Retain top talent with exit insights

Create employee exit interview forms to understand why people leave, so you can go from high turnover to high tenure.

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No second-guessing

With expertise built in, there’s no need to stress over how to phrase survey questions.

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Online forms provide a forum for employees to share things they wouldn’t face to face.

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Powerful, yet intuitive analytics help you spot insights by theme or team, fast.

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Ensure a great experience for departing global employees with surveys in their native language.

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Upload information like level, tenure, department, and manager so employees don’t need to provide them in the survey.
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Uncover ways to shape your employee programs

Combine exit interview survey results with other employee data for richer insights on what drives employee turnover.
Tag open-ended responses and quantify your results by topic.
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Exit survey insights boost employee tenure by 5x for YES Communities

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“Improving retention is a marathon, not a sprint. Our SurveyMonkey results gave us data to develop a retention strategy and improve experiences. So far we’ve seen average retention go from about 90 days to a year and a half.”

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Jean Gonzales | Vice President of Human Resources, YES Communities

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Have questions? We’re here with answers.

What features should I look for in exit interview survey software?
Look for exit interview survey software that’s intuitive to use so you can get up and running quickly. It’s also important to consider analytics and reporting capabilities, like syncing with other employee data, dashboards, thematic analysis, and powerful filters to help you understand the difference in experiences of specific groups of departing employees. Explore all SurveyMonkey plan features today.
What is the purpose of an exit interview survey?
An exit interview form or survey is used to understand the reasons why an employee is leaving your company, so you can use those insights to improve the employee experience. It is typically sent to the employee in their last week or day on the job, especially when you have notice of their departure.
Employee exit interviews can be conducted in person, but employees often feel more comfortable answering questions via an online survey or form, rather than face to face. This also helps you take common questions you would ask about topics like pay, benefits, fair treatment, etc. and create closed-ended questions that quantify departing employee sentiment, so you can track it over time to see if you’re improving.
What questions should be included in an exit interview survey?
Here are some top recommended questions from our Employee Exit Survey Template.
Questions about skill-role alignment:
- “How effectively did you feel your skills were put to use here?” Extremely, very, somewhat, not very, not at all
- “How helpful was your position here in stimulating your professional growth?” Extremely, very, somewhat, not very, not at all
- “How realistic were the expectations that were set for you?” Extremely, very, somewhat, not very, not at all
Questions about resources & benefits:
- “How well were you paid for the work you did at this company?” Extremely well, very well, somewhat well, not so well, not at all well
- “How easy was it to get the resources you needed to do your job well at this company? Extremely easy, Very easy, somewhat easy, not so easy, not at all easy
Questions about treatment and recognition:
- “How often did you feel your contributions were recognized?” Always, most of the time, about half the time, once in a while, never
- “Overall, how fairly were you treated?” Extremely fairly, very fairly, somewhat fairly, not so fairly, not at all fairly
- “Overall, how would you rate the working relationship you had with your supervisor?” Excellent, very good, good, fair, poor
Open-ended questions:
- What are your reasons for leaving this company?
- What actions can your employer take to build a better workplace?
In addition to the questions above, it’s important to include demographic questions and departmental questions like age, gender identity, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, location, job level, department, and tenure. This allows you to filter and compare these groups during analysis.
How do you analyze exit interview data?
Here are a few tips for analyzing exit interview survey responses:
1. Use top-two-box scores to summarize closed-ended responses into a single number (e.g. the % of departing employees who say they had an excellent or very good working relationship with their manager). This makes it easy to compare topics side-by-side to see what needs the most attention.
2. Tag your open-ended responses so you can spot the top themes at a glance. This turns open-ended text into a clean chart quantifying how often themes are surfaced.
3. Filter responses by department, location, etc. to see if there are any themes that stick out so you can address them with the right level of management.
4. Track your results over time to see whether the changes you’re making are having the desired effect. Along with the survey results themselves, track other key metrics like employee retention and turnover so you can tie your programs to business impact.

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