Exit Interview Form Template
Capture the candid truth departing employees rarely say out loud — reasons, ratings, and the one thing you should fix first.
Before you go: your unfiltered take is the most useful gift you can leave behind. This is read after your last day and never affects references.
People tell the truth on their way out — if you ask before the goodwill fades and make the asking painless. An exit interview form beats the awkward final-week meeting on both counts: the departing employee writes at their own pace, without watching an HR face react, and the answers land in a structured table instead of someone's meeting notes.
Why these fields. Role and department make the data segmentable — attrition insight is worthless as a company-wide average and priceless per team. The primary-reason dropdown forces one honest headline; people leave for bundles of reasons, but making them pick the biggest one is what turns twelve resignations into a pattern you can act on. The paired open questions are deliberately symmetric: asking only what went wrong produces grievance lists, while "what did we do well" preserves the strengths you must not accidentally optimize away. The workload scale catches burnout signal that exit conversations politely omit. The recommend-as-a-workplace score is your employee NPS from the people with the least reason to flatter — track it over time and it is the most honest culture metric you own. The return question quietly builds your boomerang pipeline; a "yes" from a strong leaver is a warm candidate in two years.
What we left out. Manager-specific ratings by name and compensation disclosure requests. Named ratings turn a reflection into an accusation form and chill honesty; pay conversations belong in payroll's records, not in a survey a departing employee may not trust yet.
Who uses this. HR leads who inherited a retention problem and need evidence before proposing fixes; agencies and restaurants with structural churn who want each departure to teach something; small founders who cannot bear to run the meeting version but will absolutely read the answers.
Make it yours. Send the link on the person's last morning, when candor peaks. If your culture skews cautious, make the name-adjacent fields optional and say plainly in the intro who reads the answers — specificity buys honesty. Review responses quarterly with the CSV export: reasons, scores, and departments pivot into a one-page attrition story. Conditional logic can go deeper without bloating the default path — for example, reveal a follow-up about management support only when the leave reason points at culture. And keep the ending gracious; it is literally the last screen of their employment.
Patterns, not anecdotes. One exit is an anecdote; treat it that way. Resist reorganizing a team over a single scathing response — the signal lives in repetition, so wait until a theme recurs across three or four departures before it earns a slide. The scores deserve the same discipline: a workload rating of 2 from one leaver is a data point, while a run of them from the same department is a fire. And keep a running list of everyone who answered "yes" to returning someday — that column is a sourcing channel most companies throw away.
Frequently asked questions
Should exit interviews be anonymous?
This template asks for role and department, not name. If your team is small enough that those identify people, widen the options or make them optional — honesty beats precision here.
When is the best moment to send it?
The final week, ideally the last morning. Goodwill is still high, the details are fresh, and the person has nothing left to negotiate — the candor window is open.
How do we spot trends across many departures?
Export the CSV and pivot by department and reason. The recommend score over time is your cleanest single trend line for workplace health.
Can we branch into deeper questions for certain answers?
Yes — Logic panel rules can reveal follow-ups when, say, the leaving reason is management or culture, so only relevant leavers see the deeper questions.