Employee Relations

INTRODUCTION

Separation from a position can be a difficult time for anyone. Effective exit interviews can help those who are having trouble transitioning from one position to another; get through such an emotional time. Despite the circumstances, an exit interview should always be conducted. An Exit Interview is an employee's final interview after departing from a company. (Gomez, Balkin & Cardy, 2010).

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how having an effective exit interview process will benefit Ames Hardware. Implementing an effective exit interview policy might influence staffing, employee retention, and cost of turnover. This is a topic that I feel could be very beneficial to Ames and any other company. Because it can highlight Ames' weaknesses and validate their strengths.

By conducting effective exit interviews, Ames can gain insight on if they need to improve in certain areas or learn what areas they are doing well in and adjust accordingly. In my past, I have departed ways with a company because of reasons pertaining to management but they had no idea that was the reason why I left. Later, I found out that several people left after myself because of the same reason. I'm sure this could have been avoided if just an exit interview was performed.

IMPORTANCE FOR WORK ORGANIZATIONS

Conducting effective exit interviews can contain valuable information for any organization. This can be anywhere from positive or negative information. More than often there are conversations at work that stems from multiple things such as employees being under-paid or not getting what they deserve. Employers can gain the knowledge of certain situations if exit interviews are given at the end of an individual's employment. The purpose of performing an exit interview at the end is so that they can learn information about an individual's work experience with the company. The use of the information received can be valuable on its own or used with other data collected in the interview. Staffing, employee retention and cost of turnover are merely a few areas that exit interviews affect.

Staffing

Exit interviews are important for organizations because they perform an abundant amount of functions. They track general tendencies in the workplace (Buhler, 2011). If the company sees that several individuals are unexpectedly resigning from their positions, there could be an issue of employees not feeling valued. If there is a point in time where several women are resigning there can be an issue of discrimination. This can lead to facing a legal bind with Title VII amendment that protects women from discrimination in the workplace.

Employee Retention

Employee retention refers to the ability of a company retaining its employees. "A good exit interview can positively impact employee relations, retention and turnover within your organization. Asking the right questions and communicating the results is the key to positioning an exit interview as a valuable tool." (Strategic HR Inc.). Exit interviews are a good strategy to help improve job satisfaction. They reveal underlying reasons as to why the employee is departing from their position. The impact of the interview certainly depends on how the information is not only used but also the questions that are asked.

Job Satisfaction

If an organization responds to the suggestions and concerns provided from the exit interviews, it would appear as though they are working harder at improving the overall job satisfaction. Contrastively, if they decline to accept the information provided from the interviews, it can make the employer seem as though they are trying to figure it out or that they do not know what they are doing. Overall, the outcome of the exit interviews depends on how the information is utilized.

Cost of Turnover

As with any company, most organizations have experienced a loss of an employee. Many costs and additional work goes into training an employee. Often employees come into a workplace untrained, until they receive extensive training from a company. The cost of turnover can affect the organization because extensive training is given to an employee when they are employed by them, but when they leave; another untrained employee comes in and fills that vacant spot. This causes Ames to spend funds on the new employee's extensive training and a waste of funds from the old employee. In the case of the company not finding someone to fill that position, they incur costs if the work does not get completed.

AMES HARDWARE

Implementing an effective exit interview would be important to Ames Hardware because with them being a small company, they need the criticism in order for them to grow. Ames is a company that says that they are 'dedicated to treating every one of their employees fairly with dignity and respect'. Assuming that Ames continues to apply their valuing of each employee, it would be less likely for them to run into negative things being acknowledged at the