Carrying out well structured and well conducted exit interviews with every employee who leaves may well help you to increase the effectiveness of your organisation.

Before you carry out exit interviews, you need to think about who is best suited to conduct them. The line manager knows the outgoing employee probably better than anyone, but the employee may not be prepared to criticise the manager who, in turn, is unlikely to record comments about him or herself. A personnel officer should be able to do the job well, as he or she will be relatively objective and should have the ability to tease the truth out from vague phrases. However, what is important is that the person carrying out the