The Truth about Exit Interviews
Dear Liz,
I took your course Job Search after Fifty and lo and behold, got a great job offer last week. I gave notice to my current boss on Monday, and now I could use your help with a sticky situation.
I'm leaving my job mostly because of the crippling politics that have taken over since our division was spun off a year ago. I'm not the first person to leave, but my departure is a big enough deal that the VP of HR at our headquarters called our local HR person to tell her "Do a thorough exit interview with Joan. She's a high-visibility departure."
It's odd that no one has ever asked my opinion about the state of things before (except in a cursory once-a-year Employee Engagement survey that we all have to fill out and about which we've never heard a peep after the fact) but now the executives are simply dying for my opinions. I imagine that they want dirt on our division president.
The dirt I might share about the goings-on in my division would make your hair curl, but I'm not about to open the vault on my way out the door. Why would I? I'm leaving on a good note, and despite all the mismanagement I've seen, I have no wish to put anyone's job at risk or tarnish my own reputation after I'm gone.
My local HR person is avid to take me to lunch next week and get me to tell her everything. How do I gently put her off, or if that's impossible, can I clam up over lunch? Ironically I'm sure she is looking to trade my exit-interview gossip for political chips with her boss, the VP of HR widely known as The Shrew, while my friends at HQ have assured me that if there's any more bad news out of our division, it's the local HR gal herself who may be shown the door.
What a mess! Got any tips for me?
Thanks,
Joan
I can't imagine why you would want to leave such a sunny and uplifting place! Seriously though, I am thrilled for you to watch the snakepit recede into the distance behind you, and I couldn't agree more with your plan to keep silent and keep smiling as you flounce, bop or shimmy out the door next Friday.
Exit interviews are very strange creatures. If your managers view you as a High Visibility Departure now, why didn't they ask you for your opinions before you took another job? Sadly, in too many organizations an exit interview is the only time anybody wants to hear what you have to say. It just so happens that, as you pointed out, the exit interview also falls at the time when most people are least likely to want to burn bridges. As you say, why should they?
You have nothing to gain and lots to lose by spilling your guts. You'll have to decide whether the best plan is to send an email message to your HR colleague to wiggle out of the exit interview, or go to lunch and mumble vague pleasantries about how wonderful the working experience has been. If you decide to go the email route, you could write:
"I'm sorry, Samantha, but I can see that my schedule is going to be crazed between now and my last work day. Why don't you send me your exit interview questions, and I'll send you back answers via email."
When you get the email questions, you can answer them with wimpy toothless responses that will satisfy Samantha's need to have something to share with her boss.
If leaders want to know what's working in an organization and what isn't, there are plenty of ways for them to find out. I don't know why so many executives delude themselves that people on the way out the door, like you, would have a reason to speak up about what's broken in the organization.
Surely they realize that it's in any departing employee's best interest to do just what you're doing, and keep silent about the organization's problems. They had their chance to get your feedback, and they blew it. Now they have to live with the consequences.
Below this paragraph is one of our nifty Human Workplace dials. This one is called the Listen-O-Meter (pronounced LISS-en-AW-muh-ter). On the left side of the dial is the word Fear, and on the right side is the word Trust. On the Fear side of the dial, there's little to no listening going on in the culture. Either the organization has no upward feedback mechanism in place at all, and no culture of asking what's working and what isn't, or they have the same once-a-year speak-into-the-Black-Hole Employee Engagement survey that your firm does.
Those things are a joke. They're fear-based, because they're conducted not to improve conditions for the employees but to give the survey's issuer a CYA document that says that things really aren't so bad. If we care what our employees think, we can ask them every day! We don't have to insult them with a once-a-year survey. Would we ever tell our customers that they have one chance a year to fill out a form and slip it through the bars of the cell? Of course not. We ask our customers how we're doing at serving them every time we see or talk to them. We can do the same thing with our employees.
Here are ten of the millions of ways we can hear what our teammates have to tell us:
- Start every staff meeting with the agenda item "How are we doing?"
- Make every training session a community-building and feedback session, too.
- Let the newcomers at New Employee Orientation meetings know that we value their input, and let them know all the ways to report an issue, inquire about something confusing, make a suggestion or just share an observation.
- Start every manager-employee one-on-one meeting with the question "Anything we should talk about job-satisfaction-wise? How's your workload?"
- Empower employees who are interested to get together at lunchtime and devise improvements in processes, ideas for creating Team Mojo in the group, and general environmental upgrades. Tell everybody else how to get a suggestion into that pipeline.
- Schedule small-group lunches with executives or large-group Town Hall Meetings where top leaders can share their plans and listen to ideas and questions from the team.
- Establish a telephone, email and text hotline where employees can confidentially share concerns about unsafe, unlawful or unethical situations.
- Station an HR person in the lunchroom once a week so that employees can get concerns or questions addressed and also share their feedback.
- Launch an internal communications forum where people can help one another with work-related and home-related questions. The more trust and community we build, the more likely we are to hear about it when something is broken.
- Send your senior leaders on a tour of the organization's department meetings, so that they can sit with each department and hear (and avidly ask for!) issues and questions from the employees.
It is easy to keep an ear to the ground -- we just have to care enough to do it. Your employer missed its chance to get your valuable counsel, and now it's buried deep in the vault.
Sail through your last week and the possible fake exit interview with your usual aplomb and if you fill out the fake exit interview form, be sure to pepper it with hearts and smiley faces.
You know what I always say, Joan: if they don't ask for your priceless wisdom before you're walking out the door, they don't deserve it.
Have fun in the new gig!
Best,
Liz
Read Liz Ryan's story "The Ugly Truth about Age Discrimination" next!
Dear Liz,
I love the drawings in your stories. Where do they come from?
Marcelle
Dear Marcelle,
I draw them with colored pencils and markers. In 2013 I was very busy. I drew 2000 images and wrote one million words. I have five kids and they keep me busy also! Thanks for your kind words,
Liz
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8yLove your posts, Liz. You are such a source of inspiration to budding leaders like myself, who believe 'people' as most valuable asset to an organization.
Entertainment Journalist
9yI was rather surprised when there was no exit interview planned or even spoken of when my notice was turned in. There was just a rush to make sure I was sat down in HR and shoved out of the building moments after my manager was handed the resignation letter. This may have made sense if I had not been there long or if I was being terminated. My employment with the company, however, had been built over the years not months. Willfully ignoring reasons/concerns or putting fingers in one's ears when a seasoned employee just decides to part ways with a company is a true disservice to not only the business, but the co-workers, managers, and HR. Perhaps it is a sign that HR does not want to know the reason because it may shine a bad light on management and that is a unspoken 'no-no.' The only question I was asked when seated in HR awaiting my stuff to be collected from my office was, "Who are you going to work for?" This is the important question? I do not have a non-compete clause in my contract, so it is really of no significance. It is my guess that devoted, engaged, hardworking, dedicated, entrenched employees must just quit frequently and this is no big deal for HR, management or the recruiters who now have to fill that gap.
Dynamic Problem-Solver: Embracing Change and Open to Inspiring Opportunities
9yThis was a great read. Also, is anyone here using a vendor to collect data on exit interviews?
Safety/OSHA and Human Resources Generalist.
9yWhen I look back over the large number of exit interviews I have completed or reviewed I recognized an interesting pattern. Whenever we believed we had a problem, such as high part-time turnover the exit interviews were thoughtfully considered and helpful in correcting our course. However, when the issues that arose during the exit interviews were concerning the leadership, managerial or supervisory problems of the departing employee's boss the executive staff took these interview results with disdain, making fun of the departing employee, ignoring the concerns raised, consequently doing nothing with the information we worked so hard to get. Going from Good to Great isn't all it is cracked up to by once identified problems become "personal" to those at the top who find they may have to correct the behavior of their shining stars.
Data epistemology, inference, and systems
9yI find it laughable that so many HR professionals disagree with Liz so consistently. You, HR manager, believe your job is to make the workplace a better place to work, but often forget that you do so *for the benefit of the corporation you are employed by*. Liz, on the other hand, writes these columns for the individual, not for HR managers. If you, as the HR manager, have no idea why people are leaving your company, then it is your onus. If you do not know why employes are leaving, then you have a lot of work to do. The employee should never be under any obligation to help improve a company they are leaving, especially if the company IS THE REASON THEY ARE LEAVING. It's no different than giving away all your great ideas at the job interview. The company wins; the employee gains nothing.