March 11, 2025 • 16 mins
"In order for a survey to mean something, it has to be followed through on the results."
Notable Moments
00:51 Timing of Exit Interviews
03:53 Constructive Versus Emotional Feedback
08:03 External Feedback Handling Recommended
10:07 Understanding Customer and Employee Feedback
13:41 "Boosting Retention Through Honest Surveys"
Connect with Tim and his team:
Website: https://bestculturesolutions.ca/
LinkedIn: Best Culture Solutions, Inc
Instagram: @best.culture.solutions
Email: tim@bestculturesolutions.ca
Avoid the cost of turnover by investing in employee feedback. When done with intention, a simple conversation could make sure your organization is one where people want to work and stay. Conducting exit and stay interviews give organizations an opportunity for improved retention, boosted morale, and a culture of genuine care. Read our blog for more about how gathering and reviewing feedback is an investment in your company’s future.
To explore ways to implement these strategies in your organization, consider reaching out to Best Culture Solutions at bestculturesolutions.ca or emailing Tim directly at Tim@bestculturesolutions.ca. Together we can come up with your best culture solution.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Welcome to the World at Work podcast, where business leaders and
job seekers come together to create winning cultures and fulfilling
careers. I'm your host, Jody Mayberry, and I'm here with
Tim Dick, the founder of Best Culture Solutions
and some would say America's favorite Canadian. Have you
heard people say that, Tim? No. But I have now.
(00:30):
I didn't know that. I mean, there's look. I know that some people might
say that you're Canada's favorite American. Right? But I
feel like we pay more attention to you than you
guys pay to us. Yeah. That that is probably true,
but we're here to talk about culture rather
than although we that could be interesting because
(00:52):
I've worked in Canada. You've worked in The United States.
Perhaps sometimes we sometime, future episode, we will
talk about working cross cultures. That could be interesting, but I
have one very interesting topic I want to bring up.
Okay. I'm thinking about my time with the government.
I was a park ranger and I quit.
(01:14):
And about two to four weeks later, I got a call
from the human resources department and said, we would
just love to do an exit interview with you.
You had so much time with us, and we just wanna find out why you
left. And my response to them was, I'm willing to
do this, but why is it four weeks after
(01:36):
I left rather than four weeks before I left? And I
thought that's a good enough topic to bring up, Tim, because
every company is going to have people leave. Sometimes,
you'll even have superstars leave. Sometimes, you'll have
people that maybe you don't mind that they left. But this
idea of talking to them on their way out, it
(01:59):
is a good one because you can learn. But I want to know from
you if I hand in my notice, when
should the exit interview take place? What should happen in
it? What should I do as the
supervisor or human? That's the other one. Who should do the exit
interview? So let's cover all of that, Tim. Let's start with Yeah.
(02:21):
I did. Yeah. I I hand in my notice. When should it take place,
the exit interview? Ideally, it should be before you leave, especially if you've handed
in notice. If you've handed in two weeks notice as is typical
or requisite, if you hand in three or four weeks, whatever,
at some point before you leave, you should get that call.
And it should be at a timeline where where your reasons
(02:44):
are as fresh to you as possible, if that makes sense. They
need to be as fresh to you as possible.
Otherwise, like, as you noted, four weeks after you leave, your
feelings I mean, let's get real. Sometimes leaving a job is there's always
no matter how people may or may not demonstrate this, there's always some
element of emotion to the decision. Right? Because for whatever reason,
(03:07):
we did not feel like this role was the one for us anymore. We have
left. And if you wait too
long before, you know, before you find
out the decision that somebody made that has an emotional aspect to it, you're
not going to get the truth. You're not going to get it because things have
settled. Right? Things have settled. So I would say that as soon as you can,
(03:29):
after you get the resignation notice, you should make the call. Now it shouldn't be,
like, you know, ten minutes after because that's just really quick and oddly pouncing on
it. But within a day or two, maybe the same week, right,
even that you have given the resignation notice, they should
reach out to you, make the call. They should do it while you're still there.
Because the other thing too is that while you're still there for a lot of
(03:50):
people, you might wanna make sure that you're leaving on good terms. And one thing
that I will say about exit interview feedback is that
it is not good to be really as much as an
emotional decision, if you're trying to burn the place down on your
way out, then that feedback is likely not applicable. Most people don't
wanna go out that way. And so I'm not saying they're not going to give
(04:12):
you feedback that like, it's like you're avoiding what you don't wanna hear, but they're
more likely to be more constructive with that feedback than destructive if they're
still coming to work every day for a time, if that makes sense. So
it's important, like I say, to get it well. That emotional
piece is fresh, and the thoughts are fresh, and there's they
are people have clear mind as to why they have made that decision.
(04:34):
And I think that you need to do that in order to get good information.
Now who should do it? Now you've got lots of questions. Now do you wanna
talk let's talk about timeline first, and we'll get into who should make the call
and all that stuff. Well, I think you covered what's relevant about
timeline Quickly, just not ten, fifteen minutes after
it's turned in, but do it promptly. Yeah. And this is one thing that
came to mind when you were talking about it, Tim. If I'm leaving
(04:57):
because I don't feel heard or I have a grievance or
another company offered me more money. I feel like a quick
exit interview allows the company to step in
and say, if you're leaving for money, maybe we can match it
or if you've got a grievance, let's fix it or if you're
leaving a lot of people you've heard it said, Tim. I've heard you say
(05:19):
it, that most people leave because of their supervisor. Well,
maybe we can do something about it. And if you wait until after they're
gone, you don't have the opportunity to do any of that.
Yeah. That's right. And and even if they follow-up with you so here's a question
for you. When they followed up with you four weeks later, did you participate? I
did. Yeah. And would you say that can you did it? Right?
(05:41):
And don't get me wrong. Doing it four weeks later is better than not doing
it at all. You still get the information in some way. But
would you say that your feedback was as accurate or you
could think of the things that came to mind, right, as well as you could
have had it been the week that you turned in your notice? Yeah. You're right
on, Tim. The three things that come to mind as you asked that one
(06:03):
is it wasn't fresh anymore. Had they asked
me when I turned in my notice, it would have been fresh. I
felt like they're doing it to check a box. Otherwise,
they would have done it while it was there. And third Yeah. I felt like,
well, the I've got no stake in what I say
and what happens out of what I say. I may have felt I still
(06:25):
would have had the exit interview happened while I was there.
I like how you've just put that. I had no stake in it. Right? I
like what you've just said there. Because actually, it's it's a different way of capturing
kinda what I was just saying too. Like, when you capture it earlier, people
still have a stake in their outcomes while they're there and what happens
with it. And so it goes back to the likelihood of that
(06:47):
person being constructive versus not constructive. Right? Yeah. That's
right. The I feel it does make a difference. And, also, I think if
you do them when Tim says to do it, when it's all fresh,
then all of a sudden if I think it would feel like
somebody's paying attention, they saw I was going to leave, they
reached out. And that makes a difference because the
(07:09):
person may still leave, but they will feel like they cared enough
to reach out as soon as I put in my resignation.
That's right. Yeah. And so for that reason, it's a reputation
saver. Right? Yeah. Okay. So
we've talked timing. Now let's talk about who should do
the exit interview. Yeah. Well, simple. Somebody neutral,
(07:33):
to be honest. I mean, and in smaller organizations, that can be harder.
And we we actually have a service where we will be your exit interview
department for that reason. So that way you can maintain some neutrality
in a small organization that could be tougher. Or sometimes, you know, if
you're a larger organization, like, the reality is that you
will have a volume of turnover even if you have healthy turnover at, you know,
(07:55):
five to 10%. And so a lot of times, you
know, people will contract us out just to handle exit interviews because they know that
we are neutral. Right? And so if you do them internally, make sure that you
have somebody from the HR department or somebody that does not you
know, we talked about still having stake in things. In this case, you probably want
somebody who does not have as much of a stake in things apart from just
(08:16):
wanting to make sure that they know what they need to know so they can
make the place better. But, you know, somebody that that does
not know the people of Olduvast or or even if they know
them, you know, is not always with them,
right, or is not working with them day to day so there's no conflict of
interest, you need to have somebody who can handle it anonymously, so to speak.
(08:37):
Yeah. You need somebody that's removed from it. And that's why we get involved. We've
had companies involve us before where we do them. And once
per month, we aggregate or, like, consolidate all the feedback that
we get into one report. Right? And so you do need somebody
that they're gonna trust, right, that isn't active in that area every day, if
that makes sense. Yeah. % you do. So if if
(08:59):
we're going to do exit interviews, we've established that we should. We've
established it should be someone neutral. Completely makes sense
that your supervisor should not do your exit interview because
your supervisor could be the reason you're leaving. So it would not be
neutral. %. What does a company hope to get out
of exit interviews? If we're gonna spend the time and money to do them, Tim,
(09:21):
what do we wanna get out of them? Well, really, it's what has
caused you to want to leave the organization. And,
also, it is maybe not necessarily just what has caused
you to leave, but also what was it that you liked about it when you
were here. Right? What what were some of the good points? And
I think you wanna understand those things. You wanna get people's suggestions for what
(09:43):
worked well, but you also wanna get their suggestions for what could have been
different. And, you know, I mean, a lot of times people
overfocus on the why are you leaving piece of it. And don't get me
wrong, vitally important. But the other side of it
is that you also do wanna hear about the things that went well. You absolutely
should want to hear about what went well because you need to know
(10:05):
what things work for people so you can continue them. What if you accidentally didn't
know that and you decide to change from that? You need to know both sides
of that table. We usually have a series of 10 questions from everything like,
you know, how likely are you to recommend our services to other people? Because that
way we know if they're helping your build your brand in the community, not just
working there, but, you know, do you recommend what we do to people? Like, would
you recommend coming to our restaurant, coming to our hospital, going to our
(10:29):
store, whatever it is? And then we'll also ask, you know, would you
recommend this place as a place to work to people? Even though people are leaving,
they might still recommend the company as a place to work. And we dig in
typically about between seven and ten questions after that about things like, you know, did
you feel like you're compensated right? And what are the things that you liked about
working here? What would you change if you could? Or so that way we can
(10:51):
understand if that makes sense, right? Why people might have stayed,
but also why people are leaving. And you want both sides of that equation,
the percent you do. I've learned a lot more about exit interviews.
Some of this, I I hadn't worked through before. I just look back
and think of the exit interviews I've done,
there's really fallen to three categories, which I is probably true for
(11:14):
most things. But ones that left me feeling good about the
company, okay, they were curious. They wanted to improve.
They wanted me there. There were neutral ones that you just left and
then that was it. And then there was the example I
gave, like, after the fact, why why did it matter? And
I think done right, Tim mentioned it. It's
(11:36):
reputation builder or maintainer that it just
shows that you care. It shows you wanna improve. It shows
you're given attention to detail, all of that. But, Tim, I know
you have another thought about
exit interviews that Right. Is a little
off topic but very well tied to this. So tell
(11:57):
us really your main point about exit interviews.
Well, yeah. I mean, that's a great question. And we've talked about this before in
previous episodes, but the reality is this. Why wait until people
exit to ask those questions? Right? If you wanna get really
proactive about it, why don't you do a survey of
your team? And we've lots of people have heard the term stay
(12:19):
interviews before. And what a stay interview is is it's asking the same types of
things that you would ask somebody as they leave, but asking them before they
leave so you can find out, okay. While you're still here, how likely
are you to recommend this workplace, you know, to as
a place to work? How likely are you to recommend our services, our products to
other people who need them? What's going well here? What would you change? What frustrates
(12:41):
you about working here? Do you feel like you're well compensated? What's your overall
opinion on leadership? And making sure that we're not just asking, do you like the
leaders, but framing it as around, are they effectively leading the organization and the
company? And that way, you can find out what you need to know before
people leave. Right? And they do. They are an investment.
Make no mistake. They definitely are. But there's a few things that can come
(13:03):
from doing them. You can first of all, you you
find out things before people leave. Right? And you could possibly choose to rectify
them or fix them. And that obviously is the benefit. But the
other thing is that if you ask people, if you think about this, the psychology
behind it, and not that you want to psychologically manipulate people, that's not right,
but if you ask people how likely are you to recommend working here
(13:25):
to other people at a time in their career when they're not thinking of leaving,
then what you have done is you force them to think about at that
time what they like about working there because they haven't asked to leave yet. Now
don't get me wrong, some people might be on the edge and might push them
over on the other side too. But a lot of people might think twice and
remind themselves that, you know, things are actually
(13:55):
less likely to feel negatively about their because they do see you proactively getting that
information and that data. And so it it increases your retention
because it it shows people that you care. Now don't get me wrong. If you
do it disingenuously, you don't follow-up, it's not really anonymous, all that type
of stuff, then you actually burn that trust and there's a right way to do
it. I think we have an episode about the right way to conduct them anonymously
(14:15):
and with trust and making sure you're taking action and being transparent and accountable about
what you're doing with the survey instead of it going into nothing. If a survey
has to mean something, it has to be followed through on the results, absolutely.
But the reality is that when people see you doing that, it's going to increase
your retention rates by quite a bit. And is there an investment in doing
it? Absolutely. Is there an investment in using a firm like ours to come
(14:37):
in and do it objectively and honestly? You bet. But if you
were to save one person from leaving the company because they
saw that you're doing that, felt respected and valued, when you lose a
person, it's somewhere between 2833% of
their annual salary is the cost of turnover. I know for a fact
based on how much it costs to do these surveys, use one person
(14:59):
stays, your investment pays off in doing the survey. % of
those. Alright. This this has been a great conversation that led
us from exit interviews to stay interviews, and
you should find what Tim said very encouraging. Stay
interviews if it keeps one person worth the investment.
I think the true that can be said for exit interviews. You may discover
(15:21):
something in the exit interview that allows you to keep other
people and therefore worth the investment. Tim, if we
want help with exit interviews to have it a
neutral party or we love what you're saying about stay
interviews and we want to implement that, what can we do next? Yeah.
That great question. Well, you can reach out to us. Our website is
(15:43):
bestculturesolutions.ca. We do do stay interviews
for organizations, and we're actually in the process right now of getting it
properly added to the website. So that way people know that we do
that, but we've done a fair amount of them just through word-of-mouth and people
wanting to help. But they can find us on our website,
bestculturesolutions.ca, or you can email us,
(16:04):
Tim@bestculturesolutions.ca. We'd love to help you with that.
Well, thank you so much, Tim, and thank you for listening to World at
Work.
Welcome to the World at Work podcast, where business leaders and
job seekers come together to create winning cultures and fulfilling
careers. I'm your host, Jody Mayberry, and I'm here with
Tim Dick, the founder of Best Culture Solutions
and some would say America's favorite Canadian. Have you
heard people say that, Tim? No. But I have now.
(00:30):
I didn't know that. I mean, there's look. I know that some people might
say that you're Canada's favorite American. Right? But I
feel like we pay more attention to you than you
guys pay to us. Yeah. That that is probably true,
but we're here to talk about culture rather
than although we that could be interesting because
(00:52):
I've worked in Canada. You've worked in The United States.
Perhaps sometimes we sometime, future episode, we will
talk about working cross cultures. That could be interesting, but I
have one very interesting topic I want to bring up.
Okay. I'm thinking about my time with the government.
I was a park ranger and I quit.
(01:14):
And about two to four weeks later, I got a call
from the human resources department and said, we would
just love to do an exit interview with you.
You had so much time with us, and we just wanna find out why you
left. And my response to them was, I'm willing to
do this, but why is it four weeks after
(01:36):
I left rather than four weeks before I left? And I
thought that's a good enough topic to bring up, Tim, because
every company is going to have people leave. Sometimes,
you'll even have superstars leave. Sometimes, you'll have
people that maybe you don't mind that they left. But this
idea of talking to them on their way out, it
(01:59):
is a good one because you can learn. But I want to know from
you if I hand in my notice, when
should the exit interview take place? What should happen in
it? What should I do as the
supervisor or human? That's the other one. Who should do the exit
interview? So let's cover all of that, Tim. Let's start with Yeah.
(02:21):
I did. Yeah. I I hand in my notice. When should it take place,
the exit interview? Ideally, it should be before you leave, especially if you've handed
in notice. If you've handed in two weeks notice as is typical
or requisite, if you hand in three or four weeks, whatever,
at some point before you leave, you should get that call.
And it should be at a timeline where where your reasons
(02:44):
are as fresh to you as possible, if that makes sense. They
need to be as fresh to you as possible.
Otherwise, like, as you noted, four weeks after you leave, your
feelings I mean, let's get real. Sometimes leaving a job is there's always
no matter how people may or may not demonstrate this, there's always some
element of emotion to the decision. Right? Because for whatever reason,
(03:07):
we did not feel like this role was the one for us anymore. We have
left. And if you wait too
long before, you know, before you find
out the decision that somebody made that has an emotional aspect to it, you're
not going to get the truth. You're not going to get it because things have
settled. Right? Things have settled. So I would say that as soon as you can,
(03:29):
after you get the resignation notice, you should make the call. Now it shouldn't be,
like, you know, ten minutes after because that's just really quick and oddly pouncing on
it. But within a day or two, maybe the same week, right,
even that you have given the resignation notice, they should
reach out to you, make the call. They should do it while you're still there.
Because the other thing too is that while you're still there for a lot of
(03:50):
people, you might wanna make sure that you're leaving on good terms. And one thing
that I will say about exit interview feedback is that
it is not good to be really as much as an
emotional decision, if you're trying to burn the place down on your
way out, then that feedback is likely not applicable. Most people don't
wanna go out that way. And so I'm not saying they're not going to give
(04:12):
you feedback that like, it's like you're avoiding what you don't wanna hear, but they're
more likely to be more constructive with that feedback than destructive if they're
still coming to work every day for a time, if that makes sense. So
it's important, like I say, to get it well. That emotional
piece is fresh, and the thoughts are fresh, and there's they
are people have clear mind as to why they have made that decision.
(04:34):
And I think that you need to do that in order to get good information.
Now who should do it? Now you've got lots of questions. Now do you wanna
talk let's talk about timeline first, and we'll get into who should make the call
and all that stuff. Well, I think you covered what's relevant about
timeline Quickly, just not ten, fifteen minutes after
it's turned in, but do it promptly. Yeah. And this is one thing that
came to mind when you were talking about it, Tim. If I'm leaving
(04:57):
because I don't feel heard or I have a grievance or
another company offered me more money. I feel like a quick
exit interview allows the company to step in
and say, if you're leaving for money, maybe we can match it
or if you've got a grievance, let's fix it or if you're
leaving a lot of people you've heard it said, Tim. I've heard you say
(05:19):
it, that most people leave because of their supervisor. Well,
maybe we can do something about it. And if you wait until after they're
gone, you don't have the opportunity to do any of that.
Yeah. That's right. And and even if they follow-up with you so here's a question
for you. When they followed up with you four weeks later, did you participate? I
did. Yeah. And would you say that can you did it? Right?
(05:41):
And don't get me wrong. Doing it four weeks later is better than not doing
it at all. You still get the information in some way. But
would you say that your feedback was as accurate or you
could think of the things that came to mind, right, as well as you could
have had it been the week that you turned in your notice? Yeah. You're right
on, Tim. The three things that come to mind as you asked that one
(06:03):
is it wasn't fresh anymore. Had they asked
me when I turned in my notice, it would have been fresh. I
felt like they're doing it to check a box. Otherwise,
they would have done it while it was there. And third Yeah. I felt like,
well, the I've got no stake in what I say
and what happens out of what I say. I may have felt I still
(06:25):
would have had the exit interview happened while I was there.
I like how you've just put that. I had no stake in it. Right? I
like what you've just said there. Because actually, it's it's a different way of capturing
kinda what I was just saying too. Like, when you capture it earlier, people
still have a stake in their outcomes while they're there and what happens
with it. And so it goes back to the likelihood of that
(06:47):
person being constructive versus not constructive. Right? Yeah. That's
right. The I feel it does make a difference. And, also, I think if
you do them when Tim says to do it, when it's all fresh,
then all of a sudden if I think it would feel like
somebody's paying attention, they saw I was going to leave, they
reached out. And that makes a difference because the
(07:09):
person may still leave, but they will feel like they cared enough
to reach out as soon as I put in my resignation.
That's right. Yeah. And so for that reason, it's a reputation
saver. Right? Yeah. Okay. So
we've talked timing. Now let's talk about who should do
the exit interview. Yeah. Well, simple. Somebody neutral,
(07:33):
to be honest. I mean, and in smaller organizations, that can be harder.
And we we actually have a service where we will be your exit interview
department for that reason. So that way you can maintain some neutrality
in a small organization that could be tougher. Or sometimes, you know, if
you're a larger organization, like, the reality is that you
will have a volume of turnover even if you have healthy turnover at, you know,
(07:55):
five to 10%. And so a lot of times, you
know, people will contract us out just to handle exit interviews because they know that
we are neutral. Right? And so if you do them internally, make sure that you
have somebody from the HR department or somebody that does not you
know, we talked about still having stake in things. In this case, you probably want
somebody who does not have as much of a stake in things apart from just
(08:16):
wanting to make sure that they know what they need to know so they can
make the place better. But, you know, somebody that that does
not know the people of Olduvast or or even if they know
them, you know, is not always with them,
right, or is not working with them day to day so there's no conflict of
interest, you need to have somebody who can handle it anonymously, so to speak.
(08:37):
Yeah. You need somebody that's removed from it. And that's why we get involved. We've
had companies involve us before where we do them. And once
per month, we aggregate or, like, consolidate all the feedback that
we get into one report. Right? And so you do need somebody
that they're gonna trust, right, that isn't active in that area every day, if
that makes sense. Yeah. % you do. So if if
(08:59):
we're going to do exit interviews, we've established that we should. We've
established it should be someone neutral. Completely makes sense
that your supervisor should not do your exit interview because
your supervisor could be the reason you're leaving. So it would not be
neutral. %. What does a company hope to get out
of exit interviews? If we're gonna spend the time and money to do them, Tim,
(09:21):
what do we wanna get out of them? Well, really, it's what has
caused you to want to leave the organization. And,
also, it is maybe not necessarily just what has caused
you to leave, but also what was it that you liked about it when you
were here. Right? What what were some of the good points? And
I think you wanna understand those things. You wanna get people's suggestions for what
(09:43):
worked well, but you also wanna get their suggestions for what could have been
different. And, you know, I mean, a lot of times people
overfocus on the why are you leaving piece of it. And don't get me
wrong, vitally important. But the other side of it
is that you also do wanna hear about the things that went well. You absolutely
should want to hear about what went well because you need to know
(10:05):
what things work for people so you can continue them. What if you accidentally didn't
know that and you decide to change from that? You need to know both sides
of that table. We usually have a series of 10 questions from everything like,
you know, how likely are you to recommend our services to other people? Because that
way we know if they're helping your build your brand in the community, not just
working there, but, you know, do you recommend what we do to people? Like, would
you recommend coming to our restaurant, coming to our hospital, going to our
(10:29):
store, whatever it is? And then we'll also ask, you know, would you
recommend this place as a place to work to people? Even though people are leaving,
they might still recommend the company as a place to work. And we dig in
typically about between seven and ten questions after that about things like, you know, did
you feel like you're compensated right? And what are the things that you liked about
working here? What would you change if you could? Or so that way we can
(10:51):
understand if that makes sense, right? Why people might have stayed,
but also why people are leaving. And you want both sides of that equation,
the percent you do. I've learned a lot more about exit interviews.
Some of this, I I hadn't worked through before. I just look back
and think of the exit interviews I've done,
there's really fallen to three categories, which I is probably true for
(11:14):
most things. But ones that left me feeling good about the
company, okay, they were curious. They wanted to improve.
They wanted me there. There were neutral ones that you just left and
then that was it. And then there was the example I
gave, like, after the fact, why why did it matter? And
I think done right, Tim mentioned it. It's
(11:36):
reputation builder or maintainer that it just
shows that you care. It shows you wanna improve. It shows
you're given attention to detail, all of that. But, Tim, I know
you have another thought about
exit interviews that Right. Is a little
off topic but very well tied to this. So tell
(11:57):
us really your main point about exit interviews.
Well, yeah. I mean, that's a great question. And we've talked about this before in
previous episodes, but the reality is this. Why wait until people
exit to ask those questions? Right? If you wanna get really
proactive about it, why don't you do a survey of
your team? And we've lots of people have heard the term stay
(12:19):
interviews before. And what a stay interview is is it's asking the same types of
things that you would ask somebody as they leave, but asking them before they
leave so you can find out, okay. While you're still here, how likely
are you to recommend this workplace, you know, to as
a place to work? How likely are you to recommend our services, our products to
other people who need them? What's going well here? What would you change? What frustrates
(12:41):
you about working here? Do you feel like you're well compensated? What's your overall
opinion on leadership? And making sure that we're not just asking, do you like the
leaders, but framing it as around, are they effectively leading the organization and the
company? And that way, you can find out what you need to know before
people leave. Right? And they do. They are an investment.
Make no mistake. They definitely are. But there's a few things that can come
(13:03):
from doing them. You can first of all, you you
find out things before people leave. Right? And you could possibly choose to rectify
them or fix them. And that obviously is the benefit. But the
other thing is that if you ask people, if you think about this, the psychology
behind it, and not that you want to psychologically manipulate people, that's not right,
but if you ask people how likely are you to recommend working here
(13:25):
to other people at a time in their career when they're not thinking of leaving,
then what you have done is you force them to think about at that
time what they like about working there because they haven't asked to leave yet. Now
don't get me wrong, some people might be on the edge and might push them
over on the other side too. But a lot of people might think twice and
remind themselves that, you know, things are actually
(13:55):
less likely to feel negatively about their because they do see you proactively getting that
information and that data. And so it it increases your retention
because it it shows people that you care. Now don't get me wrong. If you
do it disingenuously, you don't follow-up, it's not really anonymous, all that type
of stuff, then you actually burn that trust and there's a right way to do
it. I think we have an episode about the right way to conduct them anonymously
(14:15):
and with trust and making sure you're taking action and being transparent and accountable about
what you're doing with the survey instead of it going into nothing. If a survey
has to mean something, it has to be followed through on the results, absolutely.
But the reality is that when people see you doing that, it's going to increase
your retention rates by quite a bit. And is there an investment in doing
it? Absolutely. Is there an investment in using a firm like ours to come
(14:37):
in and do it objectively and honestly? You bet. But if you
were to save one person from leaving the company because they
saw that you're doing that, felt respected and valued, when you lose a
person, it's somewhere between 2833% of
their annual salary is the cost of turnover. I know for a fact
based on how much it costs to do these surveys, use one person
(14:59):
stays, your investment pays off in doing the survey. % of
those. Alright. This this has been a great conversation that led
us from exit interviews to stay interviews, and
you should find what Tim said very encouraging. Stay
interviews if it keeps one person worth the investment.
I think the true that can be said for exit interviews. You may discover
(15:21):
something in the exit interview that allows you to keep other
people and therefore worth the investment. Tim, if we
want help with exit interviews to have it a
neutral party or we love what you're saying about stay
interviews and we want to implement that, what can we do next? Yeah.
That great question. Well, you can reach out to us. Our website is
(15:43):
bestculturesolutions.ca. We do do stay interviews
for organizations, and we're actually in the process right now of getting it
properly added to the website. So that way people know that we do
that, but we've done a fair amount of them just through word-of-mouth and people
wanting to help. But they can find us on our website,
bestculturesolutions.ca, or you can email us,
(16:04):
Tim@bestculturesolutions.ca. We'd love to help you with that.
Well, thank you so much, Tim, and thank you for listening to World at
Work.
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