Most companies commit a significant amount of time, effort, and other resources to attract, recruit, interview, and place top talent within their marketplaces. They also invest time onboarding and training new employees, in addition to implementing strategies to motivate and retain their good employees.
So, when an employee decides to resign, it is no doubt that company executives want to find out why. And perhaps, more importantly, what they can do about it, so it doesn’t happen often or repeatedly. That’s where conducting an employee exit survey via online survey software can help.
What is an Employee Exit Survey?
An employee exit survey is a survey tool that provides the departing employee an opportunity to express his feedback and opinions on his job, the company, its’ methods, and other aspects related to his job. Unlike an employee exit interview, which is done face-to-face, over the telephone, or video conferencing, and employee exit survey is done either via pen and paper, or more modernly, through email or web-based interface.
Reasons to Conduct an Employee Exit Survey
The main goals of an employee exit survey are to find out why the employee is deciding to resign his employment and prevent future resignations. Typically, once an employee has handed over her resignation, she will be more forthcoming in providing the reasons for her departure, than she would have been prior to announcing her termination.
If structured correctly, an employee exit survey can provide valuable insight into the employee’s perception of:
- Workplace ethics
- Opportunities for advancement and career growth
- Workplace culture
- Management support
- Compensation vis-a-vis competitors
- Leadership abilities
- Training
- Employee morale
- and more.
Further, employee exit survey can help you gain insight into whether employees are:
- Being lured away by other competitors.
- Feeling like they have limited opportunity for advancement.
- Having unfavorable views of the management team.
- Feeling like their contributions to the company are not important.
- Feeling unsatisfied with their jobs and compensation.
Over time, by employers examining the feedback obtained from exit surveys, company personnel can begin to identify patterns and trends as to the reasons employees are leaving the company. Employers can find out whether high turnovers are company-wide or related to only one specific department. The latter could mean that there is an isolated problem, rather than an enterprise-wide issue.
Overall, exit surveys can uncover insightful information that employers can use to improve the morale of its workforce and efficiency of its operations. Departing employees may provide valuable “intel” into workforce development, process improvement, and even bring to light areas of potential litigation.
|