The purpose of the exit interview is two fold (one obvious, one not so obvious):

1. To gather data from departing employees on working conditions to improve retention

2. To attempt to protect from litigation.

The first one is obvious but probably unnecessary. If you are a company that really cares about retention so much that you consult your employees, you probably already have an idea why they are leaving and what working conditions are like. An exit interview is unlikely to reveal anything.

If you are a company that doesn’t know enough about what working conditions are like and why employees leave, it is unlikely that you’ll ask the right questions or apply the answers in any meaningful way. There are exceptions to both of these but you get the idea.

Now the idea of litigation avoidance is sort of silly to me. I laughed out loud in a classroom setting when I heard this one. If you haven’t buttoned up possible litigation gaps in your company before you get to an employee exit, an exit interview will do zero good. Granted an exit interview is court admissable in most cases, it is usually considered weak evidence (as the situation of an exit interview is taken into consideration, it makes sense). If everything else in your employee file says you were miserable because of your boss and an exit interview says you gave the boss a 3 out of 5, that doesn’t mean much. Companies that do a great job of resolving legalities and work situations immediately have nothing to flush out at the end of a career at that company. The few times it does come around, it is unlikely an exit interview would do anything. You still have to have solid documentation throughout.

If you’re a good company in the employee relations side, an exit interview isn’t going to reveal much and it isn’t going to add much litigation protection. If you’re a crappy company, an exit interview is at best a stop gap solution to a much bigger problem in your organization. Focusing efforts on improving the exit interview would be better spent on focusing efforts on preventing the exit interview from being called in the first place.

For one, the concept of litigation avoidance was unheard of 30+ years ago. Companies rarely got sued and if they did, it was typically by consumers who had suffered through some sort of physical harm. If you paid minimum wage and you weren’t physically abusing your employees, you were probably alright.

In those days, being an employee was like being a child on a teeter-totter with a 300 pound adult on the other side. The equation was out of balance.

Since the formation of the EEOC, the balance has slowly shifted. Sexual harassment policies started taking effect and those who were used to the good old days had to adapt or be out of a job. Same with discrimination (which is still in the process of being full adapted). And for the most part, these regulations have been for the better. It has put the focus on work. Studies have been focused on the glass ceiling in workplaces where people are not allowed to advance due to non-work related reasons.

The balance has changed and we can argue all day long as to where that balance is but it is incredibly important to realize that most businesses have changed policies and that has had both a good and bad effect on the performance and morale of employees.

Whenever a sexual harassment charge comes to me, the “factory” shuts down. Regardless of my view of the reliability of such a charge, I must take certain actions to ensure my butt (I can be sued personally) and my company’s butt stays out of the line of fire. Whatever I was doing before is of no consequence. A sexual harassment investigation could take weeks of interviews, documentation and communication between all parties. If it goes to litigation, it could be months or years. Not all of that is going to be spent on this case but it is going to change my workload severely.

So whenever I make sexual harassment policies within the workplace, I am pretty much banning almost every type of non-work related conversations imaginable. That may seem over the top and my enforcement of it may be incredibly rigid but look at the alternatives I have. Either we spend the hours up front to ensure that people understand that we want them talking about spreadsheets and TPS reports, not big butts and Jesus or we spend days, weeks, months or years defending why we didn’t talk enough about it to begin with. The choice seems pretty clear to me.

Not all businesses are that strict but there is a significant risk attached with that. So if I seem a little keyed up while people tell jokes around the water cooler, maybe you have a little taste of why that is the case.

I understand the first school of thought very well. HR is often the business end of the political correctness fostered by a company’s legal department, lawmakers at state and US capitals and judges and it irritates me as well. That being said though, the point is moot. That is the business environment we operate in and as I commented, our legal system rewards employers that over-enforce sexual harassment law. End of story. Do any of your legal departments want to take a principled stand and fight for the right for this guy to say “copious BJ’s” as he pleases? Perhaps if he is the CEO but not if he is an easily replaced, entry level employee.

The fact of the matter is that employers are fairly risk adverse on any potential sexual harassment behavior. Could this guy have sued us for firing him inappropriately? Perhaps. The chance of it going to court and getting heard is pretty slim, the chance of him winning it is slimmer. Could someone plop a sexual harassment suit on us based on this e-mail? Perhaps. The chance of it going to court and getting heard is much better than the employee who got fired. Furthermore, if this guy had made previous advances towards other employees that the supervisor was unaware of, this could further the case of harassing behavior and not an innocent joke. Not to mention, there is very little tone in e-mail to go off of. If this were a conversation with witnesses, perhaps it could be more easily defended as a joke. Black and white text gives little indication of the jist of his statement. His intentions of a joke is unclear enough to raise a valid point.

So I guess that’s the long way of stating my view on it. Did I agree with it in principle? No, I thought it was an over-enforcement. Does it matter whether I agree in principle? Not really. Why? Because in practice, over-enforcement is encouraged and makes much more sense than rolling the dice with sexual harassment. Were it my business, legal department and money on the line, the choice is obvious. If some other HR guy wants to play with fire on that one, please go ahead and let me know your results and ROI on it. This was an easy decision to support. There are much more compelling cases out there where there is an obviously wronged person on the business end of political correctness but I am confident in saying this isn’t one of them.

Matt sent an e-mail out about 45 minutes after our conversation. Whenever I received it, I was thinking that it was just sent to me. It wouldn’t be the first time, no doubt about it. Then I read the message and I noticed the “To:” field said it was sent to the listserv. I again was shocked to what I saw. A diatribe by Matt regarding how “the man” (not making this up) had brought him down and that our corporate culture was an enemy of human rights. It was laughable stuff, especially in sharp contrast to the note he had sent out not two hours earlier (not to mention the fact that we worked for a university). What floored me was that the e-mail was even accepted. I called the IT guy at home and did what I knew how to do best. I asked a question:

“So did you turn off Matt’s access?”

“Of course I did. Why?”

“Have you checked your e-mail?”

“No.” click click click “Oh crap!”

“Way to go, now will you turn it off?”

“Yes.”

So ended my optimism when it came to people leaving an organization. Thanks to Matt (and some new experiences) I now take much greater precautions and expect the worst of every single termination I am a part of. Most of them go well but I don’t bet on it any more.

To: listserv
From: “Matt”
Subject: Shift available

Thursday 3/31
5:00pm – 9:00pm
Building C

Reason: I have a big lab I have to do. Copious BJ’s to the person who takes this shift.

I froze. I re-read. I froze again. I heard footsteps coming towards my office. A quicker pace than usual. In walks my boss, Director of the department. He says the four words I didn’t want to hear at 5:30: “Take care of it.” Guh. I call Matt and tell him to come to the office right now. I call my IT guy to have him come in. In between that time, I get e-mails from three people on my staff that can’t believe the e-mail. One of them is going to file a complaint with the Human Rights Department. The IT guy comes in first so I have him sit with me to fire Matt.

Whenever Matt comes in, he is completely unapologetic. Whenever I tell him he is going to get fired, he gets defiant and starts asking me to cite what policies he has broken. I told him we work for a university that has a zero tolerance policy on sexually harassing words. This isn’t one of those things I could overlook, it is something that we had to take care of right now.

After he leaves, I tell the IT guy to take care of his e-mail access. He says he will do it. He doesn’t. And guess what happens? To be continued…

I don’t encourage people to use lawyers needlessly. If you have an in-house staff, it is less of an issue but if you are pegging an outside contractor every time, it can get expensive quickly.