Paul (name changed) writes on LinkedIn why he was not honest about his exhaustion and burnout during his exit interview. “Nothing changes anyway”, he shrugs off.

Jane Doe (name changed) adds “why risk the settlement money and experience certificate, when I won’t work with my managers again!”

Scroll through Reddit or Glassdoor; people working for different employers are connected by one common emotion about exit interviews: nonchalance.

Let’s face it. Exit Interviews feels like having a small talk with a stranger during a farewell party. Nobody really cares. But if you are an HR, or leading the People and Culture Office, then you should care about every exit interview, more than any strategy deck.

What is an Exit Interview, Really? 

An exit interview, like any interview, should be a structured conversation between a departing employee and their employer (represented by usually an HR). The goal is simple: uncover feedback on these five pillars of any organization:

• Team dynamics
• Leadership qualities
• Growth opportunities
• Work-life balance
• Psychological Safety

If done well, this is one rare moment of capturing unfiltered opinions. 

“Nothing changes anyway” vs “They are leaving anyway”:

The Outcome Biases that Gatekeep Exit Interviews

On exploring hundreds of online feedback in Glassdoors and Reddits, we realized that people stopped caring at this stage because: 

• They often come too late in the employee lifecycle to feel actionable.
• HR may feel its biased or bitter.
• There is no mechanism to follow through.
• Lack of psychological safety often leads to dishonest answers.

Breakdown “Polite and Vague” Responses:

Why Exit Interviews Deserve Attention? 

Most HRs will understand why exit interviews are important.  
They struggle with how to use this opportunity make changes and better protect the organization.

Of the entire employee lifecycle, onboarding and employee engagement consumes the energy, leaving almost no time to process the feedback of those who left into actions for better experience for those who stays. How can you fix it without increasing headcount and cost? 

Between back-to-back interviews, urgent backfills, onboarding coordination, and culture campaigns to retain talent, HR is in a constant state of calendar chaos. When someone resigns, the clock starts ticking: replacement mode kicks in, hiring takes priority, and exit interviews get reduced to a polite conversation, hastily noted and rarely revisited