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The present status of Exit Interviews:

More often the exit interview is perceived as one of the formalities of the HR process by both the departing employee and the HR professionals themselves. It’s widely being used only as a paper record to study why employees left the organisation and large doubts prevail whether the findings from the exit interview process results in formulating any kind of retention measures or strategies. Neither the interviewer nor the interviewee is inclined towards completing a satisfied exit interview process, towards achieving the main purpose of the exit interview.

The information gathered during the exit interviews is often superficial. They usually describe the unavoidable reasons such as illness, proximity to home, relocation and to some extent they describe low pay and unchallenging tasks as the reasons for the departure. The superficial interview process fails to recognize the actual reasons for the departure. Often the responses from the departing employees will be from the top of their mind and the actual reasons will be a hidden one. It’s just like arriving to a conclusion by viewing the tip of an iceberg.

Most managers fail to recognize that the employees’ decision to quit is not a sudden phenomenon rather it precedes by week or month’s time spent thinking about quitting. Intentions to quit are triggered by various events that take place in during various time phases. If an employee’s expectations are met by the organisation, then as a first time the ‘quitting-thought’ will be blossomed and if the same condition prevails the thoughts about the quitting will be motivated enough for the actual quitting process. Anticipating the employees’ need before they cause frustration is the key to long term retention, but exit interview does not do so.

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Analysis of Exit Interview:

Exit interview data of two popular MNC software organizations was taken for the study’s purpose and was categorized according to the classifications of turnover (see table 2). The organization names are not revealed for confidentiality purposes. It has been coded as ‘A’ and ‘B’. The table 1 lists the reasons for the employees’ departure and the frequency.

Reasons provided by the departed employees

Si No:	Reasons	No. of departed employees Organization A B Total	Turn over classification	Classification Total

01	Better salary	19	****	19	Pull Factor	25
02	Onsite Opportunity	***	6	6
03	Growth	10	****	10	Push Factor	30
04	Projects not challenging	6	3	9
05	Work culture	4	****	04
06	Insecurity	2	****	2
07	Unhappy about his appraisal	****	2	2
08	Attitude of leaders	3	****	3
09	Home town	12	****	12	Unavoidable	35
10	Personal	10	7	17
11	Health problems	6	****	6
12	Terminated due cheating	****	3	3	Involuntary	12
13	Terminated due to Performance Issues	****	3	3
14	Transferred to H.Q	****	6	6
	Total	72	30	102		102

Source: Secondary data – obtained from the organizations

Classifications of Employee Turnover

Pull Type	Push Type	Unavoidable	Involuntary
Reasons: Positive alternate employments due to higher pay, more benefits, overseas opportunity and so on.	Reasons: Uncongenial Organisational Culture, Problems with peers and/ or supervisors, Job boredom, perceptual unfairness (salary and promotion)	Reasons: Extra Organisational factors such as retirement, illness, relocation, death of spouses/family members, child care, higher educations and so on	Reasons: Initiated by the organisation itself. Examples are lay-offs, employee’s termination due to problems, ending of contract, etc

It is noted from table-1 that majority of the quitting (35%) were attributed ‘unavoidable reasons’, followed by ‘push factors’ (30%) and ‘pull factors’ (25%) receptively. As mentioned earlier most employees tend to provide socially desirable reasons such as ‘pay’, ‘illness ness’, ‘personal problems’ and the like, here too it can be clearly viewed that 19 % of the reasons fall under the category of “salary reasons”, major 35% is roofed under the reasons for ‘health problems’, ‘home town’ and ‘personal problems’. 30% of the employees were open and honest enough to provide reasons under the “Push factor”. Does this 35% of the employees were true in revealing the actual reasons for their departure.

This study goes well in accordance with our discussion about the ‘superficial nature” of the exit interview. The majority of the category is extra-organisational in origin, as they pose or no threat when revealed to the management

Lefkowitz, J & Katz’s, M,L.(1969) study on the “Validity of Exit Interviews” involved a comparisons of ‘reasons for termination’ recorded in the company’s personnel records as obtained during an unstructured interview, with the reasons listed by those same employees on the mailed followed up questionnaire. The responses were categorized as 1. Involuntary separations 2. Voluntary avoidable separations 3. Voluntary unavoidable separations. The study found wide discrepancies between the initial and follow up reasons for termination as obtained from the employees. Number of unavoidable termination which upon later questioning were actually found to be avoidable. The major reasons given for termination at the time of exit interview was voluntary unavoidable, but at the time of follow up the most frequent reason was the Voluntary avoidable. The study suggested of supplementing (and possibility of completely replacing) exit interviews with a post-termination questionnaire approach.

Another study on the exit interview of an Indian software organisation by Deepak Kumar (2001) revealed that 72% of the departed employees attributed “personal reasons” as the cause for their departure and often quoted “abroad opportunity”as a reason. He concludes by saying that “Employee satisfaction surveys should be considered for confirming the findings of analysis of exit interview records”.

From these studies it is very evident that the confidence on the exit interview process in gleaning the reasons is contentious. It is very difficult for one to come out with specific reasons for the employees’ departure and formulate retention strategies or measures with the findings of exit interview alone. If done so it’s like “throw in the towel” business and also shows the lackadaisical attitude of the HR professionals marching towards an early conclusion for the departures, based on which if measures are taken, it will be mere a fun run and exacerbates the issue. A more pragmatic and down-to-earth approach is required for a rational solution.

The status of departing employees:

The departing employees’ also have valid reasons for not revealing the actual reasons. They do not want to burn their bridges by revealing the facts. Often the employees feel that the feed back they provide will not be read and it will be ignored. They also feel that their feedback would result in repercussions on the other employees. Emotionally charged up and angry employees feel that they do not want to help by participating in the interview and if at all they will be very reluctant to reveal the truth. They also feel that revealing the truth will be a problem.

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