You know why someone applied for the job. You know how they performed, how their role developed, the leave they took, the goals they worked towards and the conversations they had with their manager.
But when they leave, how much do you actually learn from them?
The end of employment can contain some of the most useful feedback an organisation receives. Yet exit interviews are often inconsistent, left too late, recorded in separate documents or missed completely. That makes it harder to answer important questions:
The new Exit Interviews feature in HR Duo brings structured employee feedback, manager-led reviews, ready-to-use templates and automated workflows into one consistent exit process.
It extends the employee lifecycle inside one HR Platform, from attracting and hiring people through onboarding, workforce management and performance, right through to their departure.
Exit interviews can provide valuable information, but only if they happen consistently.
HR teams managing hundreds or thousands of employees shouldn’t have to remember which employees need an exit questionnaire, find the right document, email it manually, and then chase managers for completion.
HR Duo brings that process into the same HRMS that manages the rest of the employee lifecycle. When an employee receives a leaving date, HR Duo can automatically start the appropriate Exit Interview process based on automation rules created by your organisation.
You can:
More specific rules can also take precedence over general ones. For example, you might have one standard Exit Interview process for everyone leaving your organisation, while employees leaving a particular department or location receive a different questionnaire or process.
Once the rules are in place, HR Duo handles the process when an eligible employee receives a leaving date, leading to less manual administration and more consistent feedback.
Knowing that you should run an exit interview is one thing. Knowing what to ask is another.
HR Duo includes ready-to-use templates covering both sides of the process.
The employee questionnaire gives the departing employee an opportunity to provide their own feedback before or as part of the Exit Interview process. It explores areas including why they are leaving, what prompted them to look elsewhere, what could potentially have changed their decision, what they valued about the role and what the organisation could improve.
It also asks whether they would recommend the organisation as a place to work, whether they would consider returning, whether they felt valued, and whether they had the tools, resources, training and working conditions needed to succeed.
The manager-led Exit Interview form is designed to be completed by a manager or supervisor with the leaving employee. It captures employee details, reasons for leaving, what triggered their search for another opportunity, what they liked and disliked about the role, areas for improvement and, where appropriate, information about their next position.
Organisations can use these as a structured starting point rather than building every Exit Interview process from scratch.
And because employee and manager stages sit within the same review workflow, Exit Interviews become a repeatable part of the employee lifecycle rather than another disconnected form.
An exit interview is a structured conversation or questionnaire completed with an employee before they leave an organisation. It gives the employee an opportunity to discuss their experience, why they're leaving and what the organisation could improve.
For employers, it provides a valuable source of employee feedback at the final stage of the employment lifecycle.
Acas advises that arranging an exit interview can help employers understand why an employee is leaving. It can also provide information that supports future recruitment and retention decisions.
Importantly, an exit interview should go further than asking "Why are you leaving?"
The most useful conversations look across the employee's entire experience with your organisation.
What attracted them in the first place?
Did the reality of the role match what they were promised?
What prompted them to start looking elsewhere?
Was there anything that might have changed their mind?
What did they value about working for you?
What frustrated them?
Did they feel valued?
Did they have what they needed to perform their job effectively?
Would they recommend you as an employer?
And under what circumstances might they return?
Those questions can turn an individual departure into useful workforce information.
People leave organisations for many different reasons, and without a consistent way to collect feedback, HR and senior leaders can end up making retention decisions based on assumptions rather than evidence. The CIPD recommends understanding why employees leave as a part of developing effective employee retention strategies. It also points to the potential costs of employee turnover, including recruitment, training and lost organisational knowledge.
A structured exit interview process can help you understand those reasons in more detail.
One exit interview gives you one person's experience, but twenty exit interviews may start showing you a pattern.
Perhaps employees within one department repeatedly mention limited progression. Maybe employees recruited for a certain role consistently say the job differed from what they expected. You could discover repeated concerns around:
Once feedback becomes consistent and structured, you can begin looking beyond individual departures and identifying wider workforce issues.
The final reason for leaving doesn't always tell you the whole story. An employee might ultimately leave for a better salary. But what made them start looking?
That's why the HR Duo templates go beyond recording the main reason for leaving and ask what prompted the employee to begin searching for another opportunity. Both the employee and manager-led templates include this question.
That distinction can matter, because the new job may have completed the decision, but something within the existing employee experience may have started it.
Sometimes the problem starts before the employee even joins. If employees regularly tell you that the role was different from the position advertised, that feedback should influence your next recruitment campaign.
Acas specifically gives the example that where employees leave because a job wasn't what they expected, employers could use that information to make future job adverts clearer about responsibilities.
Your exit process can therefore feed directly back into the beginning of your employee lifecycle.
An exit interview may happen too late to retain the employee who is leaving, but their feedback could help you retain the next person.
If several employees mention limited manager communication, you can look more closely at one-to-ones.
If development repeatedly appears as a concern, you can review performance conversations and career progression.
If working patterns are creating problems, Operations can assess rotas, shift allocation and staffing levels.
Exit data becomes more useful when you connect it with the workforce information already held within your HR software.
Exit Interviews shouldn't focus exclusively on what went wrong. HR Duo's templates also ask departing employees what they liked best about their job.
That matters because you might discover that employees particularly value their team, certain working arrangements, development opportunities or aspects of how their manager operates.
Knowing what works can be just as useful as knowing what needs changing.
HR Duo's ready-to-use exit employee questionnaire asks whether the individual would recommend the organisation as a place to work to a friend or family member, and asks them to explain their response.
That gives you another perspective on how somebody feels about the organisation at the point they leave.
Gallup research has found a relationship between the quality of an employee's exit experience and whether they would recommend their former employer. How somebody leaves can continue to influence your employer brand, future recruitment and your relationship with former employees.
Leaving doesn't always mean somebody would never work for you again. Our ready-to-use employee questionnaire asks “Under what circumstances, if any, would you consider returning to the Company?”
That can provide useful context. Some good employees leave because their circumstances change, they receive an opportunity you cannot currently offer, or they want a different experience.
Understanding what might bring them back can help organisations think differently about their former employees and potential future hires.
The best Exit Interviews combine enough structure to compare responses with enough space for employees to explain their experience.
A useful process should establish the employee's main reason for leaving and what first prompted them to consider another opportunity.
It should also explore whether anything could reasonably have changed their decision.
Ask what they liked most and least about their role, what they think the organisation could improve and whether they felt valued.
You can explore whether they had the tools, resources, training and working conditions needed to perform effectively.
It can also be useful to understand whether they would recommend your organisation to somebody else and whether they might consider returning in future.
Where appropriate and voluntarily provided, information about the employee's next role can also provide context around factors such as career progression, pay, pension, holiday or other benefits.
The aim isn't to interrogate somebody before they leave, it's to understand their experience well enough to learn from it.
Learn and grow with effective exit interviews
Collecting Exit Interview forms alone will not improve retention. The value comes from what happens next.
Look across the feedback you receive
Compare common themes
Consider the employee's experience across different stages of their journey
Then connect that feedback with the other workforce information available to you
If leavers repeatedly mention a lack of resources, investigate whether the issue appears in particular teams or locations.
If employees do not feel valued, review manager conversations, recognition and performance processes.
If people regularly say something could have changed their decision to leave, ask whether that issue could have been identified earlier through probation, one-to-ones, employee feedback or performance conversations.
And if employees consistently praise something about working for you, understand what you need to protect.