Study the exit interviews
As much as you’d like to reduce turnover to zero, you’re still going to have employees who move on to other opportunities. If you’ve continually reinforced your cultural values to them during their tenure, you should be able to glean some valuable insight from their exit interviews.
Open up the door for criticism with the questions that you ask outgoing employees. Some might let emotion color their opinion of their bosses, co-workers or the company as a whole. But in many cases, you will get an unvarnished look at what your company needs to do in order to improve its internal policies and practices.
“At our company, human resources conducts the exit interviews, and they forward it to the supervisor of the individual, who then sends it to senior management,” Maguire says. “Senior vice presidents, executive VPs, myself, we all see the exit interview.
“We ask a number of questions in the interview, covering ways we can improve, where there might have been problems in the relationship, and what sorts of things we could do differently. Then HR takes the information and implements it in a way that can help us better prepare current and future employees to perform their jobs.”
How to reach: Philadelphia Insurance Cos., (800) 873-4552 or www.phly.com
