Conducting an Exit Interview Quick Guide
Conducting an Exit Interview: Quick Guide
Our process
Exit interviews will be offered to all staff when they leave. Rather than a fixed procedure, we want a flexible process that can adapt to how different people leave, but with enough consistency to generate useful learning over time.
The interview will be offered by the line manager as part of offboarding, and recorded on an offboarding checklist.
Where someone prefers not to speak in person, written questions will be available as an alternative.
A small number of people will conduct exit interviews, to help ensure consistency. The conversations will be fed back to the HR & Wellbeing Steering Group.
Guidance for those conducting an exit interview
The purpose of an exit interview is twofold: to help the person leaving feel genuinely heard and to leave on a good note, and to generate honest learning for the organisation. Neither goal is well served by defensiveness. Our role is to listen, not to represent Handcrafted, justify decisions, or correct the record, even where the person's experience feels one-sided or unfair.
It helps to keep in mind that people leave in very different circumstances — someone moving on to an exciting new opportunity needs a different kind of conversation to someone leaving because their experience here has been difficult. In both cases, ask open questions, give space, and follow the thread of what they actually want to say.
The suggested questions below are prompts that can be used to open up conversation rather than needing to work through them one by one. What matters is that the person leaves feeling they had a genuine opportunity to speak.
Sample questions
Why they are leaving
- What prompted you to start looking for something new?
- What are you most looking forward to in your next role?
- Was there anything we could have done differently that might have changed things?
Their experience of the role
- What did you value most about working here?
- Were there things that frustrated you or that you felt could work better?
- Did you feel you had the support and tools to do your job well?
Looking forward
- What skills or qualities do you think we should look for in your replacement?
- What would you want your successor to know?
- Is there anything else you'd like to say before you go?