A regional accountancy firm has conducted exit interviews for a decade. HR compiles the results each year. The leading reasons for leaving are consistently “better career opportunity” (41%), “higher salary” (27%) and “personal reasons” (14%). The partners conclude that departures are mostly about pay and ambition and are largely outside their control.
A new HR manager, Dimitra, telephones twenty former employees six months after they left. Her question is simple: “Looking back, what was the real reason?” Eleven of the twenty name the same partner. They describe late-night emails, public criticism and credit taken for their work. None had mentioned him at exit. One says: “I needed a reference from that firm. What was I going to say?” Ten years of exit data had accurately recorded what leavers were prepared to say, and that had told the firm almost nothing about why they left.
The exit interview is among the most widely used HR practices and among the least trusted by those who conduct it. The reasoning behind it is sound: people who are leaving have nothing to lose and will say what serving employees will not.
That premise is wrong. Leavers have a good deal to lose and little to gain from candour. This guide explains the psychology behind the polite fictions and describes what can be done to obtain something more useful.
Leavers have reasons to stay quiet.
References, relationships and the absence of any personal benefit make politeness the rational choice.
Stated reasons differ from real ones.
Pay and opportunity are given at exit. Management and treatment emerge later, to a neutral listener.
Ask for the story, later, and aggregate.
Use neutral interviewers, ask when they first thought of leaving, follow up after some months and act on patterns.
Why do leavers hold back?
Because, from where they sit, honesty has costs and no benefits.
They need a reference. The person conducting the interview, or the manager being discussed, may be asked about them for years to come. Criticising someone who will later be asked to vouch for you is plainly unwise.
They do not want to burn bridges. Industries are small. A former manager may turn up as a client, a colleague or an interviewer. “Leave on good terms” is standard career advice, and following it means saying nothing awkward.
There is nothing in it for them. Whatever is wrong can no longer be fixed for their benefit. Candour is a favour to an organisation they have already decided to leave.
They have moved on emotionally. By the last week, attention is on the new job. Going back over old grievances is unappealing.
They doubt anything will change. If concerns raised during employment were ignored, there is little reason to expect better now.
Loyalty to colleagues. Describing a team’s problems may reflect on friends who are staying.
Social desirability. People present themselves favourably. “I got a great offer” is a better story than “I couldn’t stand my boss”. It is also easier to say to the person’s face.
In any interview, people tend to give answers that will be viewed favourably and that avoid conflict. “A better opportunity” is the perfect socially desirable answer: true in a narrow sense, flattering to the leaver, offensive to nobody and impossible to act on.
How different are stated and real reasons?
Substantially, according to the limited research that has compared them.
Research going back to the 1960s and 1980s, in which leavers were surveyed again months after departure by a neutral party, has repeatedly found large shifts in the reasons given. In one frequently cited study by Joel Zarandona and Michael Camuso, pay and benefits featured prominently at exit, while in the follow-up eighteen months later a much larger share of respondents named supervision as the reason.
The pattern, in which pay and opportunity are stated and management and treatment are revealed, is what Dimitra found. It is consistent with what is known about how people come to leave. In the unfolding model of turnover, many departures begin with a specific event that leads the person to reconsider. The better offer is the destination. It is seldom the origin.
“Higher salary” is misleading in a particular way. Most people who change jobs do get a pay rise, so the answer is nearly always available and nearly always true. It says nothing about why they started to look.
Do organisations even use the data?
Often not.
In research covering executives and organisations across a range of industries, the authors found that most organisations conducted exit interviews in some form, yet many gathered the data without analysing it, analysed it without passing it to the leaders who could act, or could not point to a specific action taken as a result.
This forms a loop. Employees who have watched exit interviews produce no change are less inclined to be honest in their own. The process becomes a ritual carried out because it always has been.
Who should conduct the interview?
Not the leaver’s direct manager. That person is the most likely subject of any real criticism and is the reference-giver.
| Interviewer | Candour | Drawback |
|---|---|---|
| Direct manager | Lowest | Often the subject; controls the reference |
| HR generalist | Moderate | Seen as close to management; may be junior |
| Manager’s manager or a senior leader | Higher on leadership issues | Leaver may feel intimidated |
| A trusted person outside the reporting line | Higher | Needs skill and authority to pass findings on |
| External third party | Highest | Cost; less knowledge of context |
Spain and Groysberg recommend that second- or third-line managers conduct at least some exit interviews, on the grounds that they are far enough from the leaver to be told things and senior enough to act on them. An external interviewer, or an anonymous survey run by a third party, usually produces the frankest responses.
Whoever conducts it must be clear and truthful about confidentiality. Say exactly who will see what, and in what form. A broken promise of confidentiality will be known across the organisation within a week.
When should it happen?
The conventional timing, in the final days of employment, may be the worst available. The person is saying goodbyes, is still dependent on the organisation for final pay and a reference, and is still in the emotional setting of the job.
There are two alternatives.
Earlier, shortly after resignation. Some researchers suggest that the period just after notice is given, before the person has mentally left, yields more engaged answers.
Later, some months after departure. By then the person has started the new job, no longer depends on the old employer in the same way, has gained distance and can make a comparison. Response rates are lower. Candour is much higher. This is what Dimitra did.
A sensible design uses both: a brief conversation at exit covering the practical and the obvious, and a follow-up by a neutral person or by survey three to six months later.
What questions bring out the real reasons?
Questions that ask for the story instead of the reason.
“Why are you leaving?” calls for a summary, and the summary is “a better opportunity”. Questions about events, moments and comparisons get behind it.
“When did you first start thinking about leaving?” is the most useful single question. It moves the conversation from the destination to the trigger. Listen for an event: a reorganisation, a refused request, a promotion decision, a remark in a meeting.
Third-person questions help as well. People will say about “the team” or “others” what they will not say about themselves: “What do you think makes people in this department consider leaving?”
How should the data be analysed?
For patterns, not for individual opinions.
Aggregate. One leaver’s criticism of a manager is a single view. Five leavers from the same team over two years, describing similar behaviour, is evidence. Reporting themes in aggregate also protects individuals, which makes candour safer.
Segment. Break results down by manager, team, length of service, role and performance level. Why your best people leave matters more than why people leave in general, and the two answers often differ.
Look for triggers. Classify the events that began the process. If a third of departures follow the annual pay review, or a particular reorganisation, you have found something that can be changed.
Compare with other sources. Engagement surveys, stay interviews, grievances and absence figures. Exit data is one input.
Treat stated reasons with caution. Report “career opportunity” as the stated reason, and look beneath it.
Never pass identifiable criticism straight back to the manager concerned after promising confidentiality. Beyond the breach of trust, it exposes the leaver to retaliation in references. Where an exit interview discloses serious matters such as harassment, discrimination, fraud or safety breaches, the organisation may have a duty to investigate. Explain that limit on confidentiality at the outset.
What should you do with what you learn?
Act on it, and be seen to. The value of exit interviews lies wholly in what changes because of them.
Give leaders a small number of clear themes with evidence. Where the themes point to a particular manager, treat it as a management and development matter and corroborate it from other sources. Where they point to a policy or practice, change it. Then tell current employees: “People who left last year told us that X. Here is what we’ve done.” That is the best investment you can make in the honesty of future interviews, because it answers the leaver’s unspoken question about whether anything would come of telling you.
Are stay interviews better?
In one important respect, yes. They come while there is still time to do something.
A stay interview is a structured conversation with a current employee about what keeps them and what might lead them to go. It reaches the same information before the decision is made. It relies on the employee believing that candour is safe, which is the climate described in our guide to psychological safety. Where people will not tell their manager the truth while employed, they are unlikely to tell HR on the way out.
The two approaches complement each other. Stay interviews prevent individual departures. Exit and post-exit interviews, properly conducted and aggregated, show patterns that serving employees are too cautious to mention. What the patterns often reveal is a slow erosion of the unwritten deal between employer and employee, discussed in our guide to the psychological contract.
Choose ten people who left between six and twelve months ago and whom you would gladly have kept. Have someone they have no reason to fear ring them and ask one question: “Looking back, when did you first think about leaving, and why?” Compare the answers with what the exit forms recorded. That comparison will show how far your current process can be relied on.
Dimitra presented her findings to the managing partner without names: eleven of twenty leavers, one team, the same three behaviours. The firm had been losing two or three trained accountants a year from that team for a decade, at a cost she estimated at several times the partner’s annual profit share. For ten years the reason had been recorded in the file as “better career opportunity”, which was true of every one of them.
Frequently asked questions
Are exit interviews honest?
Frequently not. Departing employees tend to give safe, socially acceptable reasons such as a better opportunity or higher pay, because they need references, wish to leave on good terms and gain nothing from frankness.
Who should conduct an exit interview?
Someone other than the employee’s direct manager. A manager one or two levels up, a trusted HR professional outside the reporting line or an external third party will generally obtain more candid answers.
What is the best question to ask in an exit interview?
“When did you first start thinking about leaving, and what was happening at the time?” It directs attention to the event that set the decision in motion, not the destination.
When is the best time for an exit interview?
A short conversation before departure is useful for practical matters, but the most candid information usually comes from a follow-up three to six months after the person has left, conducted by a neutral party or by anonymous survey.
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