For the most part, exit interviews are useless.
The information you gain will do nothing to help you retain that person (or anyone else) because people who are leaving have no reason to tell you the truth and they, wisely, don’t want to burn any bridges.
That’s why I strongly recommend you skip the exit interview drill and start conducting “Stay with Us” employee retention interviews with your A-players every three-to-six months instead.
If you do lose an A-player, call that former employee toward the end of their second week on the new job to see how things are going. Tell them they are missed and that, if things are not working out as expected, you would like to have them back on the team.
You will be amazed how many of these people find out the grass isn’t greener after all.
This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog