Excellent Employees / Leaving

Exit interviews capture the trigger and miss the cause

People leave for an accumulation and cite the final item.

Exit interviews are conducted with somebody who has already gone, has no incentive to be difficult, and frequently wants a reference. They produce polite, plausible reasons: a good opportunity, a shorter commute, a change of direction. Those are usually true and rarely complete.

The actual pattern is an accumulation over months followed by a trigger. The trigger gets reported and the accumulation does not, so an organisation acting on exit data addresses the last item in a sequence that is still operating on everybody who stayed.

The better instrument is a stay conversation with people who have not resigned, asking what would make them consider leaving and what nearly did. It produces the accumulation while it can still be affected, and the people who answer are still invested.

Where exit interviews are used, conducting them a few months after departure rather than in the final week produces markedly more candid answers, since the person no longer needs anything from the organisation.

There is a specific progression conversation worth having with people who are not going to advance and are valuable where they are. Being told that somebody is doing exactly what the organisation needs, that it is recognised, and that it will continue to be paid properly, is a legitimate and often welcome message that almost nobody delivers.