Hi,
Nothing to worry about - exit interviews are very standard process at professional companies, it is a requirement to check you aren't going to bring a case for constructive dismissal and usually management do want to hear the feedback so they can consider how to retain staff.
In all honesty they may have wanted to manage you out of the business, if you took up a lot of management time complaining about all your issues.
At your exit issue, state your reasons for leaving when asked but keep it brief, factual and simple. Try to give tangible examples, things that are actionable for the employer to address. You already have another job to go to, and need to work your notice without exacerbating your MH issues, so don't go to the interview in a state of high emotional stress and word-vomit all your complaints at the HR person.
I'm confused who this "coach" is - that's a weird job title. Did you not have a line manager? A coach would not typically assign work, or have any power over the process. At most thwy may be able to advocate for you with a manager. But usually a coach would be helping YOU to figure out how to solve a problem YOURSELF. Can you explain more about the coaching relationship?
I find it difficult from what you have written to really understand what you wanted the company to do differently. The only really tangible thing I can latch on to is you wanted them to give you more work. I cannot see any firm promoting you if you have not been utilised as there is going to be little evidence of your performance and little opportunity for you to grow and learn.
However as a manager of a team facing a greatly reduced amount of work to allocate between a team of employees, I would have been inclined NOT to risk burdening an employee with CEV family members and MH issues. Perhaps the management felt they were acting in your best interest but did not communicate it very well.
The diversity one is tricky as you haven't provided any examples. Just remember diversity cannot always be achieved overnight. What did you expect them to do and what did they fail to do? Do remember that many management teams were under a HUGE amount of pressure during covid, so I do think if they didn't revolutionise their group-think when you turned up complaining, it is perhaps because they had a lot of other things going on. A lot of changes have been put on hold to free up time to cope with covid.
A lot of managers at the firm where my DH is a senior manager, for example, picked up extra work due to junior staff being furloughed or their hours reduced. For example my DH had to go and do client's stocktakes during the pandemic, something he hasn't done for many years because his junior staff literally all said they were too scared to go because of covid, and their MH would suffer if they were made to do it. So my DH stepped up, even though he is asthmatic. He didn't make a song and dance, just suited up in PPE and crossed his fingers. If someone didn't do that work, the clients would have been let down and possibly lost, and then his employees would have been facing redundancy too. My poor DH did days and days of unpaid weekend overtime just to keep things ticking over. He also spent hours and hours and hours talking with young employees who had covid-related issues, and whose MH was in pieces, or had practical problems wfh in difficult situations. It was emotionally exhausting for him, he was working insane hours trying to help people remotely, keep certain staff from breaking down, manage client expectations during a time of turmoil so that people still had jobs to come back to. And he had his OWN mental health to manage too, and his own family.
The expectation and entitlement of some of his employees to have their MH problems catered to by their employer is frankly breathtaking, and many of these employees don't want to do ANYTHING to help themselves, they expect their employee to be parent, doctor, counsellor, educator. Then they complain bitterly.- it is always about their own needs and how unfair everything is - and at the same tkme they are jealous of peers and don't pull together as a team.
A lot goes on behind the scenes that you probably arent aware of at professional firms, some of it good, some not so good. If you try harder to step outside yourself and consider what else is going on around yoj, you might be better positioned to work out how to get what you want and bring about the change you want to see.
More than once I had to remind my DH he is a manager, not everyone's dad, and an employer DOES NOT have a "duty of care" - they have a contract with you, they have to abide by employment legislation. Yes many employers promise to try to help people to develop both personally and professionally, but if you are bringing a MH disability perhaps the symptoms made you very difficult to support and help, and perhaps the way you presented led the management to conclude it was in your best interest not to be given too much work in a period of time when the management was over-stretched by covid crisis. Perhaps they didnt want to put you into a performance management process, for example, during the pandemic. Perhaps your MH was adversely impacting your performance prior to covid and you weren't really listening to that message. (Why did you have a coach as well as a line manager?)
I can imagine his frustration if my DH had an employee feeling peeved about missed promotion in this time of crisis, and simultaneously complaining about lack of work, when so many clients were facing economic ruin. To be blunt, you are lucky to have a job and a choice of jobs to go to.
Just try to remember that the people you work for are only human, and they ALSO had huge changes to deal with, they ALSO may have families with CEV issues, wfh under huge stress.
In fairness to your employer also: a coach's role is NOT to fix your problems. Go and look up what a coach does. Their role is to help YOU to improve your work performance, often this involves asking thought-provoking questions to help the coachee make important decisions, undertake behavioral changes and take action themselves. Would this explain the question about working for a charity? It sounds like you were making impassioned statements about diversity issues and at the same time making it abundantly clear how much you didnt enjoy working at your current job.
Sometimes when there is a bad "fit" between a company and a new employee, it just takes time to settle down. It has been a hugely disrupted year, and it sounds like you have experienced poor communication, possibly misunderstood the coaching process, and cut the people you work for absolutely NO slack whatsoever as they worked through one of the most challenging times in recent history.
Take some time to reflect on what you would do differently if this happened again in your next job, and consider how to develop your skills in the areas of persuasiveness, empathy, and communicating effectively with senior people.