Exit Interviews and Counter Offers

I promised a couple of weeks back, when I wrote on interviews that I would come back with the sequel to that, which is on exit interviews and counter offers.

I must admit that I have been through this cycle only once so far, and I only wish I be spared of the latter forever. The reason for this, you will discover towards the second half of this post.

The idea behind exit interviews, is to figure out what were the niggles that the employee who is quitting faced, during his term with the company, so that the company can figure out, whether there is anything within its reach to improve the overall employee satisfaction quotient.

There are two ways of doing this, the formal way of asking them to fill a form, and then ask them, how they are sure that their next employment is indeed a greener pasture, and not a mirage, in a very constructive manner. But the one, in which I was interviewed when I quit one ofmy revious employers was a very novel approach – aggressive, intimidating, provocative, and most importantly very very effective.

Here our Chief HR Coordinator was trying to prove a point that my next employment was going to be nothing but a mundane assignment which can be done by college dropouts.

Now, this is something hurts your ego straight up, and then you start defending your decision, and then, just when you are finding your feet, you start cribbing about the current job, and say it is much worse than what she makes out of my next employment opportunity.

Now, when I am through with this question, HR gets an idea of what I felt was lacking in that company.

Then, to see if I am really firm on my decision, then comes a googly, which talks about exploring other opportunities than the one I am supposed to do. This one, checks if I have taken a decision in my senses, or just out of insane frustration.

My heartfelt sympathies are always with HR, as they normally have no clue when the recruitment happens, as HR is informed about the candidate after the entire Line has cleared it. So HR interviews are more or less a formality. And when the employee quits, the Line would that the HR gets to face the wrath of the departing employee, and the Line will keep quiet.

But having said that, I would be conveying only half truth, as the Line indulges itself in what is called the Counter Offer tactics.

This is basically done to drop the bait that the increment cycle is just round the corner, and also to promise that you will be compensated pie to pie with the new offer. If you are too good, the promise is that your pay scale with an unbelievable short period, so on and so forth.

My strong opinion is that, doling out counter offer is an unethical and also a lazy approach, to keep the attrition at bay.
Unethical, as the practitioners feel that money is all that matters in career management. Maybe to an extent, but not the be all and end all.
Lazy, because, you have a futile appraisal procedure, and you expect the employment market to value your resources and keep equating the best offers as time goes by.

Just like corruption, where both the parties bribing and bribed are at equal fault, same applies to counter offers.

More the number of employees, who expect salary hikes, by producing offer of employment from the next employer to the current employer, it would turn out to be more demoralizing for the peer employee community, and make them feel that they are losing by not practicing job hopping mock drills.

I welcome your comments on this, as I think that each one of us has our opinion on best practices with respect to parting techniques .