Do exit interviews still matter?

Ahoy legend. Welcome to another episode of the Team Buffalo podcast. I'm your host, Travis Thomas. Today's topic is should I really conduct an exit interview? It's an interesting one that comes up quite a bit lately. And I think the reason it's come up a fair bit lately, obviously, is there's a global talent shortage, people are on the go, lots of changes. And some people are asking, Well, should I even bother? Does it really matter why someone's leaving? And before we get right into the answer, I think we should unpick a little bit of what they're asking, see if the context makes a whole lot of a difference. And then we can go from there. So quick question. My assistant is leaving at the end of the month, I have always heard you should lead an exit interview with anyone who quits. Is an exit interview still normal. If the person was part time, does that make a difference? And should I lead the exit interview? And can you let me know what types of questions should be included? I'm going to cover off on the exit interview bit. Because I think that's important. And it answers the question, but then I'll give you a useful thing that you should also be doing beyond the exit interview. So stay tuned in for that bit after but to start with unequivocably? Yes, the answer is yes, we should do an exit interview where you might go well, Travis, you know, had three people leave last week and this regardless of how many have left and why they've left, you still need to know. And I think by not knowing you leave yourself vulnerable to what you might not have known rather than knowing and just reaffirming what you thought you knew. So it's kind of like if I didn't ask Was I right? But if I did ask, and I was right, then I was right. But if I did ask, and I wasn't right, well, cool. Good. I've learned something I didn't know. So some of the things you want to keep an eye out for an exit interview are fair that you might be seeing a lot of and that are fairly common at the moment are things like pay, and people are leaving for pay. And I'm gonna give you that tactic at the end that I will think will help with some of this. But you, you need to make sure you're asking the right questions at the right time. So one is pay. Another is culture is a shockingly or not necessarily to us, but shockingly to other leaders without being judgey. They're saying, well, people are leaving because they say they don't enjoy working here. They don't like their boss, or they're having a rough go and they don't feel supported. Yeah, people have just been through a pandemic for a couple of years, we're still going through, we're now on the heels of an economic recession globally. And I think we're kind of there. And people are now dealing with extremely high levels of burnout levels of burnout. You know, I've been in the workplace for since my late teens. So we'll say 20 odd years. And I've never seen kind of this level of exhaustion in the workforce in my whole working life, which is, you know, about half of my life or so. And I think that says something. And I think if you think that doesn't say something, as a leader, you're leaving yourself well and truly open to people feeling like they're not looked after and not supported. So extreme burnout. And then on the back of that is low tolerance, given the high market opportunity for poor leadership. So what that means is there are really, really high levels of job vacancies. Unemployment rate is as low as it's been for a long period of time. Of course, these things are cyclical, and it will turn but for now, employees have buying power. If you are not a great organization to work with or your a terrible leader, or even your leader that's just busy and looking after your people, you will lose people purely based on the sole volume of market opportunity that's out there. People are tired and they have choices. You know, if there's a lot of choices, a lot of fish in the sea, I will go. And it's really not that hard. And in many industries I'm consulting in at the moment, people are being headhunted directly. They're getting direct outreach from recruiter saying, Hey, I know that employers kind of paying around this amount, we offer these benefits, we've got this culture, and we'll pay this level of salary. How would the person not entertain that? And if you're a good leader, and maybe you're paying a little bit below market rates, that's okay. You know, peeps, people will stay for that some people will take lower pay in exchange for a guaranteed or a really good culture that they know. But ifthe culture is crap. You're not looking after people. They're not being developed and they're being pushed to the brink, they're going to go so we need to understand why are they leaving is it burnout? Is it salary? Is it they you know, something we couldn't get past? Or there's another bucket which I think is really important to remember too is there are healthy reasons for attrition. So for years, I've always said to leaders, you should have two categories for when someone

healthy and unhealthy attrition. Healthy attrition are things like, you know, I'm going to start a new career. So for example, my team about a year or two ago at someone leaves she was amazed. thing, but she left because she was going to become a teacher. Well, why would I try and convince that person to stay on the team, when they were starting to become a teacher, they're not positioned to become a teacher, and they've always wanted to be a teacher. We knew that when we brought her on board, but that's okay, that's healthy attrition, that's not, you know, oh, we should have made her stay. And we didn't convince it. No, let her go. That's not what she wanted. Let her go let her be the thing she was meant to be. And if she wants to come back, I would hire her back in a heartbeat. Because she's amazing. And she knows that we had that conversation. Great. Other healthy attrition reasons or change in lifestyle or circumstances, you know, one person, their partner moved away, and they decided that they didn't want a part time job. Unfortunately for that job, it couldn't be accommodated with this particular individual in this scenario in this client, that they could do part time, you do your best to make accommodations, but that's an unreasonable accommodation, when the business just couldn't tolerate that as a part time role. It needed to be full time they tried finding someone to Job share, couldn't find someone, they did make an effort and it didn't work. That would be healthy attrition, yes, we would have liked to retain them, but we could not retain the person in that scenario. So we've got two examples there of healthy attrition. There are a number of others, if you do research online, I'm sure you'll find multiple others are happy to chat about those unhealthy attrition is, of course, the things that are preventable, or things that maybe we didn't know, were an issue, but we probably should have known. So poor leadership, people being burned out and not being looked after increasing workloads. Sometimes, because of the fact that those other vacancies on the team exist, your existing team members will have to carry the additional load, keep an eye on them. If they get burned out. And I see others heading for the door, they may head for the door pay when we could have done something about pays a really terrible reason. You know, I had a previous clients who have said, Never go into details. But previous clients have said, hey, you know, we keep losing people to XYZ down the road. And I say, Well, what are they paying? So they're paying this? So what are you paying paying this? Why is there such a big gap? Look, we want to keep our our costs as low as possible? Well, look, it's nice to try and keep your costs at a certain level. And yes, you need to still make money. But if you're clear that the rest of the market is paying multiple levels above yours to the point where you're non-competitive, you're going to lose in that model, you cannot expect people to stay when they know the market pays more than that. So those are examples of unhealthy attrition, talked about healthy attrition. Some of the questions you want to ask in the interview, which I think are really important, are what are some of the great things that you had while working here, you know, some of the things you enjoyed, or some of the things we did particularly well as an employer, on the other side is one of the things we could have done better, we should have stopped doing or if you were sat in my seat, what would you have done differently? If you were the leader think that's super important. You know, if you could have my job for a day, what would you immediately change? What were some of the things you think we should keep doing that? You know, did help and we're good. And you would still speak kindly about an interesting question that people don't like to ask because they're afraid of the answer, but I think is really important is would you recommend a friend to come work here? So if someone's quitting, or leaving for whatever reason? If they say, No, there's something there? Why would they say no to that? If they were happy with it, it's kind of like you go to a restaurant, the food was great, but it's not your kind of food, you still recommend it, you'd still say, hey, you know, it's a great place to eat, you know, I'm not big into that type of fruit food. But whatever it's, you know, I'd highly recommend it. Same with this type of scenario. No, that's the best analogy is if someone would not recommend it, something's not resolved there. And if they say no, asked, Hey, look, I hope you don't mind me asking, you know, it's important for us that we learn from this and do the best we can to keep great people like yourself as why wouldn't you recommend this place to somebody who you know, or someone who's looking for a role? I think that's really, really important. So those are some starter questions. There are a series of questions you can ask. But I think if you just started with those kind of three to five questions that would really help you. Now, I did promise you something that was equally powerful, and in my opinion, more powerful than the next interview and can preempt a lot of this stuff. In this example that the person gave, it's not necessarily a big problem, but I think it's worth mentioning today on this topic. And that's what I call the staying interview. What the heck are you talking about? So a lot of good leaders will have coaching on a regular basis, they'll have ketchups, with their employees on a regular basis. Great, that's fine. Those are all the healthy things you should do. But I recommend when you do either your quarterly planning with your team or your individuals, sorry, as a team, but as individuals on the team, where you do your quarterly development planning or how often you do that goal setting with them. I'd suggest at some interval in that not leaving it for years and years, but to have a staying interview and to ask them hey, you know, I want to understand why do you keep working here? What about this place? Do you love? What about this place? Even though you're still here? Do you think we could maybe improve it If you were to take my role for a day or to be promoted up into my role, which is entirely possible, because I want to be promoted, you want to be promoted. What would you change? I think those questions, again, are similar to what you would hear in an exit interview. But the real power in this is that you can ask the question, learn the insights and make the changes before the person leaves before. So if I get insights that three out of my five people are telling me there's a problem with x, y, z, I should probably do something. And if they all say it's really frustrating them or burning them out or making them question what they're doing, I should definitely fix the damn thing. So I think it's super powerful. I've talked about this past in the blog and in our newsletter, and I cannot recommend enough that you're doing regular catch ups with their people to see if this is coming. Like the teaching example, I knew that person was going to go I knew whether you need degree was wrapping up the person with a change in circumstances because we had a good relationship that gave me well and truly more notice than was required. I looked after them during that period, and it was fine. So make sure you're doing those things. Make sure you're looking after your people as best you can. It's a tough time out there. Do your exit interviews, do your staying interviews, understand what those insights are and make the right changes to keep your people engaged and keep your business and career going and growing. I've been Travis your host. You can check out more of these insights, tools, tactics and tips at yeambuffalo.co/newsletter where you can subscribe for our weekly content. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode and keep being awesome. Thank you