Are Exit Interviews More Like Autopsies or Toe Tags?

Remember when we used to call fast-popular and short-term things a fad? Things like pet rocks and hula hoops? Exit interviews are like that except they haven’t gone away…yet.

When speaking each year at the SHRM annual conference, I poll the audience like this:

Raise your hand if your company conducts exit interviews…and nearly all raise their hands.

Raise your hand if your company has gotten better in any way because you conduct exit interviews…and less than five percent raise their hands.

Exit interviews are a fad, still waiting to go away. Their strong roots come from most companies doing them so other HR departments continue to do them. Besides, what other “solution” does HR have to fix turnover? Exit interviews have the appearance of leading to a solution because logically if we know why employees leave and we can fix that, then we can cut turnover and employees will stay.

That logic breaks down, though, because (1) leaving employees don’t tell the truth, (2) nor do managers tell truths if they are the ones checking the “reason for leaving” box, and (3) surveys are constructed so poorly that the most common leave reason is “better opportunity”. Opportunity for what? Better pay? Better boss? Promotion potential? Close to home? Work from home? Or is “better opportunity” the employee’s way of dodging the question?

One of two things happen with the resulting exit survey data and both of them are worthless. Either HR presents a periodic executive report on why employees leave that results in no changes, or HR initiates a committee to “solve” the fake reasons their exit surveys tell them why their employees left. Imagine a committee meeting every few weeks scribbling on white boards, trying to solve “better opportunity”.

The shout-out lesson here takes us back to what employees want the most…and that answer is a boss they can trust. Employee appreciation week and company clocks will never substitute for a supervisor looking an employee in the eye saying you did a good job about something very specific…nor do employees teeter-totter on the fence about leaving because you offer pet insurance.

This is cousin to Deloitte telling us we spend $1.53 billion per year trying to fix engagement at the same time Gallup makes clear employee engagement has hardly budged since they began tracking it 21 years ago. Because no matter what we name any employee survey, the outcome has zero value if we create more one-size-fits-all programs because of it.

This is not that complicated. Many HR departments still do exit surveys because turnover is high, executives ask for them, and they don’t know what else to do.

The exponentially-better idea of course is to do Stay Interviews. I invented Stay Interviews because of all the words you’ve read above, that HR is wasting time doing exit interviews but more importantly, HR CAN’T FIX TURNOVER ANYHOW. Only first-line leaders can. And those leaders must learn to ask five questions, listen to each employee’s answers, probe to learn more, take several pages of notes, and then help that employee solve the issues that are most important to them.

There will be objections. Leaders will say they don’t have time…because they are too busy filling open jobs due to turnover or cleaning up after the mistakes made by new hires. Sit with an executive and go through the standard meetings on her supervisors’ calendars and you’ll regularly-scheduled meetings where Stay Interviews can be conducted instead.

So, are exit interviews more like autopsies or toe tags? Autopsies at least provide a real reason for something. The correct answer is toe tags.

Want Dick Finnegan to speak at your next company meeting or conference? Or your local SHRM conference? Please email him at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com.  You are also welcome to forward this blog to anyone you believe would find it helpful.