The value of employee exit interviews for agencies

All agencies experience turnover, so it makes sense to have a process for when employees leave. The exit interview is an important part of that sequence.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss best practices for conducting effective exit interviews, including who should run them and what they should include.

The co-hosts also offer advice on the importance of ongoing employee communication to avoid surprises in the exit interviews that could have been avoided.

Key takeaways

* Gini Dietrich: “Most people leave managers, they don’t leave companies.”

* Chip Griffin: “If you are the one doing the exit interview, don’t react. Just listen.”

* Gini Dietrich: “If I can follow the conversation, I am going to get much better information than if I just go through my checklist of questions that I’m supposed to ask in my exit interview.”

* Chip Griffin: “An exit interview is an exit from their current role. It’s not the exit to the relationship.”

Related

* Focus on agency employee retention

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: Gini, I quit. Do you have any questions for me?

Gini Dietrich: Many.

Chip Griffin: Right after this.

Gini Dietrich: Please don’t quit.

Chip Griffin: Why? You don’t want to have to hit record on StreamYard?

Gini Dietrich: You do more than that. You produce it. You do the…

Chip Griffin: No, Jen produces it. I just…

Gini Dietrich: Okay, fair. But still, it’s on your side. If you quit, she quits.

Chip Griffin: All I do is I show up, I hit record and start talking.

Gini Dietrich: Can I hire her?

Chip Griffin: Which some would argue is probably not a good thing. They wish I would just hit record and shut up.

Gini Dietrich: That’s not true.

Chip Griffin: Some people, I bet, I bet, they’re probably not listening, right? That’s fair. If you believe that and you still listen, well, I can’t really help you then. You’ve got some issues that probably need to be dealt with in therapy. That I can’t assist you with.

Gini Dietrich: Go to podcast therapy.

Chip Griffin: Well, no, real therapy is what I was thinking. Like, you know, if you, if you want to listen to somebody that you hate listening to, in any event, that is not what we were talking about today. What we are going to talk about today is the exciting topic of exit interviews.

Gini Dietrich: Exciting, super exciting, important though.

It is important. Yep. And it’s challenging because it’s hard to get the truth from people when they leave. So I think there’s an opportunity for us to talk about how to conduct those and who should conduct them so that you can get really constructive information. Cause usually you get, especially as the, as the owner, you get things like, Oh,