18 exit interview questions to ask your employees

Over the course of your business, you'll naturally gain and lose , sometimes watching those you were most invested in move on to new things. When quality team members want to leave your organization, it's natural to wonder why. Each time you need to fill staffing gaps, you may be unsure how to incentivize longer-term commitments and improve your team dynamic.

Holding an exit interview is a great way to end a work relationship on a positive note. It also provides your organization with valuable knowledge from a colleague at a time when they’re more likely to speak candidly than other members of staff.

Our exit interview guide has two main aims:

For employers: To describe what makes a good exit interview, including pointers on crafting your own employee exit interview questions centered on the most important matters facing your organization. We'll include a list of tried-and-true stock questions, so you're prepared the next time a member of staff decides the grass might be greener elsewhere.
For exit interviewees: To provide valuable pointers on getting the most out of the opportunity to make an impact on company operations—both on behalf of former colleagues and for the personal and professional experience. It looks good on a resume to show you were a valued member of the team, right to the end!

What is an exit interview?

An exit interview is an optional part of the offboarding process. It’s a meeting to allow an outgoing employee to share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings about their time with the company. As far as research and strategies go, exit interviews are classed as a survey.

It's a time for the company leaders to learn more about their company culture and employee motivations, without needing to guess or speculate. The exit interview itself is a meeting, but the entire process (for the employer) involves:

Asking pointed questions
Transcribing the answers in a database-friendly format
Optimally tagging and itemizing responses for easier analysis
Compiling the results into a searchable repository (on which future exit interviews can build)

Employee exit interview questions are tailored to reveal what the employee liked or didn't like about their time with the company. The questions should also be designed to encourage thoughtfully nuanced and authentic responses. This allows managers to probe more deeply into the overall company culture and the relationship between staff, management, customers, and other .

Who conducts an exit interview?

Exit interviews are normally held by an unbiased staff member familiar with the company culture, such as a respected member of the human resources team. These staff members have:

An unbiased role
Rapport with numerous high- and low-ranking staff alike
Respected opinions about the hiring process
The ability to impact company culture

Large enterprises may hire an external exit interview company for completely unbiased reports.

Holding an in-office exit interview is generally considered best practice. It provides the same environment as the employee's standard working conditions, helping them remember in detail what was involved in their daily functions. If their job was remote, it’s most effective to conduct the exit interview over the same video platform they're used to.

The key to getting the most honest answers to successful exit interview questions is:

Asking them in a familiar setting
Someone conducting the interview with whom the employee feels comfortable

What makes a good exit interview?

Good exit interview questions are a blend of closed and open-ended questions. This mix creates a natural dynamic for the interview, generating the hard data you're after and the "vibe" required to make that data forthcoming.

Question quality has a major bearing on the direction of the interview and the main themes that are ultimately addressed. Before the exit interview, ask your key decision-makers: “What aspects of our company culture most directly impact our ability to achieve company goals as an effective, unified team?”

Key themes to measure in an exit interview

Next, craft several key exit interview questions, imagining you have to cover all territory in a few artfully honed inquiries. These will reflect the most important themes the company is curious about.

Some of the most important topics companies choose to explore during exit interviews include:

Communications habits between staff members, and between staff and management
Behavior patterns in different departments
Whether employees feel supported, satisfied, and loyal—and if not, why
and the factors affecting this
Which aspects of the company most significantly impact turnover and retention rates
What kind of work–life balance employees typically have, and the role they expect management to play in helping them achieve a better balance
How much of a direct stake employees feel in the company's success

After choosing the most important themes for your organization, you'll have a more solid direction for the interview and a focus point around which to craft interview questions.

How to use exit interviews to improve performance

So what makes exit interview data valuable? After holding your exit interview and taking time to digest the responses, your company leaders could see how you can improve:

Onboarding processes
Employee work–life balance
Overall company culture
Management styles
Company productivity

18 exit interview questions to ask

It’s important to keep the interviewee engaged with unique, novel questions. Read on for a solid mix of thought-provoking questions designed to learn the motivating thought patterns and attitudes of your employees, at the time when they're most likely to openly share their thoughts. Your goal is to elicit more unguarded answers while giving your exiting employee a reason to feel comfortable and more candid.

With experience, you'll find the order in which you ask these questions often has a bearing on the shape the interview takes. For example, consider whether you'd rather save more personal questions for the end, or ask them upfront, depending on whether you'd like a more professional or casual dynamic.

Select and modify the following employee exit interview questions according to your needs and preference, and order them so you build up to the key themes you’ve already established.

What compelled you to seek other opportunities?
What about your new job are you most looking forward to?
Would you consider returning to our company under different circumstances?
Do you believe management fully recognized your efforts? How could we improve employee recognition?
Were any policies difficult to understand or appreciate? If so, what would make them better, and how could they be communicated differently?
Did your duties deviate from your original job description, and if yes, how?
Were you equipped with the necessary tools, workplace conditions, and resources needed to consistently achieve success? What areas of staff support could be improved, and how?
Was your training effective for your role, and how could our training process accelerate employee growth?
What was the greatest part of your job here?
What was the worst part of the job, and how can we address those challenges for the benefit of other employees?
Do you have ideas for elevating staff morale?
Can you describe the perfect replacement candidate (besides you, of course)?
Would you recommend working here to friends or family? Why/why not?
Did you feel comfortable communicating regularly with your manager, and what communication obstacles did you experience?
What words or phrases would you use to describe our company culture?
Did we give you clear-enough goals and objectives at regular intervals?
How forthcoming was our feedback, and did it help or hinder you in your role?
Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Good tools for conducting exit interview surveys

If you're looking to make exit interviews a mainstay of your offboarding process, there are some tools that will make the process more efficient.

Learn how to use survey-collection services, and set them up beforehand with templates and custom settings. It will go a long way in keeping the interviewer and interviewee comfortable.

Some of the best exit interview tools we heartily recommend include:

Typeform and SurveyMonkey, which include great inbuilt functions for smooth, effective exit interview surveys.
Video chat platforms, for conducting and recording online interviews. This may be needed if the employee leaves before you have had the chance to meet one last time. Even making a video of a live meeting can help, if you feel body language would be helpful to review.
Dovetail, our powerful, multifaceted research platform, is designed for automated transcriptions and easy, thorough survey response analysis. This will help you to compare and contrast employee exit interview questions throughout the years, mining answers for actionable insights at the press of a button.