[eeeficus]

I agree with the article. If you leave, feedback is not worth it. I always gave honest feedback at exit interviews and felt like shit for a while afterwards. And I don’t understand why companies are doing this, honestly. Take feedback from your employees and really listen! What is the gain to ask for feedback to someone leaving the company? Is it more honest? Then you have a cultural problem because it means your employees are afraid to give honest feedback.

[wccrawford]

Somebody up top thinks this will actually provide valuable information for the future. In my experience, it'll provide information, but the company won't actually value it. Either the information is actually useless (person is leaving because they want more experience that can't be had there) or the company won't actually learn anything from it (person is leaving due to bad situation or not enough money). They may claim to learn from it, and may even think they are, but they don't.

[justin_oaks]

I remember a previous employer sending out a survey to several customers to get feedback on the product. The boss who had the survey sent never bothered read the survey results, and he never sent them to anyone else either.

I'm sure he's not alone in ignoring important feedback. I'm sure feedback from people leaving the company is generally ignored too.

[sfink]

Because it's hard to trust the signal. If you (properly) ask people to complain, they'll complain. But how do you know whether those complaints matter? People will complain about the things that bother them the most in relative terms. (Actually not even that; they'll complain about whatever's front of mind at the time.)

Maybe the cafeteria food isn't great, but improving it would have zero effect because it just doesn't matter. But if someone who is leaving brings up the cafeteria food out of all the things they could have brought up? And 5 of the last 6 people leaving brought up the same thing? That's way more meaningful than everyone sitting around whining about how the food isn't as good as at $X company.

It's a lot like getting product direction from your customers. Listen to your customers, but for god's sake, don't just do what they ask for. (And if you can somehow find out why the ones who are leaving are leaving, that's gold.)