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If you have the opportunity to develop or improve an exit interview for your company, know that you have a critical opportunity to collect data from a fleeting pool of individuals who have little to gain or lose from the process. However, what they know, what they have experienced, and what they may be willing to share, is invaluable if collected with a strong interview tool, and then studied.
Below are 3 tips for designing a strong exit interview questionnaire.
- For as many questions as possible, use a Likert scale or something similar to that so that the results can be quantified and analyzed easily.
- Leave room for open ended questions so that people can leave their comments. With these responses, you could have someone review them for trends of words or topics.
- Ask about an array of topics, including some basic ones like benefits, salary, opportunities for promotion, scope of job responsibility and location of work. Don’t miss the opportunity to also ask about some less tangible topics that are reflective of agency culture like the strength of relationships among staff, communication from the top down, and managers’ ability to stay in role.
Once you’ve developed your tool, remember to have the person conducting the interview inform interviewees how the data will be analyzed and used. It’s important for people to know that if they say something about a specific person, it won’t get back to that person directly. That person may receive the feedback packaged with other feedback, and framed as a theme. Individuals should know what happens to their data as it is completely up to them about what they want to reveal. Therefore, be transparent about your process.
Have experience developing exit interview forms? Tell us about in the comments below.