Exit interviews provide feedback on why employees leave, what they liked about their job, and where the organization needs improvement. They are most effective when data is compiled and tracked over time. The concept has been revisited as a tool to capture knowledge from leavers. Exit interviews can be a win-win situation: the organization retains a portion of the leaver's knowledge and shares it; the departing employee articulates unique contributions and leaves a mark.

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A Guide to Exit Interviews
Olivier Serrat
2013

2. Exit … Stage Left
If 80% of knowledge is
unwritten and largely
unspoken, we need to
elicit that before we
can articulate, share,
and make wider use of
it. Knowledge
harvesting is one way
to do so.
The less knowledge
and experience an
organization captures
from staff on a regular
basis, the more it
needs to capture
when they leave. This
is especially relevant
where departing
employees embody
significant human
capital that should be
passed to those who
remain in the
organization.
Exit interviews are a
unique chance to
survey and analyze
the opinions of
departing employees,
who are generally
more forthcoming and
objective on such
occasions.

3. Exit … Stage Right
More recently, the
practice of exit
interviews has been
revisited as a
knowledge
management tool to
identify, capture,
store, and share
knowledge from
departing employees
and minimize loss
through staff turnover.
Most departing
employees are
pleased to share
knowledge, help a
successor, or brief
senior management.
In so doing, they yield
information that can
be used to enhance all
aspects of an
organization's working
environment including
culture, management,
business processes,
and intra- as well as
inter-organizational
relationships.
One day your life will
flash before your eyes.
Make sure it's worth
watching.—
Anonymous

4. The Benefits of Legacy
Exit interviews are a win–win situation: the organization retains a
portion of the leaver's knowledge and shares it; the departing
employee articulates unique contributions and leaves a mark.
The only thing you take with you when you're gone is what you leave
behind.—John Allston.
I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things
which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally
omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.—René
Descartes

5. The Benefits of Legacy
At
negligible
cost,
some
benefits
of exit
interviews
are that
they
• Help retain vital knowledge in the organization.
• Catalyze identification of specific shortcomings and
opportunities for improvement.
• Enhance the understanding and experience that
managers have of managing people and organizations.
• Support an organization's human resource practices.
• Inform management succession planning.
• Indicate how to improve staff engagement and retention.
• Quicken and improve the effectiveness of the
recruitment process.
• Shorten the learning curve of new employees or
successors to the departing employee.
• Generate useful information for training needs analysis
and training planning processes.
• Result in the departing employee having a more positive
view of the organization and its culture.

6. Face-à-Face
Face-to-face
interactions are central
to exit interviews. This
method tells the
departing employee
that his or her opinion
is important enough to
have someone sit
down and discuss
issues of concern to
the organization.
Preferably, they
complement or
deepen earlier
responses to
questionnaires.
The exit interview process must be initiated as
soon as it is known that a particular employee is
leaving. In preparation, it is necessary to
• Consider who currently accesses the departing
employee's knowledge and what they need to
know from the replacement staff.
• Develop a plan in a participatory way to
ensure that important knowledge can be
identified, captured, and stored (for later
sharing) during the departing employee's
notice period.

7. Sample Exit Interview Questions
General
• What was satisfying during your time in the unit? What was frustrating?
• What could you have done better or more?
• What extra responsibility would you have welcomed?
Induction
• Were you inducted adequately for your role(s)?
• What improvement could be made to the way you were inducted for your role(s)?
Learning and Development
• How well do think your learning and development needs were assessed and met
• What learning and development did you find helpful and enjoyable?
• What learning and development would you have liked or needed that you did not receive
and what effect would that have had?

8. Sample Exit Interview Questions
Performance Evaluation
• What can you say about the way your performance was measured and the feedback on your
performance results?
• How well do you think the performance and development plan worked for you?
• How would you have changed the expectations (or absence of) that were placed on you?
And why?
Communications
• What can you say about communications in the unit? How could these be improved?
• What could you say about communications between the unit and other departments and
offices? How could these be improved?
Working Conditions
• How would you describe the culture of the unit?
• What suggestion would you make to improve working conditions?
• What examples of inefficiencies in business processes and procedures in the unit could you
point to?
• How could the unit reduce stress levels among employees where stress is an issue?

9. Sample Exit Interview Questions
Management
• What can you say about the way you were managed? On a day-to-day basis? On a month-to-
month basis?
• What things did the unit and its management do to make your job more difficult?
• What would you say about how you were motivated and how could that have been
improved?
• How could the unit have enabled you to have made better use of your time?
Knowledge Transfer
• What would you consider to be your foremost knowledge assets?
• How might your explicit and tacit knowledge be transferred prior to your departure?
• Would you be happy to take part in a briefing meeting with managers, replacements,
successor, and/or colleagues so that we can benefit further from your knowledge prior to
your departure?
• What can the unit do to enable you to pass on as much of your knowledge as possible to
your replacement or successor prior to your departure?
• How and when would you prefer to pass on your knowledge to your successor?
• Could you introduce (name of successor) to your key contacts before you go?
• How can the unit gather and make better use of the knowledge of employees?

10. Activity-Based Mapping Template
Key Activity
Inputs OutputsTask/Process
Users & Uses
of Outputs
Tools &
Systems
Dependencies
e.g.,
authorizations, etc.
Organizational &
Management
Issues

11. Toward Learning-Based Exits
Since 2005, Shell has helped its units identify and retain critical knowledge.
After discussions to target retirees, a critical knowledge interview is
conducted with the departing expert to zoom in on the expertise his/her unit
is most likely to miss upon retirement (or even transfer, in which case a
simplified approach is used). This sets the ground for the selection of best-fit
techniques for the capture of knowledge during follow-on, in-depth
interviews (and its dissemination). Over the years, variants of the approach
and its application have spread.
Where knowledge must not be lost, some organizations have fostered retiree
networks (or pre-retirement mentoring schemes). Others have simply
extended tenures.

12. Further Reading
• ADB. 2008. Conducting Exit Interviews. Manila.
www.adb.org/publications/conducting-exit-interviews
• ——. 2009. Building Trust in the Workplace. Manila.
www.adb.org/publications/building-trust-workplace
• ——. 2010. Harvesting Knowledge. Manila.
www.adb.org/publications/harvesting-knowledge
• ——. 2010. Engaging Staff in the Workplace. Manila.
www.adb.org/publications/engaging-staff-workplace

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