Hi, I am a recruitment professional, working for an insurance firm. We have had recently been taken-over by another, much larger, multi-national insurance company during the beginning of this year. Since then, there was some re-organization that came into effect among the top management levels. Since the last few months, I have had to deal with quiet a few resignations from some long-time and talented coworkers and I have handled their exit interviews. Very few of them are vocal about the reason of their leaving. And for those who do say, I wish we would have know the reason earlier as we could have prevented loosing talent from our workforce. Is it is possible to salvage loosing talent during the exit interview stage?
In general, the exit interview stage is the beginning of the end. At this point the majority of employees have made a decision to leave the organization, a process that was probably agonizing, conflicting and difficult to make. For the majority of employees, this resignation letter is handed over after an alternative job has been secured. So once done it is generally impossible to convince an employee otherwise.
Before I go ahead and answer your question about ‘salvaging during an exit interview’, I would rather recommend measures your HR department could inculcate to ‘prevent’ employee dissatisfaction. These ‘preventive measures’ deal with the four categories of why 70% people leave: Recognition & appreciation, Compensation, Career development, and work culture & environment.
People remain in an organization when they get what they want. Contrary to popular belief good salaries are not the only motivating factors, some of our recent survey results have indicated this. In fact our survey results has indicated that apart form 28% respondents who indicated salaries as a motivating factor, 19% indicated career growth prospects,17% indicated relationships at work and 14% indicated job nature.
Other factors include work culture and availability of on-the-job training. (One of my previous blogs did touch upon the subject of employee motivation and steps that could be implemented.) So, exciting work and challenges; career growth, training & development; and great working relationships are the three key retention factors that you can focus on.
A positive approach would be to proactively find out what your employees want while they are still there. At Bayt.com, just as in the same of most organizations, we have a process of annual appraisals. These appraisals employ a 180° approach, wherein both the employees and direct managers appraise the employee’s performance for the year that has been. Part of the comprehensive appraisal process also includes charting progress on the job, skills gained and also asking the employee to list their future career aspirations. This will reduce the dissonance between the employee’s needs and what the direct manager has in mind for him/ her.
What you, as a HR professional, could salvage form the exit interviews that you have had is this- find out what category of employees you are having retention issues with. On an average how many years of experience do that hold? Do you see high turnover for a particular department? Similarly, do you find that a particular department or regional office has managed to retain quality employees for a length of time? Try to find out what is it that they are doing right and try replicating it.
As you mentioned above, your organization has been a part of a takeover. A takeover also means change in the organizational culture with, sometimes, a change in management and leadership style. If you feel that a change in leadership styles or the work environment is in order, it is worth that effort. It is also worth the time to develop good performance systems, good communication processes and good relationships.
