In dealing with employee research, why is HR so easily distracted from the goal of improving business results and so easily buried in paperwork?

With fastidious dedication each employee is rounded up and forced to sit through an awkward question and answer session. After pleasantries are exchanged both parties are wondering if the other knows that politically correct euphemisms are being used in lieu honest helpful facts. As the conversation continues, the interviewee is careful not to be too vague but is certain to protect the all important ‘good reference’ status. He or she is careful to dodge any subject matter that may cause the interviewer to probe for details, names or specific examples of poor behavior. The more one word responses the quicker this all too uncomfortable dialogue can be over. The interviewee certainly does not want to get involved in any explanations that may have fall-out effecting friends. After all this information is recorded, cataloged and stored the employee or former employee is allowed to finally exit. Is this a story that you have catalogued in some exit interview file cabinet?

Invariably HR suffers from the same obstacles in all industries when asked to conduct exit interviews.  When asked about the quality of these interviews HR invariably speaks to the quantity of effort put towards the project rather than the accuracy of the data or progress of the action plans. Focusing on getting the interviews done rather than changing the business based on the data is taking your eye off the ball.

The typical internal exit interview process has these shortcomings:

• The data is compromised – data collected at the point of termination is not valid. Only responses collected by a third party after the point of termination is reliable.
• Reporting is unworkable – taking the time to transcribe hand written notes into summary reports and graphs for the consumption by management can become overwhelming. Responsible third party terminate research will report findings back to management in the way they want to see it.
• Response rate are very low – regardless of the effort HR puts into internal exit interview processes, response rate are rarely above 15%. A proactive third party should be able to deliver representative data: response rates over 50%.

All the firm wants to know is why are people leaving and how to get them to stay. If data collection and reporting are outsourced, a large amount of time is available for the HR team to take action on the information to improve the business results. It is results that count in business, not the number of completed interviews in the file cabinet.