Why Are Your Employees Leaving? Three Ways You Can Find Out.
Employee turnover is well known for being extremely costly to organizations, both in terms of the financial cost for the company and the toll it can take on employee morale. For this reason, many organizations are looking for ways to better retain their talent.
To do this, it is important that organizations first identify WHY employees are leaving. Due to the high cost of turnover, organizational leaders often jump to implementing solutions they think will solve their problem. However, these solutions are often based on assumptions and intuition rather than data and evidence. As a result, they are often not the most effective or efficient solutions. In order for leaders to implement solutions that will solve their turnover problem the first time around, they must first know why their people are leaving.
Exit interviews, exit surveys, and predictive analytics are extremely beneficial methods for helping organizations determine why employees are leaving.
We recommend using one of the following three methods to gather data on why employees are leaving your organization to ensure the changes you invest in are the right ones.
Exit interviews. Perhaps one of the most straight forward ways to understand why employees are leaving your organization is to ask them in an exit interview. Exit interviews are conducted with departing employees (either face-to-face or over the phone) to understand the reason(s) for their departure. During an exit interview a supervisor and/or Human Resources representative typically asks the departing employee a series of open-ended questions to facilitate a discussion. The discussion should focus on the employee’s time at the organization and their reason for leaving. Exit interviews are typically conducted during the employee’s last week of employment. One major benefit to exit interviews is that because they are conducted in-person the interviews allow for gathering rich, open-ended data on what employees liked about their employment, what areas of the company need improvement, and ultimately, why they are deciding to leave. When considered in aggregate, this information can be extremely valuable for informing decisions to reduce turnover.
Exit surveys. Another option for determining why employees are leaving your organization is to conduct exit surveys. Exit surveys are similar to exit interviews in that the surveys directly ask employees what they liked/didn’t like about their job and why they are leaving the organization, just in a paper or electronic format. Exit surveys can be especially beneficial for collecting quantitative data because they allow respondents to easily rate their experiences and perceptions on scales. One major benefit to surveys compared to interviews is that they can help increase respondents’ feelings of confidentiality. Providing feedback can be uncomfortable for departing employees, and they may feel more comfortable being honest on a survey compared to a face-to-face interview. Exit surveys are typically facilitated by the Human Resources department or an external consulting firm, and they are either provided to the employee prior to their last day or employment or during the first month after leaving the organization.
Predictive Analytics. Finally, organizations can use predictive analytics to better understand why employees are leaving. Unlike exit interviews and exit surveys, which require the collection of new data, predictive analytics utilizes existing data to examine relationships between different employee characteristics and turnover. This data can include both transactional elements (e.g., tenure with the company, time since last promotion) and attitudinal data (e.g., data from the yearly engagement survey). The goal of most predictive analytic approaches is to gather as much data as possible and then utilize advanced statistical analyses to identify which factors seem to be the strongest predictors turnover. One benefit of this approach is that organizations do not have to gather new data at the time of departure, which can often be difficult and come with additional expenses. However, this approach does require that the organization has someone (either an employee or external consultant) who is proficient in predictive analytics. Additionally, the organization would have had to collect metrics that are predictive of employees leaving their organization, and store them both consistently and accurately.
Exit interviews, exit surveys, and predictive analytics are extremely beneficial methods for helping organizations determine why employees are leaving, in order to inform their decision making and improve retention efforts. In addition to being used on their own, each of these methods can be utilized in combination with each other. For example, an organization may decide to conduct an exit survey with all departing employees and then also conduct in-depth exit interviews with employees who were top performers. This provides a way to maximize benefits from both information gathering techniques. Regardless of which method(s) you use, knowing WHY employees are leaving your organization allows you to ensure the changes you invest in are the right choices. If you would like to discuss this further or would like some help implementing any of the methods discussed here, feel free to reach out!