Why are you losing employees?

Have you lost some valuable employees in the past year?  Does your firm understand why those employees are leaving?   If you are like most companies, exit interviews serve as a mechanism for unearthing the reasons behind these departures.  I learned something quite interesting this week though.  In talking with a group of human resource executives, I discovered their frustration with the traditional exit interview.   Many executives expressed concern that departing employees are "too nice" in those exit interviews - they simply don't offer a candid assessment of why they have chosen to leave the firm.  Several HR chiefs offered a solution to this problem.  They described how their firms have eschewed the traditional exit interview.  Instead, the companies have hired a third party to conduct confidential surveys/interviews of these individuals several months AFTER they have left the firm.  The executives reported that these interviews yielded much more valuable insights... and much more candor, than the traditional exit interview.