Departing Staff Can Tell You How to Hang on to Those That Remain Through exit interviews, “an employee who has resigned can tell you lots of things you might not have noticed about your practice.” So says David Scroggins, in a recent article in Medical Economics magazine, “Practice Pointers: Reduce turnover with exit interviews.” Scroggins was one of several management experts across the country asked to provide information on how to use exit interviews to ferret out the cause of staff turnover. Frequent turnover can be costly for a practice in terms of office efficiency, recruitment, and training. Results from this interview can show you how to make your practice more attractive to prospective employees. According to Scroggins, the exit interview should be designed to uncover essential facts: why the employee is leaving what they liked/disliked about the job how they would have changed it if given the power to do so. Timing of the interview is important. Rather than waiting until the employee’s last day, a better approach is to schedule the interview as soon as the person hands in their resignation, when employees’ reasons for quitting are the clearest. Scroggins suggests making the interview an upbeat person-to-person experience. He notes that a positive approach is the most effective. Tell the employee, “Thanks for working here. How can we improve things?”