Goodbyes are never easy. Whether you say them to friends, family, partner, co-workers, or employees, it gets even worse if you are left wondering why. That being said, whenever an employee leaves your company, it’s essential to find out the reasons for doing so.
This is where an employee exit survey kicks in.
To create your own survey or use our ready-made exit survey template, simply log in to your LeadQuizzes account. Or sign up if you don’t have one yet. To preview or use the template, scroll down now.
To learn more about exit surveys, why they matter, and which exit survey questions you should ask, keep on reading.
What is an Exit Survey and Why You Need to Be Using It
After an employee informs you that they’re planning to leave your company, most HRs and CEOs’ first instinct is to rush into hiring a suitable replacement. The moment an employee announces they’re leaving, they no longer matter to them.
Which is a mistake. There’s still one more thing they can do for your company – help make it better for future employees. Unfortunately, most employers neglect the importance of exit surveys and interviews as an essential part of the offboarding process.
Exit surveys are surveys given to employees who are about to leave your company or organization. They contain a series of questions about their overall experience working at the company as well as their reasons for leaving.
Such surveys are used to help companies and organizations build a better working environment for their current and future employees. The ultimate aim of those is not to convince the about-to-leave employees to stay but to create a better work culture that would make all other employees feel more engaged and want to stay longer.
The exit survey results can be used by HR or management to realize what they’re doing right and which areas might need some additional improvement. The feedback obtained can be used to make the necessary adjustments.
42 Sample Exit Survey Questions to Ask in Your Next Exit Interview
Reasons for leaving the company
The main point of any exit survey is to find out why a particular employee has decided to leave your company so as to “prevent” other valuable employees from doing so in the future. That being said, here are some sample questions to help you find out more about their reasons for leaving.
1. What is your main reason for leaving this job?
2. Which of these factors influenced your decision to leave the most?
3. If you feel comfortable sharing, have you already found a new position?
4. What makes your new position more attractive than the present job?
5. What could the company do to keep its best people (people like you)?
6. Would you ever consider working here again, and if so, under what circumstances?
Management
Lately, LinkedIn was flooded with people sharing a quote that goes something along the “People don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses” lines. When you come to think about it, it’s largely true.
Bad management is one of the most common reasons people decide to leave their current position, so it’s essential to find out if there’s anything you can do to improve the way you manage your employees. Here are some exit survey questions to help you do that.
7. How well did you get along with your management?
8. How well do you think the management recognized and/or awarded your efforts towards the development of the company?
9. Would you like to share any specific suggestions on how to manage a similar crisis better in the future?
10. How would you rate the overall communication within the company?
11. Is there anything you would like to say to the management but you didn’t have the chance so far?
Motivation
In most cases, management is directly responsible for employee motivation. Here are some sample questions to help you check whether the management did their job well in this area.
12. Do you think the management did enough to motivate you? If not, what could’ve been done differently?
13. Do you think the work you did was adequately appreciated and recognized?
14. How satisfied were you with your benefits, perks, bonuses, and other incentives?
15. Would you say our company offers a competitive salary for your job position?
16. Would you say you were treated as a valuable member of the company?
Workplace relationships, policies, and culture
Managing a team of any size or shape means taking care of workplace relationships, company policies, and work culture. How well did you do with each? Ask some of these questions in your exit survey and find out.
17. How would you describe our company’s work culture?
18. Are teamwork and cooperation encouraged enough within the company?
19. How well did you get along with your coworkers?
20. How would you rate the overall cooperation with other departments?
21. Have you ever experienced any discrimination or harassment working here?
22. What do you think about our company’s policies? Are they are adequate enough?
23. Did you have any say in the company’s policy changes?
24. What could be done to make this company a better place to work?
Professional development
In addition to managing a team, every company’s management has to make sure enough attention has been paid to each individual’s specific needs. That being said, you need to enable your employees to constantly develop and advance their skills and knowledge. This will benefit not only the employees but the company as well.
25. Would you say you were given all the essential tools and resources necessary to excel at your position in our company?
26. Do you feel you were provided with enough training to excel in your role?
27. How would you rate the quality of training you received?
28. To what extent did your job description change since you started working here, if any?
29. Are there any extra responsibilities you were hoping to take on but weren’t offered to you?
30. How often did you receive feedback about your performance from your manager?
31. Was the feedback timely, helpful, and specific enough?
32. Would you say you’ve had enough support and opportunities for growth and career development at our company?
Overall job satisfaction
Even though job satisfaction is something that should be assessed on a regular basis (so as to prevent good employees from leaving you), using a separate employee satisfaction survey, questions about job satisfaction are essential to your exit interviews too, as they can help you learn more about how to keep your current employees satisfied.
Here are some questions to ask:
32. What did you enjoy most about your work here?
33 What did you dislike most about your work here?
34. Is there any particular issue you had that you would like to point out?
35. On a scale of 1-5, how easy was it to balance your professional and personal life during your time at this company?
Transition
Even if an employee has decided to leave your company, you should still do everything you can to stay on good terms. It may benefit both parties in the future. That being said, you should do your best to make the transition as easy as possible for both sides.
36. Is there anything we could have done to prevent this situation from happening?
37. If you have already made the decision, would you mind sharing with us which company would you be joining?
38. Is there anything we can do to make this transition run any smoother?
General feedback
And a few more questions to wrap up the overall impression. These are the questions usually found in an NPS survey as well.
40. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your employee experience in our company?
41. How likely are you to recommend our company to other people for potential employment?
42. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions on how we could make this company a better workplace?
Exit Survey Template
Above, we shared 42 sample exit survey questions to use in your exit interviews. Of course, in no case should you use all of them in a single survey! If you do so, you will overwhelm the takers thus influencing the response rates and the validity of the answers.
To help you get everything right, we have created this exit survey template for you to use. You can use it as it is or easily customize it to fit your specific needs and include some of the 42 questions above that didn’t find their place in this template.
To use the template, click on the button above, simply log in to your LeadQuizzes account and select the exit interview template. Or feel free to browse the other survey templates, who knows, maybe you’ll find something else you could use. Keep in mind that all of our templates are completely FREE for all our active users!
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