Even the best organizations must deal with turnover. It’s a fact of business that can be extremely costly -- in wasted training dollars, depressed productivity, and lost intelligence. But beyond the disappointment, disruption, and inconvenience, companies can benefit if they take the time to learn from each exodus.

In fact, organizations of all sizes should make it a standard practice to conduct exit interviews whenever anyone leaves. The process can provide surprising insights into a company’s operations, and the feedback is an efficient way to size up what’s working and what isn’t.

The information gathered from exit interviews can also help a company’s efforts to retain top performers. By discovering why employees leave, organizations can successfully address issues where necessary -- and ultimately, create many more reasons for employees to stick around.

While exit interviews can produce a treasure trove of usable truths, most companies do not use them. Others fail to approach the process effectively. They either perform them sporadically or without the depth required to probe for understanding. They may question only high-level employees, or they might interview everyone but fail to ask meaningful questions.

Establishing a system

Implementing a systematic process will result in a more accurate analysis of why employees leave. Organizations should conduct interviews with each departing individual and pose a thorough checklist of questions to help detect patterns.

Questions should be designed to address two categories of organizational development: workforce improvements and strategic opportunities.

Workforce improvements focus on benefits as well as remedial actions needed in the name of health and safety, harassment, discrimination, and family/work balance.

Strategic opportunities focus on various ways to improve business processes -- team-building initiatives, management training, and customer service practices, for example.

Consistency is critical, so questions should be structured so that they’re repeatable from interview to interview. It may help to start with the most obvious questions and build from there. For example:

• What is your main reason for leaving?
• What attracted you to your new job?
• How does your new job differ from your current one?
• How will your compensation and benefits package differ from what you had here?
• What was most satisfying about your job here? What was least satisfying?
• Do you feel your job description was accurate?
• Did you find that the goals and targets of your role were clear throughout your employment?
• Could your qualifications and skills have been used to better advantage?
• Did you feel you received appropriate training and support to enable you to do your job?
• How was your working environment?
• What might we do to improve overall working conditions?
• How would you describe the culture or “feel” of the organization?
• What can you say about relationships among the various departments you interacted with? How these could be improved?
• How would you rate the quality of the supervision you received?
• What could your immediate supervisor do to improve his or her management effectiveness?
• Did you receive sufficient and ongoing feedback about your performance?

The last word

Three considerations will further ensure a successful exit interview process: Objectivity, confidentiality, and implementation.

As difficult as it can be for organizations to hear negative things about itself, interviews provide an invaluable opportunity to improve the business. Therefore, objectivity is essential. An experienced and impartial interviewer can extract beneficial information without emotional impediments and without influencing the departing employee’s responses.

Confidentiality is equally essential and interviewers should never involve an employee’s immediate supervisor or teammates in the exit process. Doing so only undermines the desired candidness.

Finally, the feedback must form the foundation of a strong employee retention program. This requires follow-up analysis of information and attention to the development and implementation of improvements. Without this final step, there is no point in conducting exit interviews at all.