Modernizing the Exit Interview: What are the Options?

Exit procedures are increasingly among the processes that companies are choosing to outsource and standardize, with outsourcing usually being the proposed change that receives the quickest buy-in from leaders and employees alike.  

More than anything else, putting the responsibility for data collection and reporting on the shoulders of a 3^rd party promises far better confidentiality for a departing employee. Decreasing the fear of burning bridges or stirring up trouble for remaining employees, outsourced data collection methods demonstrate to a departing employee that his or her company is truly committed to confidentiality; internal interview processes simply don’t demonstrate that same commitment – no matter how distant an interviewer may be from a departing employee’s role in the company. 

Standardizing, on the other hand, can imply a number of possible changes to a company’s exit protocol, and is more likely to invite mixed reactions. The less radical of these changes includes automating how an employee is contacted about participating in exit procedures. By integrating with a company’s HRIS, an automated exit process can instantly invite departing employees to schedule an exit interview or survey immediately after the employee is tagged by the system as a voluntary termination. This automation alone can save substantial amount of HR time (which would otherwise be spent tracking down and scheduling departing employees). So it’s generally an easy change to swallow.

But more substantial process changes – such as those that standardize the actual data collection method and content for the exit process –are often met with resistance. And this is when a careful examination of a company’s goals (and budget) for exit procedures need take place.

If an organization ultimately wants the ability to document and act upon trends, the questions that are posed to departing employees must be consistent and the responses that are elicited must be appropriately categorized. While this is easily achieved for some questions by providing pre-set response options (e.g., yes/no; agree/disagree, etc.), it is more difficult for open-ended questions. 

So what options exist for companies wanting to outsource their exit process and act upon information that can only be posed to employees in an open-ended format?

A first option is employ a third party to administer standardized, open-ended interview questions in an online survey. For example, Reliant’s survey program clients are given the option to receive qualitative reports of the responses to open-ended survey items, summarizing responses by themes. Depending upon the nature of the question (and so, the variety of responses) themes that persist year over year can then be make into standardized response options, further enhancing reporting capabilities.

A second option is to employ a third party to administer an online survey that includes both open-ended and closed questions (with standardized response options; e.g., a Likert agreement scale; strongly agree to strongly disagree). Using this combination of questions in an online survey allows for probing – such that individuals who respond to a particular closed-ended question in a specific way can be prompted to then answer a standardized open-ended question.  Because individuals are branched into standardized questions, their responses can be coded and examined for trend data over time. 

A third option is of course to engage a third party to administer open-ended questions in real-time interviews either online or over the phone.  Those conducting the interviews are often trained in interview procedures and can dig deeper into individual responses by offering unique probing questions. However, the risk of this method is that while it allows for probing questions, and so can provide a potentially richer set of information, responses that are provided to unique probes cannot be compared. Thus, trend information will only be captured by those items that have fairly consistent responses between departing employees, which to some extent negates the value of probing in the first place.

So, as is the case with most important decisions, choosing which option to go with ultimately boils down to what is trying to be accomplished by outsourcing your exit process, and how much you’re willing to spend in the name of that accomplishment. If the primary goal is to examine changes in responses over time, you need to consider options that allow you to compare responses in some meaningful way. But if the primary goal is to elicit detailed information on potentially highly unique reasons for why employees leave your organization, then you’ll want to look into options that best facilitate probing during live interviews.