Why Collect Employee Feedback During Exit?
Exit surveys are an essential tool for understanding why employees leave and what their experience was like during their tenure. No matter how excellent your culture is, people will eventually leave, and they can provide valuable insights into how to retain others.
Exit surveys help organizations identify patterns, root causes of turnover, and opportunities to improve employee experience. High turnover has both direct costs (hiring, training) and indirect costs (knowledge loss, lower morale) that impact team performance and brand reputation.
Exit Surveys Enable You to:
Identify areas of improvement by pinpointing what's pushing people to leave
Take swift action to address negative feedback and decrease turnover
Understand attrition patterns across teams, departments, and demographics
Learn what competitors are doing to attract your talent
Turn departing employees into brand advocates
Get honest feedback on your strategic priorities
How to Implement an Exit Survey
Culture Amp's platform configures exit surveys as ongoing (Attributed Continuous) surveys to capture feedback in real time as employees leave. Best practices we recommend considering when implementing include:
Use templates, but customize as needed - Start with Culture Amp's research-based template, then adjust language to resonate with your environment
Ensure clarity and relevance - Questions should be clear, actionable, and relevant to your context
Complement surveys with interviews - Pair surveys with interviews to gather richer qualitative feedback alongside quantitative data
Maintain confidentiality and data sensitivity - Exit surveys are typically attributed, allowing for follow-up conversations and targeted action. However, be transparent about how any feedback will be used, and who will have access to the data.
The Science Behind Our Exit Outcome Factor
The outcome factor in a Culture Amp exit survey uses an abridged version of our engagement index, providing a summary score representing key attitudes and experiences at exit. This factor serves a dual purpose:
Enables driver/impact analysis
showing which factors most influence overall scores
Supports outcome tracking over time
Centering the survey around an outcome factor increases the consistency and comparability of results.
The inclusion of engagement items in an exit survey gives organizations a final measure of how departing employees feel about the company, which can inform potential for alumni advocacy, ‘boomerang’ (return) hires, or future referrals. Scientifically, treating this as the outcome factor allows for linkage analysis - for example, examining which engagement survey responses best predict turnover and are reflected in exit feedback.
Survey Factors
Factor | Purpose |
Engagement (Outcome) | Measures commitment, recommendation, and motivation—an abridged version of the engagement index, adapted for past-tense reflection. |
Exit Decision | Captures the reasons behind departure using quantitative and open-ended items. |
Leadership Experience | Perceptions of leadership, focusing on whether leaders communicate a motivating vision, keep employees informed, and serve as role models |
Enablement | Gauges access to resources, tools, and support. |
Alignment & Involvement | Explores role clarity, purpose, and participation in decision-making. |
Career Development & Growth | Reflects on advancement and learning opportunities. |
We recommend starting with Culture Amp's template, then customizing where relevant to your organizational context and strategic priorities. Items can be tailored to address specific priorities, though consultation with legal and HR is advised for sensitive topics.
Why Do We Recommend Measuring Engagement During Exit
Measuring engagement at exit provides insight into departing employees' level of enthusiasm, connection, and likelihood to recommend the organization. This measure enables:
Trend analysis - Track engagement over time for leavers and identify changes in sentiment
Driver analysis - Identify what most influences disengagement by connecting engagement at exit to specific factors
Linkage with existing engagement results - Cross-reference with engagement survey data to understand if low engagement in certain areas predicts higher turnover
Decide on Your Survey Strategy and Design Your Approach
What is Your Strategy?
Before implementing your exit survey, it’s a good idea to establish a clear strategy that aligns with your organizational priorities and available resources.
Assess Your Priorities and Capacity
Define what you want to achieve: for example, reducing turnover in specific areas, understanding culture issues, or improving employee experience. Your priorities will shape your survey focus and question depth.
Assess Capacity for Follow-up Action
Consider who will review responses, conduct interviews, and drive action planning. Ensure you have adequate HR support and leadership buy-in.
Choose Your Data Collection Approach
Survey only
This streamlined method focuses solely on the standardized survey, making it efficient to administer and analyze. It may suit you if your organization has high turnover volumes or you have limited interview capacity, providing you with consistent quantitative data that's easy to track over time.
Survey with optional interviews
This hybrid approach works best when you use clear criteria to determine when follow-up interviews are warranted, helping you avoid selection bias while managing any resource constraints. You might interview all departing employees in key positions, those who provide concerning feedback, or a representative sample across different demographics and departments.
Survey plus interview for all
Most comprehensive approach, combining quantitative and qualitative insights. This is resource-intensive, but may be valuable for retention-focused organizations.
Data Integration Considerations
Consider whether you want to capture interview results within the survey platform for integrated analysis. Culture Amp's template provides guidance on recommended interview questions that can complement your survey data. This integration allows you to analyze both quantitative and qualitative feedback together, providing a more complete picture of the employee experience.
Don't forget to include open-ended questions in your survey such as "What are some things that we are doing great here?" and "What are some things that we are not doing so great here?" These free-text responses often provide the most actionable insights and help contextualize your quantitative results.
Reflection Questions
With your basic strategy outlined, the next step is examining your specific organizational context and assumptions. The following reflection questions will help you customize your exit survey approach and ensure it addresses your most pressing retention challenges.
What are your reasons for wanting to gather feedback as employees are exiting?
Common reasons from other organizations:
Review the employee experience and culture across your organization from the perspective of someone leaving
Understand the drivers of turnover
Minimize regrettable exits
Dig into questions and test assumptions
What assumptions or hypotheses do you want to test with an exit survey?
Common assumptions we hear:
Is pay the reason people are leaving, or is there more to it?
Are the reasons people tell us they are leaving consistent with what we are seeing in other feedback like engagement?
The main reason people are leaving is...
How do you want to share and take action on exit feedback once you have collected it?
Common practice from other organizations:
Individual responses are viewed by HR when they are submitted
Where action is required, parts of these individual responses are shared with the manager or leader
Overall exit insights are shared on a monthly/quarterly basis
Gain Maximum Insight From Your Exit Survey Results
Insights from Individual Results
When an employee leaves, HR should review their exit survey feedback and determine what should be shared with managers. Highlight responses that differ from other feedback sources (like engagement results). For example, if someone cites career opportunities as a reason for leaving but your company typically scores well in this area, you may wish to dig deeper in the exit interview.
Tip: Categorize your results to gain even more insight. For example, categorize your exit survey respondents into "regrettable" or "non-regrettable" categories using custom demographics. This is very helpful for comparing the experiences of both groups and prioritizing where to take action.
If you see that non-regrettable employees are rating things lower than regrettable employees, this may be explained by low performance. However, when regrettable employees respond less favorably, this may be a sign you should dive in deeper because you may be driving your highest-performing employees to leave.
You can also use this custom demographic in past engagement surveys to retrospectively explore the differences between exited and current employees.
Reviewing Aggregate Results
Once you have sufficient responses (25+ for driver analysis), you can review your aggregate results to understand:
What was the overall experience of employees who exited?
What did the company do well and not so well?
What matters most to departing employees?
What can you focus on to increase retention?
Are there trends that you are noticing?
Compare exit survey results to your previous engagement surveys using questions like "I would recommend [company] as a great place to work." While exit results will naturally be lower, you still want departing employees to be advocates.
Tip: Sort questions by favorability to identify strengths (highest-scoring items) and opportunities (lowest-scoring items).
Take Action on Your Exit Survey Results
Review your lowest-scoring items, and use driver analysis (when available) to help prioritise areas that will make the biggest impact. Some low-scoring items may not actually correlate with engagement or retention - for example, compensation is often cited but rarely a true driver of retention.
Key Steps for Taking Action:
Review responses to "Is there something we could have done to keep you?"
Select a focus theme based on quantitative and qualitative data
Look at engagement survey data to identify higher-scoring groups in your selected area, to see if you can gain some insights into what’s different.
Identify any lower-scoring groups or cohorts that you want to investigate further, and potentially look to develop initiatives or programmatic support.
Tip: Remember, you're taking action with current employees in mind. Use stay interviews or focus groups to narrow down on your target areas and potential solutions. Involve current employees in any solution development to ensure relevance.
For example, If "career opportunities" emerges as a focus area, consider creating transparent leveling processes or standardizing lateral movement procedures.
FAQs
Do you have a benchmark for this exit survey?
We don't have recent external exit survey benchmarks available due to the continuous nature of lifecycle surveys and lower response rates compared to engagement surveys. The most recent benchmarks are from 2021. Internal benchmarking isn't possible because exit survey data is collected continuously and departing employee cohorts are unique over time.
While direct benchmarking is limited, focus on internal trends and comparisons across teams, departments, or demographic groups to drive meaningful action.
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