Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time - EXIT SURVEYS

Being an employer is hard – employees don’t always do what you want them to, and they often surprise you in ways both good and bad for your business. Generally, an engaged workforce is more productive and easier to manage. There is no-one way to improve engagement within your workplace, however there are tools that can take you down the right path for your business. Another tool, in addition to the Engagement Survey, is an Exit Survey.

Part 2 – Exit Surveys

An exit survey is a survey distributed to ex-employees soon after their employment ends. Like the engagement survey it includes questions about their past experience within the workplace. Unlike the engagement survey, an exit survey can directly investigate why someone has left the business, rather than speculate why they would. This can provide insight as to what you could have done to keep them, or possibly, what differentiates the employees you want to keep, and the ones you were happy to see go. A well-run survey achieves the following:

1.     Identifies why employees leave

Are all employees leaving for a better pay? Have all employees experienced poor relationships with their manager or their team? Do all employees feel as though they didn’t receive enough training to do their job correctly?

2.     Gives you a direction

If you see patterns, especially amongst the employees you wanted to keep, you can take specific actions to break those patterns. Even if it was an employee you were happy to see go, their feedback can still indicate underlying problems that might have lead to their deteriorating conduct or performance – e.g. an employee who feels as though their manager did not treat them fairly was unlikely to ever react well to constructive feedback.

3.     Gives the employee the ‘final say’

Engagement surveys, as well as exit interviews conducted while the worker is still employed, can be subject to bias; workers feel compelled to be more positive in their responses for fear of threats to their employment and potential future opportunities. Even where there is anonymity, the fear can remain. While exit survey’s run over a month after the employee’s exit aren’t completely free from this bias, it is much more likely to have less of an effect on the answers. Employees will generally know after a few weeks whether they made the right choice in leaving and can feel freer to say what they really think.

4.     Gives you a benchmark

Much like the engagement survey, if you want to know how things at your workplace have changed over time, such as the effects of certain business initiatives, changes in management, or the removal of toxic employees, you need benchmarks, you need to run surveys multiple times of multiple months and years. The exit survey, does not need to change between years and can have similar questions to the engagement survey, providing you with comparable snapshots of employee sentiment over time and between current and ex-employees. A great benchmark that comes from exit surveys is whether ex-employees are more or less likely to recommend you as an employer, at a time when they are likely to make that recommendation, or not.

As part of QTA’s commitment to the road freight industry, we have developed a free exit survey template for members.  The survey is developed to achieve the goals identified above, by focusing on questions that elicit meaningful responses. The survey includes a range of question types that improve the likelihood that employees complete the survey, including closed ‘yes-no’ questions and free comment fields, that they can choose not to answer.

Example questions include:

·         What is the initial reason why you wanted to leave?

·         Under what circumstances would you consider returning?

·         What Could We Have Done Better?

The survey can be easily set-up in an online survey tool, such as Survey Monkey. As an additional fee-for-service, the QTA can set-up the confidential survey and or prepare reports to review and analyse the results.

If you would like a copy of the free exit survey template, or if you have any questions about exit surveys, please contact Ezra Pyers, QTA Employment Relations Manager at ezra@qta.com.au | 07 3394 4388

Special thanks to TWUSUPER for sponsoring this series