“Help Us Help Your Friends”

Part 1 of 3: Rethinking the Exit Interview

Many moons ago, I was employed by a startup as the sole HR person in the team. As daunting as that role was, it had one exceptional advantage — I had complete freedom to experiment with processes as I deemed fit. As a self-proclaimed student of HR who was ever so curious, this was like finding a diamond in the rough. Crazy opportunity.

I tried playing around with many aspects of conventional wisdom, some of which gave impressive results and some not so much. At the top of the former list would be my experiments with exit interviews.

Disclaimer: attrition was not an issue at this organisation. The culture was extremely favourable with a high degree of psychological safety. But I always felt there was still good scope for improvement. Just because things are going well doesn’t mean they can’t get better. Besides, it takes just one wrong hire to break the spirit of an entire team.

My goal with exit interviews was to identify triggers that could send the employee experience into a nosedive — and to understand where we could have done better. Basically, to uncover issues that I didn’t already know about.

Here’s the theory I worked from: any time someone asks me what could have gone better, my mind goes blank. But ask me what didn’t you like or what do you wish had been different — and I’m full of opinions. I decided to try the same approach with my exits.

I started with a standard form for employees to fill in. Six core questions on a Likert scale and two open-ended questions where they could add anything they wished to document. None were mandatory. I let them know upfront that their responses would be recorded. They could fill the form any time they wished to.

On the last day of their employment, I’d schedule a call — titled Final Steps + Exit Interview . I would quickly cover the exit formalities, and then ease into the form.

I’d tell them I’d already gone through their responses and that their comments were noted. Then I’d say: “Everything from here is undocumented and confidential — strictly for my own understanding. Share as much or as little as you like, but I’d appreciate as much detail as possible. It helps make things better for the colleagues and new hires coming in after you.”

Then I’d pull up the form on a screen nearby and go through each question together:

• How would you rate your overall experience at this organisation?
• How would you rate your experience within your team?
• How would you rate your experience with your direct supervisor?
• How would you rate the growth and development opportunities available to you?
• How would you rate the experience HR provided?
• How would you rate the impact this role has had on your career?

I paused at each one. Asked if they wanted to elaborate. They owned the discussion — they could skip anything they didn’t want to address. (And knowing full well that no response is still very much a response.)

When they did respond — and mostly they did — I asked questions centred around regret, personal experience, and opinions:

You rated your organisational experience a 3 but your team experience a 5. Where do you think we fell short?

What could we do differently for your colleagues?

What does growth mean to you — where did we get it right, and where did we miss?

You rated career impact highly. What should we never change?

If you could do it again, what would you have done differently?

What stopped you from doing it the first time?

And boy, how the answers flowed.

Sharing the screen showed them I meant it when I said I wasn’t documenting. Framing questions from a place of genuine curiosity rather than a fault-finding exercise removed the defensiveness. Giving them control of the conversation gave them the safety to share what they’d been holding back. And appealing to something bigger than themselves — help us help your friends — gave them a reason to be honest that felt genuinely worth it.

What came out of those conversations went far beyond the standard employee turnover narrative. Team dynamics nobody had named. Manager relationships that were shifting. Moments of uncertaininty that was a clearly due to a communication mismatch. Moments where someone had stayed silent when they shouldn’t have — and eventually decided to leave instead. Some of the inputs we received were so poignant, that I would feel had I or leadership known earlier, we could have changed the outcome entirely.

My technique worked because they knew I was telling the truth. HR and leadership there had always been careful with the trust employees placed in us. From small confidences to personal grievances and big ambitions — we behaved consistently, all day everyday. By the time someone sat in that exit conversation, there was very little doubt about our intentions.

And by the end of the conversation, the exiting employees found themselves in a position where they were working alongside the HR/ management for one last time. But this time to help their former colleagues and friends.

Back then I couldn’t fully articulate why my approach worked until I starting behavioural language into it. But thats part 2.

In Part 2, I’ll break down the behavioural principles underneath this — why the conditions of a conversation matter as much as the questions in it, and the nudge theory that explains why this approach works when traditional exit interview best practices don’t.