Would you fill out and return an exit interview survey to a past employer? If you would, dare you be truthful. Would you ignore it? Would you be politically correct? They want to know how you rate the department, the supervisor, the organization as a whole, why you left, what you liked most, hated the most, etc. It was a bad experience and I hate to even mention what went on there. But, of course, management thinks everything is wonderful and I am sure they are not going to like the truth. Why should I answer it when it won't make any difference?
I view it as an optional formality, if you should so choose.
What an exit interview is not, is some form of therapeutic intervention for departing employees to employ an opportunity to vent their emotional frustration and disdain to anyone. You will not conclude this process by gaining any such supportive benefits.
Quite frankly, why choose to volunteer and become their technical consultant to fix their problems anyways?
Besides, they should already have capable people employed there who are supposed to be recognizing and identifying these kind of issues occuring at the workplace.
Whatever the issues, it's no longer your problem... As they often say, "you can't fix stupid."
I usually ignore surveys and polls from employers, past and present, as there is no way to guarantee anonymity and one never knows how the retaliation bug will bite.
I feel the same for most surveys and polls. However, a completed exit survey was one of the requirements stipulated in the policies of one hospital that I worked for in order for me to receive my banked PTO when I left. There was no way to even pretend that the survey would be anonymous so I just told them what I thought they wanted to hear so as not to burn any bridges...just in case.
I received one phone call from HR, left a voicemail stating they received my notice and would like to set up an exit interview.
I never returned the call.
Then I got a call after my notice asking where I was since I was scheduled to work. I gladly played the message with self termination date back to them and stated my last day was two weeks earlier. Guess they still hadn’t gotten their crap together.
I once sent my notice via email to my immediate supervisor (in hindsight I should have copied it to HR). He never responded to my notice and I later found out that he also never informed HR, so they tried to terminate me for “no call, no show.” I ended up getting it straightened out but I was ticked.
My unofficial guestimated tally give or take a few on this topic.
9- absolutely, yes take the survey and be honest but don't be too awfully honest, like don't hit them below the belt if you can help it, even if you would really like to.
They really don't want to know. They SAY they do but we all know it's easier for them to ignore the problems than actually deal with them.
I worked for a company that realized they were having some issues. Corporate began sending out a survey question weekly. I talked with my manager about it briefly and she encouraged me to be honest in my experiences. I did.
Next thing you know I am most definitely being retaliated against. It isn't anything that is obvious but clearly it is what occurred. I ended up quitting and going elsewhere. I still got those stupid surveys for a month after leaving, I did tell them what happened when I completed the survey honestly and that the retaliation cost them a good employee. And asked them to remove me from the email list.
Never again. Let them figure it out. I don't do exit surveys or interviews. Why would I waste my time on that. Once you are leaving they really can't force you to do anything no less any kind of surveys or job reviews.
When you lose a number of people in a short time there is a problem somewhere inhouse...It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure that out!
Crash_Cart
446 Posts
I view it as an optional formality, if you should so choose.
What an exit interview is not, is some form of therapeutic intervention for departing employees to employ an opportunity to vent their emotional frustration and disdain to anyone. You will not conclude this process by gaining any such supportive benefits.
Quite frankly, why choose to volunteer and become their technical consultant to fix their problems anyways?
Besides, they should already have capable people employed there who are supposed to be recognizing and identifying these kind of issues occuring at the workplace.
Whatever the issues, it's no longer your problem... As they often say, "you can't fix stupid."