Most organisations have a vast untapped resource: their ex-employees. While it is good practice to listen to employee suggestions while they are with us, once they have gone the communication is limited. Many employees leave their jobs with a head full of ideas about improving their workplaces, and will keep this to themselves or share it with others.
Knowing why your employees are leaving empowers you to retain your best talent. In the interview it is possible to find out what individual, interpersonal, role, and organisational factors contributed to the employee leaving, showing you where to focus developmental efforts. Furthermore, exit interviews can help you to better understand what is most rewarding and challenging about the roles, and how you might go about selecting whoever will take the departed employee's place.
How can you ensure your departing employee gives you the full story? Part of the reason exit interviewing is underutilised is that often the best feedback an organisation needs to hear is difficult to hear, and to get it is to have a difficult, sometimes tense conversation. Interviewees are more forthcoming when they are treated sympathetically, given confidentiality, and interviewed by an independent source.
In addition exit interviews should be: