Nobody enjoys conducting exit interviews. But they could be one of your most powerful strategic tools.
Imagine if every time someone left your business, they handed you a report on exactly why and how you could stop others leaving for the same reasons.
That’s the power of a good exit interview.
They’re one of the most underused tools in business because, when done well, they give you something incredibly rare: the truth. Not the sugar-coated feedback from employee surveys. Not the rehearsed answers you hear in one-to-ones. But real, honest insights from people with nothing to lose and no agenda.
Why Exit Interviews Are Worth Your Time
- You’ll Get the Unfiltered Version of Events
People leaving aren’t worried about career progression or internal politics. That means they’re more likely to tell you the real reasons they’re going, whether that’s inconsistent management, unclear development paths or toxic microcultures. This kind of feedback helps you get under the skin of what’s really going on in your teams.
- You’ll Save Serious Money
As we’ve seen in previous blogs, the costs of a bad hire can soon stack up. Go through that a few times and your business could be losing hundreds of thousands of pounds. And it’s not just a money issue. The time it takes to onboard and get someone up to speed can cost teams momentum for months. Exit interviews allow you to halt this hiring merry-go-round before it costs you more talent and more money. Maybe it’s your hybrid policy. Maybe it’s how new hires are onboarded. You won’t know unless you ask.
- You’ll Improve Engagement
The interview isn’t just about the person leaving. It’s about the people staying. When you take action based on exit feedback, and share what you’ve done, it shows your employees that they matter. That builds trust and trust builds engagement.
- You’ll Sharpen Your Recruitment Process
Exit interviews often uncover a mismatch between what people thought they were signing up for and what the job actually turned out to be. Just over half of UK professionals are quitting new roles because they do not meet their expectations. That’s a sign your recruitment messaging or onboarding is off. Tweak those based on real feedback and you’ll see better-fit hires and stronger early retention.
- You’ll Drive Real Change
The smartest businesses use exit feedback to tackle deep-rooted issues like leadership behaviours, communication gaps or training needs. If you’re serious about continuous improvement, this is where it starts.
How to Run Exit Interviews That Actually Work
We know exit interviews are a formality, but if they’re only a box-ticking exercise, people won’t open up. So here are some tips on how to undercover some useful insights:
- Prepare Before the Interview
Sounds obvious, but preparing some key information will be a huge benefit. Look at your leaver’s performance, their feedback over time and their role in the team. Go in informed and have some open, unbiased questions ready – the kind that invite conversation, not one-word or defensive answers.
- Get the Setting Right
Follow your company procedures and book a meeting room so you have privacy and can demonstrate confidentiality. Let them know their honesty won’t affect references and their feedback will be used to make things better, not for retaliation.
- Ask, Don’t Lead
Balance the questions. Ask what worked and what didn’t. Keep it open. Let them talk and avoid the trap of defending your side – your job is to listen.
- Record and Analyse
Document the feedback clearly, objectively and consistently. Then look for themes. Are your leavers all talking about the same issues? That’s your starting point for improvement.
- Stay Neutral
Remain professional. Don’t get defensive and don’t make it personal. Definitely don’t let the reason they’re leaving get in the way. You’re there to collect insights, not to get caught up in the details around their exit.
- Follow Up and Act
This is the important bit and where some businesses drop the ball. If you’ve uncovered some useful information, you need to do something with it. Working alongside your HR function can help you create retention strategies that address specific concerns. One of your actions might be to adjust your internal processes, coach your managers or tweak the onboarding. Whatever it is, be sure to implement it and communicate it with your teams to show you’re serious about improving and retaining talent. Because, let’s be honest, in a market where talent is scarce, can you afford to lose more people?
Turn Goodbyes into Growth
When someone leaves, the instinct is often to focus on replacing them as fast as you can. But if that’s all you’re thinking about, you’re missing a far bigger opportunity.
An exit interview gives you unfiltered insight into how your business really operates, not how it looks in board meetings or policy documents, but on the ground, day to day. It tells you where your leadership is falling short, where your culture needs work and where your recruitment message isn’t landing.
For finance leaders, that intelligence is invaluable. Retention isn’t just a people problem – it becomes a bottom-line issue. High turnover inflates costs, drains time and disrupts performance. Exit interviews give you the data to fix what’s broken before it starts hitting budgets. But the root causes of that churn are rarely obvious unless you actively go looking for them.
When exit interviews become part of a wider feedback loop they stop being an HR formality and start becoming a lever for performance and growth.
You can’t avoid turnover entirely. That’s unrealistic. But if you can understand why people leave, you’ll get far better at keeping the right ones and building the kind of business they’ll want to stay in.
So the next time someone hands in their notice, don’t just get a job ad out. Use it as a moment to learn, reflect and improve. Create space for a real conversation. Look for patterns across multiple exits. And most importantly, act.
If you’d like some more advice about how to structure an exit interview or what questions uncover the best insight, get in touch. We’d love to help.
