As per a recent article in the Chief, the New York City Council will be contemplating legislation that would require city agencies to conduct exit interviews with retiring and resigning municipal employees.
I don’t think exit interviews provide much value. For the places I’ve worked and had exit interviews, there were several thoughts and challenges that went with it.
It’s hard to digest because most people leave a place because of a toxic work environment, bad managers , or both. A SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) survey in August 2020 seems to concur that employees leave managers, not companies. SHRM’s report shows 84 percent of U.S. workers say poorly trained managers create a lot of unnecessary work and stress.
Whether it’s the city or private sector. And to think upper management will fix that is unrealistic. Usually, your bad manager was placed there by upper management – and it’s hard to stomach that they might have made a mistake . Or they’ll just call you a disgruntled employee.
Sure, there is usually a money component. Sometimes that is the only reason. Sometimes there is a change in career direction. And, if you’re retiring, you might be leaving due to change in management or work tasks. But more likely you hit your number and your outta here.
My real-life changes were made based on bad managers as well as stagnant pay.
Brief Examination
Let’s examine this with an example. You work for an agency where you’re able to tolerate the pay and the work is good. You work well with your co-workers and subordinates (if you’re a manager) and maybe even think you’re moving the needle forward a bit.
Then politics change and the bosses get shaken up. Some retire. Friends – er, I mean new management – gets brought in. Workload changes. Increased demands are made with no additional resources. Maybe hours get cut for the hourly employees. Maybe you work more hours (for no additional pay because you’re a manager too). Open vacancies get cut due to “budget constraints”. Your new manager refuses to address these challenges expecting you to “just do your job”.
Opportunities come up in other agencies and you make a jump. This new opportunity will require you to work with your present agency and maybe even your soon-to-be-former manager – but you will not be a direct report and you might get a little pay bump.
The agency you’re leaving wants an exit interview. How honest will you be? We would all love to tell them how it really is, including telling them that they’re number 1 with the middle finger held high. Tell them that you were given overwhelming obstacles and they didn’t respond when you told them you couldn’t complete the tasks on time because they closed all open positions, and you didn’t have enough time in a day. Your immediate manager refused to speak about your “personnel issues”. Refused to get you help when you said you were swamped working 13-14 hours per day, weekends, holidays, regularly. (I dunno, maybe that sounds a little disgruntled? Really, more like, disappointed.)
Do you think the agency will fix it? My report of budget cuts causing issues will change their mind? Reporting a toxic manager that was placed by the upper managers will chill him out? Working excessive hours with no relief in sight? Yep “we’re all working hard” and “dealing with less”. Yep, I’m just disgruntled and looking for a few bucks. Nothing to see here.
Not only that – what about the new agency? If they get wind of that kind of report, what would they think? “Did we make the right decision? This guy has some attitude”. Maybe “we work long hours here – sounds like he may have issues working late”. “Sounds like our guy can’t complete tasks and then blames others, especially management”.
Limited (or No) Value
There are a lot of discussions about “the value” of exit interviews. However, having been a participant of exit interviews in private industry, they were absolutely useless . For myself and many of my colleagues with whom I discussed their exit, we played the game . We never gave up the real reasons. We needed good references and what was the difference anyway? Nothing did change (in hindsight) and we would have just looked angry and disgruntled.
Comments and Questions Welcomed Here
