When organizations are drafting People Management Strategies, one of the perspectives that’s taken is to construct the employee life cycle. And that means, to find coherence from the point when the attraction is made, the recruitment and selection, the growth and development and finally the point of off-boarding.
Great cultures are consistent from the onboarding process all the way to the offboarding process. Imagine an Airline that only treated you well at the time of on-boarding. And once you’re on-board, it turns around. Or imagine, everything was just right from on-boarding to the whole journey. And then at the off boarding, you find missing cargo, absence of customer service.
Yet, organizations consistently do this. The off boarding is one of the worst experiences in most organizations. And it’s the off boarding that most people remember about the organizations. Employees who’re exiting an organization are often treated as criminals, as those that have betrayed the system. The organization is often more interested in relieving the employee of company property and cutting off access. The exit interview is often left to an HR intern or some random outsourced human resources services at an offshore site. No wonder most exit interviews are dysfunctional and do not produce any required outcome.
Why would an intern be appointed to conduct an exit interview for a senior leader, a logistics manager that’s served for 10 years? Ideally, a person in a similar role could be appointed to conduct such an interview. The goal of the interview is to make the organizational culture better, to ensure more retention, to add to the body of knowledge of this organization. Some choose to forego exit interviews as they neither serve the employee nor the company.
At Ortega Group, we are convicted that organizations that design great exit experiences are organizations that have cracked the culture puzzle. Culture is seen at parting. People are great in the way they exit things. How does your organization exit a relationship? That tells you about the culture of the organization. Great exits speak to great cultures. In the game of burning bridges, far more organizations are burning bridges than the exiting employees. If you want to know the company culture, look at how they treat those employees that are exiting. It doesn’t matter the reason for the exit. Culture should be consistent both at entry and exit.