askST Jobs: How honest should I be during an exit interview?

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Q: How honest should I be during my exit interview with HR? What reasons do I give my employer for leaving?

A: From an employee’s perspective, the safest and most useful approach in an exit interview is to focus on role design, decision-making and development, rather than personalities or emotions.

Employees who keep their feedback structural tend to give HR information that is more likely to be acted on, without creating unnecessary personal risk, said Mr Kevin Chan, chief executive of HR technology company Epitome.

For example, employees can say that over time, the role evolved in ways that did not fully align with their strengths, or that they were accountable for outcomes but had limited authority in decision-making.

Others may point to a lack of clarity around progression or growth in the role, or say that the pace and expectations were not clearly defined at the outset.

“These statements point to common drivers of disengagement we see in assessment data, such as role misalignment, unclear decision rights, and development gaps,” said Mr Chan.

He noted that employees would be better off avoiding comments that centre on individuals or emotional judgments, such as naming specific managers, describing interpersonal conflicts, or using labels like “toxic” or “unfair”. 

“From a workforce optimisation perspective, exit interviews are most effective when they’re treated as a signal, not a safety net,” he said.

“Organisations that rely too heavily on exit conversations to understand why people leave often miss earlier indicators around role clarity, decision-making authority, and capability fit.” 

Ms Sally Lee, head of people and admin at the Institute for Human Resource Professionals, said that from an HR perspective, exit interviews are often conducted in an open-ended manner to surface areas for improvement.

“The intention is to hear the genuine issues employees may have faced, so that timely interventions can be made and future hires are not subjected to the same challenges,” she said.

“While some employees are candid, others can be more reserved, which requires HR to employ careful and sensitive probing techniques to encourage open sharing.”

From the employee’s perspective, individuals who are leaving an organisation and wish to preserve a positive impression may choose to cite personal reasons as their primary push factors and refrain from offering deeper commentary, Ms Lee added.

Employees should try to be specific and factual when giving feedback, but one key consideration is trust – specifically, the extent to which employees believe that HR will treat their feedback confidentially and address issues without attributing comments back to them.

“Many employees are also uncomfortable with being quoted or cited as examples when management addresses the issues raised... As such, it is important that consent is explicitly sought and granted before any feedback is shared or referenced, even if the intention is to resolve underlying problems,” said Ms Lee.

Epitome’s Mr Chan noted that HR departments should build work cultures where feedback, development, and expectation-setting happen continuously, so that employee exits “validate patterns rather than surface surprises”.

“In that context, structural feedback at exit helps organisations refine future hiring and management decisions, without placing the burden of full transparency on employees at the point of departure,” he said.