When it is my turn to create content for the Salopek HR Blog, I like to review the previous posts from my colleagues. Although I do this for practical purposes, to ensure I don’t replicate a topic of a recent post; it frequently becomes a journey of the ‘nodding head’. I nod in agreement with the content and frequently do more in-depth research on a topic. Fortunately for me, I work in a field with a wide (and deep) body of knowledge that is constantly being enlarged and refined. Sometimes, it takes a day or two to get back to my original idea, or I am inspired to augment a topic with my own slant on things. This week, I found inspiration from my colleague Clementine Crooks’ blog on the “4 Tips to Successfully Court (and keep) Employees”. I quite enjoyed reading it and nodded my head a lot …..
All (even great) employers experience voluntary attrition. People leave you for a myriad of reasons (it’s not you, it’s them). However, when your employees leave and you don’t ask them why, you are missing an excellent opportunity to gain valuable (and almost free) insight into your organization’s culture and practices. Companies spend $1000’s of dollars on engagement surveys to capture that elusive (and frequently moving) engagement indicator.
Although the Salopek Exit Interview Template, which can be found on our HR Policy E-Store is quite comprehensive, there are a couple questions I feel are revealing about the workplace; regardless of the “generation” of the employee who is departing.
Did the duties you performed in your role turn out to be as you expected?
If the answer here is no, then the interviewer needs to drill deeper into why this is. There could be a number of reasons for this answer, but none of them are really good. A negative response here could indicate a misalignment between your job description (assuming you have one for the position) and the actual duties the individual was asked to perform. It is important to keep your job descriptions current and accurate.
How did you feel about the training and development opportunities you received?
It seems that you can’t log on to LinkedIn or Twitter without seeing an article about how Millennials care more about training and development opportunities than a paycheque. Although I am pretty sure that millennials want to earn enough to ascend the base of Maslow’ hierarchy of needs, I don’t believe they are unique in this desire. Baby Boomers and members of Generation X, and Z want to improve too. So, are you providing your employees with any opportunity to learn and grow? If not, why?
As previously mentioned, there are many potential questions to ask when an employee ‘breaks up with you’ – Hopefully you will ask ‘why’ and learn and grow from the experience. If you need support with conducting Exit Interviews, Stay Interviews or measuring and maximizing employee engagement contact Salopek & Associates, we’d be happy to help!