Streamline Training & Documentation: Exit Interviews

Friday, May 12, 2006

Exit Interviews

"Exit interviews invade an employee's privacy and insult his intelligence. Employers can't possibly believe they're going to get credible information in such a meeting."

or ...

"'What do I care [why a person is leaving the company]? If I saw that I had a big problem--like a whole office leaving--then I would be interested. But one person? Nah. Just look him or her in the eye: 'OK.' There's nothing else to say."

or ...

"Done correctly, exit interviews can be a win-win situation for both the organisation and the [job] leaver. The organisation gets to retain a portion of the leaver's knowledge and make it available to others, while the leaver gets to articulate their unique contributions to the organisation and to 'leave their mark'."

The trick in reconciling the above quotes is to note that the first two refer to exit interviews used to probe for the reasons an employee is leaving, while the third refers to exit interviews aimed at capturing expert knowledge from employees before they go out the door.

Nick Corcodilos, a long-time headhunter in Silicon Valley, is the author of the first quote. He dismisses "what went wrong?" exit interviews for several reasons, emphasizing the likely lack of candor and intrusion on the departing employee's privacy. What he says makes sense.

The second quote is something Michael Bloomberg said while he was still CEO of his news and information company. In Bloomberg's view, once an employee has decided to quit, he's history.

Other employers might not be as implacable as Bloomberg concerning "disloyal" employees. But, again, it's plausible to argue that taking time to discuss the reasons behind the departure won't yield a substantial pay-off.

The third quote reflects a view of exit interviews that has emerged as part of the maturing of the knowledge economy. Companies are recognizing that it is a serious loss when employees who have accumulated specialized and valuable knowledge leave, especially if all that knowledge leaves with them.

We can conclude that exit interviews are important if they have a genuinely productive focus, i.e., they deal with the specialized knowledge departing employees have accumulated. Here are some further points to keep in mind:

Have people familiar with your company's knowledge management processes do the interviewing.

Be selective. Interview those with specialized technical knowledge and/or knowledge of the networks of relationships, internal and external, that are involved in producing commercial ideas and getting projects completed. You want to capture as much knowledge as possible from people who "know the ropes," especially in the case of individuals for whom there are no groomed successors in place.

Store the information on your intranet in easily accessible form, such as in a wiki. For key lessons, you may want to make an extra effort to get the word out through means like knowledge maps and online performance support tools.

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Labels: Knowledge management

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