One Last Cheque: Why You Should Pay $1,000 For Each Exit Interview

The quest to understand why employees leave—and how to get them to stay—has become corporate America's favourite mystery to solve. I recently sat in on a Chamber of Commerce roundtable where CEOs wrung their hands over retention leaks, trading theories and solutions like baseball cards. Leaders are pulling out all the stops: focus groups, stay interviews, engagement surveys, and town halls. Yet employees keep leaving.

We must acknowledge that a portion of this dance stems from a post-COVID rupture in the cohesive and nurturing feelings once found in company culture. For some time, I’ve believed that younger employees often leave in a recurring cycle, searching for something that only truly thrives when people are together in person. And yet they don't want to be back in the office. And so, they leave again to find something that feels different, only to be greeted with the same confusing emptiness. But for today, let's put this particular thing aside.

The numbers of retention paint a stark picture. As of April 2024, despite a slight dip in turnover rates to 3.4%, voluntary resignations still account for nearly two-thirds of all job separations. That's double the rate of layoffs. We're not just losing people—we're watching willing and talented workers choose to walk away.

Let's look at the shocking math.

For a mid-level corporate employee making $80,000 annually, the costs spiral quickly. There's the immediate productivity drop in their final weeks ($6,000), followed by an average of 42 days to fill the position—during which teams operate at 65% efficiency, costing another $20,000 in lost productivity. Add recruitment costs, including advertising and interviewing ($24,000), onboarding and training the replacement ($40,000), and the productivity ramp-up period where the new hire operates at partial capacity for up to six months ($25,000). We haven't even factored in the cultural impact, lost institutional knowledge, or dampened team morale.

Total price tag? Anywhere from $90,000 to $160,000—per departure. And that's assuming you can find a replacement in this market.

What’s more is that 77% of the time, when someone walks away from your business, it’s preventable. And that’s not just my opinion, but proven research from the Work Institute.

While we’re all obsessing over the obvious costs, we’re missing the deeper story. Most people aren’t leaving for more money. Glassdoor found that 80% of employees would rather have a healthier workplace than a bigger paycheque, but we’ll never know what “better” looks like if we don’t get honest about why they’re really leaving.

You may like this: What Companies Can Do To Keep Employee Engagement High

Here's a radical proposition: What if we compensated departing employees for their candid and thorough feedback?

I propose we pay departing employees a substantial exit interview fee—say, $1,000—for an hour of brutal honesty. (I’d love it to be plunked down on the desk in cash, but that’s likely impractical.) Here we are pressing to move beyond the avoidant and sanitised version of the truth we usually get. We need unvarnished details about the interpersonal friction, the workload-breaking points, the logistical nightmares, and the leadership disconnects that actually drove them to take that recruiter call. We would share that we’re paying them because we truly care, because the full truth will make many of their ex-colleagues happier, and we need to stress that it is safe for them to be honest.

How do we ensure this investment delivers real value? How do we protect both the company and the departing employee? Here's the framework:

1. Third-Party Neutrality: Partner with an independent firm to conduct interviews, ensuring confidentiality and reducing fear of repercussions. This creates a safe space for honesty while maintaining professional distance.
2. Structured Accountability: Design a comprehensive interview protocol that requires specific examples and detailed scenarios, making it difficult to provide vague or superficial responses. The payment is contingent on meeting these depth requirements.
3. Data Aggregation and Analysis: Individual interviews become part of an anonymised database, analysed for patterns and trends. This transforms personal stories into actionable intelligence while protecting individual privacy.
4. Clear Contractual Terms: A simple agreement outlines the expectations for both parties: honest, detailed feedback in exchange for compensation, with confidentiality guaranteed.
5. Application Discipline: Most importantly, commit to actually using the insights you gather to make meaningful changes.

In my work, I've seen that understanding teams before there's a problem is always best—it's preventative medicine versus an autopsy. But when someone's already heading out the door, a paid exit interview might be your last chance to learn what went wrong. Yes, some companies require exit interviews for severance, but there's a world of difference between checking a box and sharing genuine truth.

If you don't understand why someone left, you're destined to repeat the same patterns.

Read about this super tool- an employee engagement solution to prevent employee departure : 

Gold Employee Engagement Award for Budaya

Each unexplored departure makes you more likely to say expensive, painful goodbyes to others who'll leave for similar reasons.

Let me know what you discover when you're willing to pay for the truth.

This article was also published on Juliet Funt's LinkedIn