Conducting effective exit interviews with members

NWSA is an environmental service and leadership-development organization that partners with more than 125 community agencies and has members serving in individual placements or on field teams. They use the following exit interview strategies with their members.

Preparation

• Schedule interviews for about two days prior to the commencement ceremony; this leaves time to correct any oversights (like missing paperwork or being short on hours).
• Create a written evaluation form for the members to complete. It should enable the members to rate the program, staff, and support, as well as supply their contact information and plans for life after service. (Use the sample exit form for ideas when drafting one to use with your own members.)
• Ask members to come prepared with a final time sheet and logs, final site report, and written evaluation.
• Give members some questions to think about in advance that will form the basis of their interview. (Use the sample leader exit interview for ideas when creating questions to ask your own members.)

Action

• Spend about 10-15 minutes talking individually with each member about their experience. Tell them what they have done well during their year of service, as well as some things they may want to focus on for improvement in the future. Also ask them to speak freely about the program and how it might be improved.
• Perform an exit survey to gather valuable feedback that can help refine and improve your program and better serve your members' training needs. (Use the sample exit survey to put together ideas on how to gather feedback from your leaders and members as they finish your program.)

Implementation

• Consider having an outside evaluator do a pre- and post-service survey.
• NWSA has an independent company (Merit Research) give members a survey as they begin and end their service. The end survey takes about 20 minutes to fill out and is done just before the individual interviews are conducted. Merit Research analyzes the results and reports back to NWSA.
• Use the exit interview session as part of your end-of-year celebration preparation.
• NWSA calls in all the members of the team at the same time. As they are waiting for their individual interviews, they work on their group reflection piece for the commencement ceremony (e.g., skit, song, video). They also fill out a yearbook page with their photo on it. NWSA takes these pages and makes a book that is a nice take-away. All members get a copy and sign it at commencement, just like a high school yearbook.