Most executives
and entrepreneurs would agree that one of the top three imperatives of any
organization, in addition to increasing revenue and profitability, is talent
management. For the current knowledge-centric workforce employees form a major
portion of the company’s assets and are increasingly responsible for the
revenue and profits.
Obviously, and for
a good reason, companies focus on hiring and keeping great talent. Therefore,
when a worker leaves the company, it is important to find out the reasons for
the departure. A great way to understand employee churn is to focus on the exit
interview.
YOU CAN’T BE
OBLIVIOUS TO ITS VALUE:
This important but
often underestimated tool is not a simple and quick process but, rather, a
systematic study of corporate performance – warts and all. Exit interviews
serve as excellent opportunities to identify problems that lie at the root of the
employee turnover and other corporate afflictions. They might also help
us discover and understand problems in other processes that may be hurting
revenue and profitability. According to Executive Coach Alanea Kowalski,
“Exit interviews are useful if you take them seriously and not just as another
item on the HR Agenda.” The exit interview can bring you face to face
with reality - gaps in organization, leadership, teams, or strategy - and it
can certainly help improve talent acquisition, training, and retention.
ARE YOU READY FOR
LEADERSHIP ACCOUNTABILITY?
A vital first step before instituting the exit
interview is ensuring total commitment to this undertaking from the most senior
leaders and executives in charge of the process. This means that senior
managers agree to make themselves vulnerable to some degree. Dave Fisher, who
has led large national sales organizations for more than 10 years, wrote to me:
“The number one reason an employee leaves voluntarily is that they don't like,
respect, and believe in the manager they're working for. Most managers
are afraid of conducting exit interviews or having them conducted by HR because
they are often self-condemning. That said, not having them conducted
properly and immediately deprives an organization of the knowledge it needs to
improve and to ‘coach the coach’.”
IT IS A SYSTEM AND
NOT A TACTIC:
Everyone involved in the process must be committed to
understanding what is causing employee churn and be ready to undertake measures
to stop it. Program manager Steven Bocker says, “By looking at the end results (of
exit interviews) you can reverse- engineer a career and identify events that
altered an employee’s career path.” In order to provide value, exit interviews
need to be backed by considerable thought, planning, and follow-through, or
else they would not yield any worthwhile insight and just be a drain on resources.
The process needs to be mapped out from the information-collection phase to
results.
OUTSOURCE
IT:
In reality, however, exit interviews often merely provide janitorial services to the final barfing of
ex-employees. Exit interviews should only be conducted if you are serious about
taking action, in which case they should be a part of a greater review process
of the organization. There should be a systematic method of extracting, storing, analyzing, and utilizing
information about the firm obtained from former employees. Exit
interviews can't be disjointed acts of conversations. Keep in mind
too that you cannot take everything the exiting employee says as the holy
truth. S/he may be frustrated and cynical and make exaggerated pronouncements. Then
there are also employees who would be scared to say anything negative because
they don’t want to burn bridges or face any vindictive consequences in the form
of negative references. They need to be assured that everything they say would
be kept confidential.
That said, having
a third party – someone who has the trust of the top leadership as well as past
employees –conduct the exit interview is also a good idea. According to Deborah
H. Herting, Founder and CEO at The Deborah Group, which develops customized strategies for success for individuals
and business organizations, “What
is the value of an exit interview when people are hesitant to be honest with
feedback? Reassurance is needed that candid feedback will be assessed from a
neutral position and utilized to effect positive change with absolutely no
professional ramifications to the departing employee.”
Exit interviews
done in-house rather than by an outside, neutral entity would be akin to
complaining to police about law enforcement excesses. Beth Carvin,
President/CEO at Nobscot Corporation says, “If an employee is leaving because
the boss is a jerk, what will they say when the boss asks them why they are
leaving?” On the other hand, there’s no point taking exit interviews of
employees who have been fired.
TOWARDS A DEEPER
APPRECIATION:
When done well, the exit interviews may reveal just about
everything worth knowing – from bad policies to dysfunctional team members.
People leave for a variety of reasons and not simply to get a better job with a
better firm. They may even leave
companies that offer the best facilities and compensation because of problems
like toxic colleagues and culture, or lack of faith in the firm’s leadership or
strategy. By the same token, many employees stay with companies that are not
extraordinary in any sense, but because they like their co-workers or they
enjoy the work.
Conducted
properly, exit interviews can be as revealing as an autopsy. The past
employee is ready to spill her guts and share all that she had to deal with in
the past. Your firm may suffer from one or more diseases and such an in-depth
examination would help you diagnose the problem and devise the treatment plan,
so to say. You cannot be just a forensic scientist but also
an epidemiologist, and you should understand not only one departing
employee, but also all former workers as a group. Do you have the skills
to ask pertinent questions and find the
right answers? While this process does not require training in
"depth research methods" from a postmodernist doctoral
program, it does need a pre-planned and deliberate effort.
Finally, it pays
to genuinely focus on the exiting employees’ concerns and future plans, because
this approach helps them open up and give an honest appraisal of the company.
Stephen Holton, Senior Project/Program Manager who had a memorable exit interview in
which his boss congratulated him for getting the excellent job opportunity for
which he was leaving the company says, “You rarely forget those who help you in
duress or those who truly celebrate your success. This transition is an
opportunity for the company to make that type of a connection”.
Published by The 8020Strategy Group,