but fickle means of taking the pulse of your workplace.

The overarching goal of most exit interviews is to arrive at an accurate description of organizational working conditions. If an employee leaves voluntarily, the goal of the interview is to ascertain the true reason why he or she is leaving. If an employee has, for one reason or another, been terminated, the focus rests on the employee's views of the organization. In either case, the interviewee will often discuss areas of concern with greater candor than a current employee would.

Key questions cover

Managers and supervisors: their behavior and relations with employees
Unethical and illegal activity: how and how often it happens
Benefits and pay
Training
Advancement opportunities
Organizational culture, processes, and structures

There are two types of exit interview: the face-to-face interview and the questionnaire. The former is conducted sometime before the employee leaves the organization, the latter within a month after departure.

THE INTERVIEW

The face-to-face interview is usually conducted when employees leave an organization voluntarily. HR professionals most often tackle these interviews, as a supervisory relationship between the interviewer and interviewee can make things more difficult.

As in a job interview, a skilled exit interviewer attempts to steer conversation toward key issues and root causes while keeping the interviewee relaxed, open, and at ease. As strong emotions are often involved, the interviewee must perceive that the interviewer is taking the comments seriously.

In an amiable split, this circumstance can provide a unique opportunity for succession planning. In a knowledge-intensive environment, the exit interview can serve as the last opportunity to capture what a key employee knows.

Arnold Kransdorrf relates the story of a U.K. bank that hired an outside HR expert to interview a key executive leaving the organization before his successor arrived:

[His] interview was designed to relate to his successor the key issues for which he had been responsible and how he had accommodated [the organization's] individual corporate culture, management, communications and decision-making style. Anecdotal references were an important element, so during the interview, [he] gave his take on job content, major corporate events, internal and external relations, and gave advice to colleagues.

The final transcript was edited and indexed to ensure clarity, continuity and readability, and was made available to the company via computer disc.

(Workforce, September 1997, Vol. 76, No. 9, pp. 34-39)

When an employee has been terminated, frustration and anger may cloud attempts to collect data. When an employee leaves voluntarily, fear of ruining a positive recommendation could have the same result. In any case, multiple data sources provide clearer data, and survey questionnaires are often seen as providing more honest opinions.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE

Exit interview survey questionnaires are best distributed within a month of the employee's departure, when the work experience is still fresh in his or her mind, yet distance has allowed for new insights. Wait any longer and response rates will drop off sharply. Response rates vary, but more than 25% should be considered a success.

As with an opinion survey, confidentiality is key to a successful exit interview survey. A third party often conducts these interviews, as even former employees are loath to spill the beans on their supervisors if the information can be traced. Larger organizations have an easier time keeping things anonymous, as a greater pool of exiting employees will obscure sources of information.

Rating scales, forced rankings, and questions may all be used. An optimal survey consists of twenty to forty questions, and allows the ex-employee room to vent through open-ended questions such as, "How can our organization improve?" and "Are there any issues or problems we should be aware of?"

Over time, data collected from exit interviews can facilitate analyses of organizational strengths and weaknesses. Putting this information to good use is a challenge, but letting it go to waste can be dangerous. As former and current employees often keep in touch, lack of action after exit analysis can adversely affect morale - to say nothing of the resources wasted in collecting the data.

In our next issue of Astronology, we look at using employee opinions, gathered through opinion surveys and exit interviews, to shape human resource strategy.

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ISSN Number 1549-0467