4 Tips to Maximize the Value of Exit Interviews in the Legal Workplace

4 Tips to Maximize the Value of Exit Interviews in the Legal Workplace4 Tips to Maximize the Value of Exit Interviews in the Legal WorkplaceWhen a legal professional on your team hands you a resignation notice, do you schedule an exit interview? What about when you need to terminate a staff member - do you solicit their feedback before they leave?Exit interviews can be an ideal opportunity to obtain feedback from employees that can be used to improve business practices within legal organizations and strengthen employee zurckhalten and legal recruitment. But too often, Ive seen legal managers regard exit interviews as perfunctory, just filing away staff members interview responses along with the departeing employees profile.Heres a short quiz on exit interviewsDo you or someone in your organization conduct exit interviews with every employee who leaves, including resignations, dismissals and layoffs?Do you have an established process for exit interviews?Does your organization ask a co nsistent set of questions during exit interviews?Does someone in your organization review exit interview feedback on a regular basis?If you answered no to any of these questions, chances are that your organization is not deriving maximum value from the exit interview process.Here are four tips for using exit interviews productively and reaping the benefits they can offer1. Conduct exit interviews with all departing employees.Exit interviews should be conducted with all employees who are leaving the organization, regardless whether the circumstances involve a resignation, dismissal or layoff. One of the mistakes I see most often is when law firms or legal departments hold exit interviews only with high-performing staff members they will sorely miss, because they want to find out exactly why the person is leaving to try to prevent a mass exodus of other top talent. But when exit interviews are done only occasionally or subjectively, you cant get a clear snapshot of areas within the or ganization that may need attention.2. Establish a process for exit interviews.If youre going to use exit interviews as part of your organizational approach, its important to create a process and administer it consistently across the board. This includes asking the same questions in each instance so you can compile and address cumulative data over time. Its also helpful to focus on open-ended questions to gain the most insights and provide the employee with questions in advance to facilitate a thoughtful and candid discussion during the interview.3. Identify a structure to capture feedback.Beyond creating a formal process for exit interviews, its critical to develop a consistent mechanism for capturing feedback so comments on various workplace issues - for example, compensation, training and development, environment and culture, mentoring - can be compared.4. Collect and regularly review exit feedback.The most significant value of exit interviews, in my opinion, is the cumulative d ata thats gathered over time. As with any data set, you need enough information in that bucket to identify recurring themes. If discussions with departing employees repeatedly raise comments on particular issues, its up to senior management to take action. So its important that exit interview feedback is collected, summarized and tracked centrally and analyzed and reviewed regularly to identify trends. Only then can legal management have a meaningful discussion and identify potential issues within the workplace where actions or changes may be required.Departing employees will generally be more honest in their feedback because theyre less concerned about repercussions than current employees may be. For that reason, exit interviews can be a very valuable tool to collect candid information about your culture and your legal leadership team, about organizational processes and procedures, structure and more. These interviews can offer a unique perspective on your companys performance and employee satisfaction that can be used strategically to improve workplace issues.Do you have other ideas for maximizing the value of exit interviews? Please share your comments below.