Exit Interview Template
What made someone leave, captured while they will still say it.
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| Employee | [name] |
| Role | [role] |
| Joined | [date] |
| Left | [date] |
| Reason for leaving | [reason] |
1. What worked well
[what they valued]
2. What could be better
[what they would change]
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Would recommend us as an employer | [answer] |
| Would consider returning | [answer] |
What is an Exit Interview?
An exit interview form captures why somebody is leaving while they are still willing to say it. The answers arrive in a short window between resignation and last day, when the person has little left to lose and has not yet lost interest. Skip it and you learn about a manager problem from the third resignation rather than the first, and you keep replacing people without finding out what you are paying for.
HR teams run these on voluntary resignations, at the end of fixed-term contracts and on retirement. Line managers sometimes run them in organisations with no HR function, which brings its own problem, since the manager is often the subject. The form is used two ways: as a structured conversation near the last day, and as a written questionnaire the leaver completes in their own time. Larger employers aggregate answers by team, manager and tenure, which is where the value sits — one exit interview is an anecdote, twenty from the same department is a finding.
What you may record, how long you may keep it, and what you must tell the leaver about its use are governed by data protection law: UK and EU GDPR, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act in India, the Privacy Act in Australia, and a patchwork of state statutes in the US. Attendance generally cannot be made a condition of the final settlement, and what an employer must pay on exit is set by local employment law. If a leaver discloses discrimination, harassment or a protected disclosure, the duty to act does not lapse because the person is going — check your obligations before filing the form away.
An exit interview does not change the decision. By the time the form appears the resignation is in, and treating the meeting as a retention conversation makes the answers worse rather than better. It is not a reference, and nothing in it should reach a future employer. It is not a disciplinary record either, and using it to build a case against a remaining manager outside a proper process is how a grievance becomes a claim. Nor is it confidential in the way people assume, unless you say plainly what will happen to it.
What to put in an Exit Interview
These are the details this template asks for. Anything left blank is marked in red on the preview so you can see what is still missing.
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Issuing organisation | For example: Maple Grove Homeowners Association |
| Organisation address | For example: 1420 Kinnear Road, Columbus, OH 43212 |
| Issued to (full name) | For example: James Whitfield |
| Designation | For example: Senior Assistant |
| Date of joining | Free text |
| Requested last working day | Free text |
| Reason for leaving | Free text |
| What worked well | For example: The team was supportive and the work was varied. |
| What could be better | For example: Communication between shifts was inconsistent, and training on the new system came too… |
| Would recommend us as an employer | Free text |
| Would consider returning | Free text |
How to write an Exit Interview
Ask the reason twice, differently
The first answer is usually the polite one. Ask for the primary reason for leaving as a single choice from a fixed list — pay, progression, manager, workload, relocation, role content, health, better offer — then ask separately, in free text, what would have had to change for them to stay. The second question produces the usable answers, because it forces a specific.
Separate the job from the manager
Ask about the role and the relationship in different questions, and keep the manager questions concrete: did you know what was expected of you, did you get feedback in the last three months, were concerns you raised acted on. Generic satisfaction ratings tell you nothing to act on. Specific behavioural questions produce answers you can put to a manager without naming the leaver.
Cover pay and progression honestly
Ask whether the new role pays more and roughly by how much, and whether they applied for anything internally in the last year. If people are leaving for an uplift you cannot see from the inside, the pay bands are the problem and no amount of engagement work will fix it. Leavers answer this question when current employees will not.
State who sees the answers, before they answer
Put it in writing at the top of the form: who reads the raw responses, whether the manager sees them, what is aggregated, how long it is kept, and what happens if something is disclosed that the organisation must act on. Vague assurances of confidentiality that you then have to break are worse than saying plainly that a serious disclosure will be escalated.
Aggregate quarterly and act on one finding
Individual forms filed in a personnel folder change nothing. Every quarter, count reasons by department, manager and tenure band, and look at leavers under twelve months separately — early attrition usually points at hiring or onboarding rather than at the job. Then pick one finding and act on it visibly, because the fastest way to kill the process is for those who stay to see nothing ever change.
Common mistakes
- Having the departing person's own manager conduct the interview guarantees polite answers when the manager is the reason, and you lose the one honest data point you were going to get.
- Promising blanket confidentiality and then quoting a leaver to their manager destroys the process for everybody who resigns afterwards.
- Filing completed forms without ever aggregating them turns the exercise into paperwork that costs the leaver an hour and tells you nothing.
- Scheduling the interview for the last hour of the last day means you get whatever the person can say while carrying a box towards the door.
- Ignoring a disclosure of harassment or discrimination because the person is leaving does not end the employer's obligation, and it leaves the issue in place for whoever stays.
Frequently asked questions
What questions should be asked in an exit interview?
The primary reason for leaving from a fixed list; what would have had to change for them to stay; whether the role matched the job description; whether they received feedback and whether concerns were acted on; whether the new role pays more; whether they applied internally; and whether they would recommend the organisation. Keep it under twenty questions, or people stop answering properly.
Are exit interviews confidential?
Only to the extent you say they are. Most employers share themes with managers but not verbatim quotes, and aggregate anything based on a handful of responses. Tell the leaver at the start what will be shared and with whom. Note that disclosures of harassment, discrimination or safety risks generally cannot be kept confidential, because the employer has duties that survive the resignation.
Is an employee required to do an exit interview?
Generally not. It is voluntary, and making the final settlement or a reference conditional on attending is poor practice and, depending on local employment law, potentially unlawful. Better response rates come from making it easy — a written form they can complete at home, sent before the last week, produces more usable answers than a meeting squeezed into a handover day.
Who should conduct the exit interview?
Somebody outside the leaver's reporting line — HR, a manager from another department, or in a small organisation whoever the person is least likely to be guarded with. The direct manager is the worst choice, because the manager relationship is among the most common reasons for leaving and few people say so to that person's face on the way out.
How do you use exit interview data?
Aggregate it. Count reasons by department, manager and tenure, and separate people leaving inside their first year from long-service leavers, because they usually tell you different things. Then act on one finding a quarter and say publicly what changed. Data that is collected and never used becomes visible to the people still there, and they stop bothering to answer.
This page explains general practice and is not legal advice. Requirements differ between countries and, in some cases, between states — check what applies where the document will be used.