The exit interview has long been a sacred cow for human resources departments. Although the intent has merit, the process is flawed, biased, inaccurate and rarely results in any transformative organizational change for facilities departments.
The exit interview is a conversation between an organizational representative and a departing employee to determine the reasons that the latter is leaving the organization. Seeking feedback from departing employees has been a staple of human resource management since the 1920s in the United States and was initially started to head off unionizations. Because its initial inception resulted in no reduction in unionization, the concept was flawed from the start (Gordan, 2010). In most cases human resources departments are just checking the box, as exit interviews are conducted but rarely acted upon.
According to Joe Mull, a national leadership consultant, “It’s a bit absurd if you think about it. The employee who has chosen to leave is consulted as to the direction and performance of the team and organization. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. For some reason, we assume that, freed from the need for self-preservation, these departing employees will shine a light on what’s really going on in the unit or practice, and thatthese interviews, when compiled over time, might help identify patterns or prevalent issues in need of reform. That never happens. Exit interviews are stupid. They’re a waste of time. Stop doing them.”
Aswari Ghatage of Plum, a human resources consulting company, wrote that the harder truth is that companies cling to exit interviews because theyfeellike diligence. They mimic accountability without requiring any effort. It is far easier to ask someone why they’re leaving than to ask the people still here why they might leave soon.
Barbara Milhizer of ERE Media stated, “Exit interviews, the second most worthless activity human resources has to handle.”
Exit interviews are problematic for several reasons: Information distortion, sample bias, lack of actionable data, impression management, and methodology.
Information distortion implies that employees may not be truthful in their responses due to fear of retribution or desire for a future positive reference. Human resources departments do not address practical problems stemming from the fact that “the exiting employee is undoubtedly very reluctant to be honest” (Giacalone & Duhon, 1991, p. 85).
Some researchers have questioned the results obtained through the use of exit interviews because it is so difficult to determine the employee’s actual reason or reasons for leaving. Often the employees do not want to give their real reason and will tell the interviewer something else. The most common explanation as to why workers quit is the higher wages of another job. This is a safe explanation which offends no one.
It is widely recognized that the causes which the company is most anxious to determine from the exit interview are precisely those which the departing employee is least likely to disclose, for fear of subsequent recrimination (Estes, 1960).
Sample bias occurs when certain groups of individuals are more likely to be included in a sample than others, leading to an unrepresented sample. This type of bias can undermine the external validity of the survey findings, making it difficult to generalize results to the entire population.
In statistics, sampling bias happens when a sample does not accurately represent the characteristics of the population for which it is drawn. This is precisely what happens in an exit interview, as opinions are only drawn from those employees who have left the organization, and many of them left due to their own bad behaviors, bad job performance, or simply were not a good fit when they were hired.
Additionally, exit interviews are voluntary, and response rates are traditionally low, skewing feedback toward the opinions of those willing to respond, not necessarily the opinions of the entire population. Most critical to the concept of bias is sample size, or participation rate in the exit interview. You should ask your human resources department how many former employees responded to the exit interview? What is our response rate? Then compare these numbers to the total number of employees. This will give you information regarding statistical significance of the responses.
Statistical significanceis a measure of the likelihood that an observed result or relationship in a study occurred due to areal effectrather than random chance or sampling error.For a population of 400, a sample size of at least197 responsesis needed to apply statistical significance with a 95 percent confidence level and a 5 percent margin of error. For very large populations, the statistically significant sample size levels out after 200. In other words, for large populations, samples after 200 responses will become repetitive.
Lack of actionable data is when the exit interview responses lack details and the information gathered is not actionable. Theeffectivenessof exit interviews in actually reducing turnover is a subject with limited high-quality evidence, according to a review in an American Psychological Association database. Although employees are usually reluctant to provide details, details are necessary to bring about real change. Vague responses like “I didn’t like my job,” or “Job culture was toxic,” are difficult to act on. Although further research can be done, these general, non- specific comments from former employees rarely result in meaningful change.
Impression management is the conscious or subconscious process of controlling how others perceive you by managing information and behavior, like your words, appearance, and actions, to project a desired image, such as confident or trustworthy for personal or professional goals. This is also related to signaling theory in which one party, the signaler, sends credible, observable signals to the another, the receiver, to convey hidden information particularly when there is information asymmetry like a job applicant’s skills or a company’s quality. Exit interviews might serve the purpose of allowing departing employees to leave a final good impression, rather than providing completely honest feedback. This is most noticeable during in-person exit interviews. If the exit interview is an electronic survey, the language of the questions can written, intentionally or unintentionally, to get the desired response.
Methodology is critical to the exit interview. If your human resources department is convinced that exit interviews have merit for the purposes of improving retention, they should be conducted face-to-face. A digital exit interview or survey is rife with bias, and information distortion. It is also completely dependent on sample size and phrasing of the questions. The face-to-face interview must be conducted by a trained professional, or the results are subject to all errors indicated here. Conducting face-to-face exit interviews rarely happens due to staffing and lack of trained professionals. The traditional criticisms of the technique involve the difficulty of obtaining enough trained interviewers, the (unknown) accuracy of the interviewee’s comments, and the possibility of his distorting or being unwilling to discuss frankly the reasons for his departure (Kreuter, 1951; Schoenfeld, 1957; Yourman, 1965).
If you are concerned about employee retention, the work culture or other human aspects of your working environment, surveys of the entire workforce may lead to actionable data. In theory, the exit interview produces responses that help an organization identify and correct organizational problems, improve the work environment, and thus reduce employee turnover. The extent to which such responses are truthful and reliable is a mystery to practitioners and researchers alike (Zarandona and Camuso, 1985). Given the mystery surrounding the effectiveness of the information obtained at exit interviews, its usefulness as a strategic tool in reducing employee turnover is counterproductive. Exit interviews are a waste of time.
Doug Pearson is the associate vice president of facilities planning and operations at Kent State University in Ohio. He has more than 40 years of experience in facilities management and was the subject of a cover profile in Building Operating Management magazine in 2024. He was a member of FacilitiesNet’s inaugural class of Facility Champions in 2022.
