Employee exit has always been one of the major challenges of HR in any industry. With an employee leaving the organization comes the entire cycle of recruitment & selection for that position. Anything as important as proper recruitment, the challenge of an HR department remains in effective handling of employee exit programs.
Employee exit process starts as soon as s/he submits his/her resignation to the HR department. Whatever be the reasons for exit, the role of HR department in exit process should be thoroughly completed. The concept of formulating & implementing exit strategies is still evolving in Nepalese context. While some companies bid goodbye to the employee with the completion of his/her notice period, some perform exit interview with the person leaving the organization.
Exit interview is seen to be one of the most popular tools used during an exit of an employee from the organization. Exit interviews provides the employee with a chance to provide feedback to the company and some good as well as bad experience he/she has faced during his employment term at the organization. Similarly, an HR expects the employee to open up with the issues that led to his/her resignation through exit interviews.
Various cases has shown that any employee leaving the organization feels reluctant to provide information on bad experiences or factors that led to his dissatisfaction in the organization. Factors such as the feeling of leaving the company in good terms limits him/her to open up and provide true information.
While employee exit is very difficult in some cases, the HR department can always come up with proper employee exit strategies for the mutual benefit of both the parties. While designing any exit process, especially exit interviews, the person responsible for handling the exit interview should be clearly defined. For instance, in some cases, the immediate supervisor can handle the interview, but this might not be feasible in other. There is the need of the HR to conduct the interviews in some cases, while the intervention of the top management is important in some cases.
Use of open ended rather than close ended forms are highly recommended for exit interviews. This way people can put their view and thoughts rather than just answer from the options provided. Also, HR should not solely rely on any one information while evaluating exit of an employee. A combination of exit interview questionnaire, interview with the HOD & interview with the HR can result in less biased information.
Taking about the results derived from any exit interview, it is seen that people do not respond fairly when they are done in a formal setting. People need time to open up and this is when they can and feel free to provide true reasons behind the resignation. HR practitioners believe that any organization should provide the employees some time and space before directly jumping to exit interviews.
Exit plan is also something that need to be designed according to the nature of work and staffs employed. Exit plans that are designed for permanent staffs may not be eligible for contractual staffs. This is because, exit for permanent staff is usually voluntary exit, but contractual staffs has to exit as the project completes. In case of I/NGOs, where the employment terminates with the completion of project, HR managers can come up with Capacity Development Programs for the employees so that they can sell them better in the job market.
The wrong practice of holding the certain percentage of salary for the sake of employee retention salary should also be eliminated. But, there are some exception to this scenario. For example, in schools, there is this tendency so that teachers do not leave during the middle of any session.
Similarly, tools and techniques for exit process differs if the employee is remotely located. In these cases, the HR department can arrange for alternatives like telephone interviews or Skype video interviews where the employee cannot be physically present for the exit interview.
HR practitioners from different organizations participated in the discussion program. Conducted on the last Wednesday every month according to English calendar, sharing of current challenges and coming up with the strategies to deal with the given situations is the major objective of HR kurakani.
