20 Great Exit Interview Questions You Need to Ask

When an employee leaves your organization, you’ll want to know why. According to Gallup, 36% of voluntary leavers didn’t consult anyone before deciding to resign. Exit interview questions provide a rare opportunity to gain meaningful insights into how your employees really feel, and how you can potentially prevent further departures.

Exit interviews are a key component of your offboarding strategy. The exit interview questions you ask should encourage honest, in-depth responses—regardless of the circumstances surrounding the employee’s departure.

Skipping exit interviews—or ignoring the insights they offer—can pose significant risks to employee retention. For example, if an employee leaves your organization because of a perceived toxic culture or a lack of growth opportunities, it’s likely that others feel the same way. And unless you address these pain points, it’s only a matter of time before other employees start to leave. In other words, if you don’t ask, you’ll never know.

To help, we've put together 20 of the best exit interview and survey questions to ask, which will help you uncover hidden patterns, identify potential problems, and protect employee retention.

Why Are Exit Interviews Important?

Exit interviews and exit surveys are important because they offer more honest insights into your workplace culture, day-to-day processes and management solutions. They also help you understand why people are deciding to leave your organization.

While negative feedback can be hard to take, without an exit interview in place, your organization can miss out on vital opportunities to improve the employee experience and boost employee retention.

People leave their job for many reasons—a higher salary, bad managers and lack of growth opportunity are considered the top three most common. But remember, it may not always be a negative situation. Moving home, jumping into a different industry or finding a role that better suits the employee’s work-life balance and priorities at home, may be reasons too.

The 20 Best Exit Interview Questions

To help you get the most from your exit interviews, we’ve pulled together 20 best exit interview questions to ask. Our sample exit interview questions have been divided into individual sub-categories to help you find the ones that work for your business.

Reasons for Leaving

Exit interview questions based on an employee’s reasons for leaving are important as they encompass their entire experience at your organization. They also allow the employee to answer more generally. These questions can all be expanded upon during the exit interview, too.

1. Why did you decide to leave the company?
2. Did you get along with your direct manager?
3. Did you get along with your peers?
4. In general, what do you think about working at our company?
5. Is there anything we could have done to prevent you from leaving?

Employee Experience

The employee experience impacts retention and satisfaction at any company. Including this category in your exit interview questions can highlight strengths and areas for improvement and allow you to enhance the work environment for current and future employees.

1. What did you think of the way you were managed?
2. Did you receive frequent, constructive feedback from your manager?
3. What benefits or programs did you feel were missing from the organization?
4. Were you recognized enough for your accomplishments?

Role-Specific Questions

Asking role-specific exit interview questions helps uncover skill gaps, challenges and any inefficiencies within a position. This can provide insight into job expectations, workload and more to establish a better role structure and smoother transitions for future hires.

1. Did you think your responsibilities were clear? Did you know what was expected of you?
2. Did you feel you had all the resources you needed to do your work here?
3. Did you receive enough training?
4. Did the role meet your expectations?
5. Did you have clear progression goals to work towards?
6. What did you like about your work? Was it rewarding, challenging, or too easy?

Forward-Facing Questions

Exit interview questions are about being open and honest. Sincere feedback from departing employees can enhance workplace policies, reveal systematic issues and create a positive work environment.

1. What are the biggest risks for our company?
2. What advice would you like to give to your team?
3. What would make this a better place to work?
4. Would you ever consider working here again?
5. Would you recommend others apply for a position here?

5 Ways to Conduct Better Exit Interviews

Most departing employees are skeptical of exit interviews. That can be down to a fear of burning bridges, or perceived lack of action. A Gallup survey notes that only four in 10 US workers were satisfied with the exit process with a previous employer. Get your exit interviews right and enhance the experience for both sides.

The good news? You can flip things around if you set the record straight right from the start. Here are five tips for conducting and formatting an effective exit interview.

1. Explain the “Why”

Exit interviews can be awkward and uncomfortable for departing employees if you don’t know what to say. So, it’s important to assure them that the interview is nothing to worry about. You should explain that you simply want to understand their motivations for seeking alternative employment.

You should also emphasize the fact that you aim to make positive changes to improve your company culture on behalf of their honesty and constructive feedback. Once employees know the reasons for the interview, they’ll be much more inclined to come forward and share their thoughts.

2. Schedule the Exit Interview at the Right Time

Most employees provide four weeks’ notice, so consider scheduling the exit interview during their last week. At this point in their role, they should be open to sharing their thoughts. If possible, meet in person, but a video call will work too.

However, some organizations choose to conduct an exit interview after the employee has left the organization. Often this can be in the form of exit survey questions. There’s a good chance the employee will have unplugged by then which can lead to a more casual conversation and enable you to have a more honest discussion.

3. Select the Right Person to Conduct the Exit Interview

Most employees don’t quit their job, they quit their managers. A survey carried out by LinkedIn found that seven in 10 US workers claim they would leave their role because of a bad manager.

So, if an exit interview is run by the direct manager of a departing employee, this could be problematic. Gallup’s survey also noted that 24% of leavers experienced “rudeness, hostility or a generally negative reaction” from their manager.

Keep things neutral and amicable with an HR representative or a second-line manager in the driver’s seat and let them conduct the interview. Because both HR professionals and second-line managers are in the buffer zone (e.g., they are one step removed from the departing employee), it allows them to gather more honest feedback. What’s more, they will have the power to introduce changes based on employee feedback.

4. Listen Carefully

When conducting an exit interview, it’s important to listen carefully to what the employee has to say. This makes them feel like their feedback is important to the organization. You should also try to ask them further questions based on the feedback they provide to avoid making any direct assumptions.

5. Ask The Right Questions

Unfortunately, poor questions often get in the way of conducting an effective exit interview so follow our recommendations to make the most of this offboarding process. As a result, your organization may be missing out on vital opportunities to improve. With the right exit interview questions and the proper approach to the conversation, you can better understand an employee’s reasons for leaving.

Asking the right exit interview questions can also help you uncover useful insights about your business that will enable you to improve the employee experience and retain top talent.

Next Steps: Level Up Your Exit Interviews

Once you’ve set the right tone and encouraged honest employee feedback, it’s up to you to do something about it.

While it might not matter to former employees what actions your organization does or does not take based on their feedback, it certainly matters to the employees who are with your organization right now.

To ensure you’re getting most from your exit interviews, listen carefully, analyze the results, and look for trends. Have several people complained about the same thing? Make a note of it and follow up with your current employees to learn how to improve their experience.

Taking the time and effort to do offboarding right for your departing employees can lead to many benefits.