Should you or shouldn’t you?

What do you say during your exit interview

#CoffeeWithFriends My friend recently tendered his resignation and he has been invited to have an exit interview with the President of his company. During coffee, he asked if I thought he should be honest and tell the President about the toxic work culture in his Department — in the past two years, six Vice-Presidents have resigned since the new Senior Vice-President took over.

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I shared that while exit interviews are intended to be data points for an organization to understand the cause of employee turnover, I have seldom seen them make any difference. This is because for exit interviews to be effective, it requires all exiting employees to give honest feedback. Since most exiting employees will opt to give politically correct answers, negative comments will be dismissed as anomalies, and the exiting employee labeled as disgruntled.

Specific to his situation, I shared my view that it would be pointless for him to tell the President about the toxic culture. It would be pointless as the President already knows. As the toxic workplace culture can only exist if the President allows it, the President has already decided not to act, and telling him what he already knows will be an exercise in futility. Better to be politically correct and leave without being thought of as…