The case for asking about benefits in exit interviews 

Do you talk to your employer clients about their stay and exit interview strategies? If not, you should. Allow me to explain why. 

Most organizations conduct exit interviews, but they can only tell us so much. As we know, these actions typically center around a standardized set of questions provided to employees after they voluntarily leave an organization. They're done either through a digital survey or one-to-one conversation with HR. Their purpose is to uncover why an employee chose to leave, often focusing on culture, leadership or role-related factors. 

When aggregated, this data can highlight both strengths and gaps such as limited career mobility or below-market compensation and even provide insight into competitor practices. There are two critical limitations, however: timing and participation.

Exit interviews happen after a decision has already been made — when it's too late to influence the outcome. Many departing employees either decline to participate or provide surface-level feedback, limiting the depth and usefulness of the data.

So how do we shift from a reactive to proactive strategy? We prioritize "stay" interviews.

A stay interview is the more meaningful counterpart to an exit interview — designed to understand what's working, what isn't and what may cause an employee to leave before they make that decision. 

These conversations can take multiple forms, including structured surveys, HR-led 1:1 discussions (often the most effective) or integrated engagement tools. When embedded into your client's broader employee engagement strategy and consistently reinforced, stay interviews help normalize open dialogue between employees and HR, often led by HR business partners.

They also create a powerful opportunity to evaluate something that is frequently overlooked in these conversations: total rewards.

While engagement-focused questions are essential, incorporating benefits-related questions ensures that an organization's offerings remain relevant, competitive and aligned with employee needs.

Consider asking your HR partners to include questions such as:

• Are you currently satisfied with your total-rewards offerings? 
• What benefits would you like to see added by your organization? 
• Which current benefit offerings are not working for you? 
• What challenges, if any, have you experienced when using your benefits? 

Guiding organizations toward more intentional stay interview practices and expanding those conversations to include total rewards positions benefit advisers as a stronger strategic partner. Because the goal for employer clients isn't just to understand why people leave; it's to understand what will make them stay.