A Quick Word on Confidentiality and Exit Interviews
I
have had two friends in recent weeks who left their jobs and were required to
complete exit interviews prior to leaving.
Both were extremely uncomfortable and felt coerced into provided
information about their boss, immediate managers and co-workers. In one case, it was strongly implied that if
the person was not willing to help them with meet the requirements of their
exit interview, the company would not be willing to help them with good
references in the future. Both stated
they did not give honest answers, gave only positive answers despite both
stating there were numerous management problems that had caused each to leave
and on open ended questions asking for any additional information they though
could be relevant gave no reply.
Exit
interviews are intended to be useful for the company. They are designed to provide feedback about
what aspect of the job and the organization may need to be altered, fixed or
improved. Unfortunately, many companies
fail to exercise the proper discipline when dealing with exit interviews
leaving employees with the impression that stating anything that might be
viewed as criticism will result in negative consequences. In order for the
answers provided during exit interviews to be useful to the company and provide
the information that they are intended to elicit, employees must feel certain
their answers will remain confidential and that none of their answers can be
associated with them. This may mean a
simple adjustment that can be accomplished through educating all employees or
it may mean a change in company culture.
Whatever the degree of change required, the only way to make exit
interviews worth the time and effort needed to conduct them is to make them useful. This means making the answers given reliable
and accurate.
The
treatment of confidential information is one of the most important ethical
issue for staffing specialists, and specifically for human resources employees.
When an employer promises employees that information will be remain
confidential, they are obligated to keep this promise. However, it could be
argued that it is obvious that the results of exit interviews will be shared
with supervisors and higher ups in the organization as this is the only way
such information will have a positive impact in terms of organizational
change. It could also be argued that
since HR works for the organization and not the employee, they have a duty to
disclose any information that could impact the business.
However,
given the negative repercussions in which negative feedback provided by the
employee during an exit interview could result, it is imperative that this
information be disclosed in an anonymous manner. If Supervisors are aware that certain former
employees were critical of them, the supervisor may give negative
references. There may also be negative
repercussions for the employee’s former co-workers if certain information
involves others. Failure to adhere to
confidentiality related to exit interviews is also likely to become common
knowledge at the organization. When this
occurs, other employees who leave in the future will likely fail to provide
accurate feedback if the information is negative to avoid potential
consequences. Thus, an important source
of information that provides the organization with the capacity for quality
improvement will be lost. In such a
scenario only positive feedback which may or may not be accurate, is likely to
be shared which does not help an organization learn about weaknesses or problems
that need correcting.
It
is also possible that when employees learn that exit interview responses are
not kept confidential they will become generally distrustful of the
organization. This could result in their
failure to provide useful feedback to address problem situations while they are
still employed with the company. In the
situation presented the best option is for HR find a way to aggregate the
information from all the interviews conducted.
This would allow a single report to be created summarizing the feedback
of all interviews together without identifying any individual employee. However, it is the responsibility of
businesses to find a way to ensure that all data and information from exit
interviews remains confidential and when presented it is in a way that prevents
any individual’s data from being identified.
All known and potential uses of the data must be disclosed to the
employee prior to having them complete the interview and should they decide not
to complete the interview, no negative consequences should be imposed.
