In fact, maintaining a highly skilled workforce is an issue facing most industries. Despite hiring pullbacks, organizations are seeing movement among valued employees who are leaving on their own volition, says Logan, a specialist in competitive retention techniques. She adds that a large number of these organizations do not have a real understanding of the actual reasons why employees stay or leave. Conventional wisdom, she points out, says that most people leave for better compensation. But telling your company you re leaving for better compensation is an easy explanation.
Many organizations make an attempt to understand the retention factor through exit interviews.
However, research has shown that most exit interviews only scratch the surface of the general causes of attrition. In fact, they often fail to differentiate between factors that make the new job attractive versus why the employee was prompted to consider leaving in the first place. And they can be quite helpful to the company. For exit interviews to be the most effective, Logan says they should be conducted by a third party, follow a standard format, be facilitated by experienced interviewers and the content carefully analyzed. Using a third party allows respondents to be more candid and explicit about why they left.