Exit interviews can provide valuable feedback

Information Outlook, July, 2005 by Debbie Schachter

As a standard part of your work as a librarian and manager, you should always be seeking and receiving feedback on your performance, both on the individual and departmental levels. Maintaining an interest and willingness to change, based on the feedback of employees as well as customers, is an essential ongoing activity for all managers. Often this is accomplished through the performance management system or annual performance reviews, where you have the opportunity to give and receive feedback to and from your employees.

There is one key opportunity to receive employee feedback that is not always realized, though. That occasion occurs when an employee chooses to take a position elsewhere; therefore, you have one final opportunity to formally receive an employee's feedback to help you to improve their position and the library's work environment.

This particular information-seeking activity is known as the exit interview, and it is an HR best practice that many organizations try to implement. You probably hold informal discussions with parting employees, but do you make a formal practice of soliciting their feedback? Few organizations really seem to understand and act upon the valuable information obtained through the exit interview, however. Your human resources department may have a policy and procedures on holding exit interviews, or you may need to devise a policy specifically for the library. Regardless, if you understand the value of feedback and are willing, it is very easy to hold formal exit interviews with departing staff to help the development of your library.

There are many reasons for holding exit interviews, and it's not only to find out why a particular staff person is leaving the organization. Obviously, an employee's reasons for leaving a position in your library is something you should want to understand, and it may not always be simply that they found a better position elsewhere. The exit interview may even be the opportunity to retain an employee you don't want to lose. If you are willing to understand the reasons why the employee wishes to depart, and are able to offer some change to their position that will suit both you and the employee, your exit interview policy will have paid off.

In most cases, the exit interview provides an employee with the opportunity to make some retrospective suggestions on how their particular job, or the library generally, can be improved. It should be thought of as a positive learning tool for the librarian or department manager. From the employer's perspective, this is the opportunity to obtain information about how employees perceive the library and why a particular employee wants to leave. It is a learning opportunity for the organization to address employee concerns and to correct ongoing problems. Particularly if you begin to see a pattern of departures--such as the exits of good staff members you would have preferred to retain--providing an exit interview opportunity for the employees may reveal underlying problems within the library or in the organization at large that you are unaware of.

Types of concerns that you may need to address include non-competitive pay rates, underlying problems between fellow employees, a lack of responsiveness of library management to employee suggestions or opinions, or a sense there is a lack of interest in staff development. Again, these are the employee's perspective only, but should provide some signals of where small problems may begin brewing among other staff.

One important reason for having a policy of holding exit interviews is that it shows all staff, not just departing staff, that you care and are interested in making the library a better place to work--provided you are willing to listen to constructive criticism and to act upon staff input to make the workplace better for everyone. This response should lead directly to improved staff development, training, retention, and succession planning. It creates a positive statement to staff that you want to improve the situation.

From a personal development perspective, the process will help you develop your management skills, through overtly soliciting feedback and by determining how to act upon it. It will develop your communication and human resource management skills. Overall, the ability to seek out and respond to suggestions and even criticism without feeling threatened will make you a better manager.

How to Conduct the Interview

First you need to determine whether your HR department conducts exit interviews. Depending on the size of your organization or staff, the employee may have more than one exit interview.

For example, the library manager may hold an exit interview with each departing staff member and a member of the HR team may also conduct exit interviews to seek feedback on the larger organization. Or you may be expected to do so at the department level only.

Ideally--and of course this depends upon the size of your library--the exit interview should be conducted by someone other than the employee's supervisor. This is for the obvious reason of obtaining feedback on how well supervisors are performing their functions and how they are viewed by their staff. In smaller libraries you may be the direct supervisor and manager, so this may not be possible.