Using Exit and Entrance Interviews to Learn From Staff Turnovers

Staff turnover is common. Leveraging that turnover for learning opportunities and growth is rare. Exit interviews, standard in the corporate world, are atypical in education. I have taught at five different schools and left each of them on good terms. I’ve always had to return my keys and computer, but on the way out, no one asked: What do you love about working here? What do we do really well? What might we do better?

Similarly, I’ve been a new teacher at five schools. While the new staff orientation tends to be exhaustive, never once did a colleague or an administrator ask me: What did your last school do that worked really well? What will you miss about your last school or district? What are two skills or talents you have in teaching?

The lack of entrance and exit interviews in education feels simple to explain:

• Interviews take time and time is limited.
• Coordinating the process and the data adds even more time.
• Gathering honest feedback is challenging, especially when exiting staff may need references.
• Finally, and most humanly, we don’t always want to hear what we can do better. Perhaps we already know what’s not working, or maybe we’re in denial of what’s not working, or maybe we’re afraid of the answer.

Simple enough to explain, yet hard to ignore the missed opportunity, because a transparent entrance and exit interview process models that the school is a group of people striving to grow, to do better. We celebrate our wins, but we also acknowledge our weaknesses so we can do better. Imagine the impact this alone could have on creating a culture that values growth, reflection, honesty, and learning.

In addition to helping shift school culture, an entrance and exit interview system can do the following:

• Identify concrete areas for growth that help shape goal setting.
• Provide inspiration, fodder, and resources for future professional learning opportunities, breakout sessions, or team goals.
• Identify areas that are already awesome for celebration and recognition.
• Offer closure to existing staff.

Here are some ideas for launching your own in-house system.

Identify your what and why

Approach the entrance and exit interview process with curiosity: Why are you gathering the data? What do you want to know? Are you curious about your school or classroom culture? Have you wondered what other administrators and teachers do to inspire the best in people? Interested in people’s interests and what makes them tick?

Given the time constraints, getting specific about your what and why will help ensure that the process is efficient as well as focused and effective.

In addition to understanding what you want to know and why, be honest with yourself regarding what action(s) you are and are not willing to explore. If you know you will not or cannot change something, perhaps don’t ask about that. Similarly, if you’re not in the mindset to receive wide-open and possibly blunt feedback, tailor the questions accordingly.

Example: There’s a lot of negativity and grumbling every time the staff gathers for meetings and for professional learning. You want to shift the culture around professional learning, and you have the freedom to identify professional development topics and resources. You design an entrance and exit interview process to crowdsource the best books, resources, tech tools, and training ideas for professional development (PD) that teachers have experienced.

These insights and recommendations then become the topics for monthly staff meetings and in-service days. Imagine the impact when a new staff member sees a strategy they shared integrated into staff PD.

Human insight is one of the most valuable resources in human-centered design. Getting specific about what you want to know and why will help you not only gather the best possible data but also build strategies to use that data.

The following questions can help you think about your what and why when tailoring your entrance and exit interviews:

• What challenges or frustrations are on your mind?
• What do you hear grumblings about?
• What information could help inform and support larger goals, initiatives, and objectives?

Identify your who and how

Once you know your goals for conducting an entrance or exit interview, you can better identify who you will ask, who should gather the information, and how the data will be gathered. Informed by what you want to know, target those in the best position to provide helpful feedback. While some goals might necessitate a wide net and lots of participation, some goals will have a narrow who: All exiting staff? Staff who served less than one year at any given building? All teachers new to the district? New teachers with three-plus years of prior teaching experience? Current teachers changing job titles or buildings?

Your who will also include who administers or conducts the interviews. A neutral party, like an HR representative, is ideal, but there are myriad options. Consider the impact of asking the resident critic—that team member who tends toward the negative—to help review and compile the data. You might ask a board member and an administrator from another building to help look through data and summarize the key findings.

Finally, consider how you will conduct your entrance or exit interviews. An anonymous survey feels like the best way to gather honest information from exiting staff and requires minimal time to facilitate. However, aim to interview new staff in person as part of their orientation process. The personalized touch, while time-consuming, will help build relationships and set the tone for curiosity.

Example: Staff turnover at one building is higher than the typical staff turnover. The why for the exit interview might be to identify possible root causes of the turnover. What you ask might focus on staff and building culture—how safe, happy, and satisfied people feel at work, or what the building does well and what does not work.

Your HR department will likely have insights and guidelines, too. Involve them in any entrance and exit process.

The following questions can help you think about your who and how:

• Who will lead the survey: Admin, HR, other teachers, a union rep? Who is most likely to yield reliable data?
• Who will you ask: Are entrance interviews for all new staff? Those who transitioned from another district or building? Do you want input from all exiting staff or only a specific subgroup? Might there be value in asking the whole staff from time to time?
• Who will review the data? How can you ensure that data gets to the people who need to hear or see it?
• How will you gather information? What format will help provide the most useful information in a reasonable amount of time: Formal interviews, surveys, informal conversations? Online or in person?

The time these conversations or surveys take pays off in so many ways. But remember: Just asking the questions isn’t enough. You must be prepared to make changes, adapt, and respond to the feedback. Asking and doing nothing is a waste of everyone’s time. Asking and then acting models a culture of growth and transparency, a desire to innovate, and a belief that teachers’ voices have value and their ideas matter. Imagine the long-term impact.

Is there a cost to this process? Absolutely. But the cost of letting all that human capital, expertise, and experience just vanish—that’s a much higher cost.