Exit interview

[MiamiWindMachine]

I’m about to leave my job after five years. I was headhunted, so it wasn’t that I was particularly unhappy or desperate to leave - I just got a very good offer. I have a great relationship with my boss, who is disappointed I’m leaving, but understands that it’s a great opportunity. I’m glad to be leaving on good terms with her and the team and will only have good things to say about them in my exit interview.

However, I don’t feel the same way about HR. I know that, as a sector, it doesn’t exactly have a reputation for attracting the best and brightest, but this is genuinely the worst team I’ve ever come across in my career. I had to deal with the then Assistant UK Manager a couple of years back and she was robotic, utterly lacking in empathy and made several mistakes. She’s since been promoted to UK Manager 🙄

As you can tell, I have no time for her, but it isn’t about personal dislike. The whole department is run extremely poorly. Everything is very “computer sez no”; there’s nothing approaching common sense in any of their decisions. Last year, they opened the annual review feedback system - with a fixed window of two weeks - on 12 December. Our annual review deadline was Boxing Day. They used the same system to open an important survey on 17 December. It’s like Christmas and New Year - which in my experience roll around roughly every year - and all the associated disruption don’t exist in their world. They must have had complaints, because they moved the annual review forward by six weeks without a word, meaning you were buggered if you’d happened to book those two weeks off. There have been many other organisational issues too.

I wanted to say all this in my exit interview. But now I find they’re sending the most junior member of the team possible to do it. Not even the Assistant Manager; I’m essentially getting the secretary. I feel insulted, and it’s just another sign of their lack of interest, or even general critical thinking. They haven’t even bothered to find out whether the company is desperate to keep me or thrilled to be rid of me.

As I say, I wanted to talk up my boss and leave on a high note. But I feel like I have to get all this out there. Maybe it won’t do any good, but at least I’ve got closure.

WWYD?

Yeah, nothing you've described here is a massive issue (they listened to feedback and moved the year end process, so they can't be that bad).

You do sound rather entitled, patronising and disagreeable from that post.... I don't think anyone care that much about your opinion

OP, you really are coming across as very unpleasant. Why are you being so rude about someone who presumably has done nothing to you?

An exit interview is a tick box. Go if you wish and say nice things about your boss, decline politely if you don’t want to go. A HR leader wouldn’t do one, it’s not appropriate or part of their role.

There’s really no need to be so dramatic and unpleasant.

Additionally, there is always budget available to keep talented people, they just didn’t want to keep you enough to spend it.

Good luck in your new role, I hope you are outwardly much more pleasant than you are online.

@nikkiandham

Yes, that’s what I’m beginning to think too.

I’ve quite enjoyed reading the increasingly unhinged messages 😂

yep

OP - they really don’t give a hoot what you think.

but it’s funny that you think HR will grind to a standstill at the news you have opened up about them in your exit interview! 😂

I don’t understand why you ever thought that an exit interview with HR was the right forum to raise your issues with HR, however senior the person is who conducts it? Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
Surely as you’re so senior and important you talk about the HR issues to someone else senior who might have the ability to change things, giving constructive/positive suggestions for how things might be improved, rather than ranting aggressively as you have done here.
Equally you feed back about your boss being great to their boss.
Then turn down the exit interview.
It isn’t that complicated

Honestly op.
Terminology aside. The fact that they are sending a very junior member of staff to do the exit interview just confirms what most of us know. They're a box ticking exercise and, they don't want to waste further resources on someone who in effect has already left .
They end up in a drawer in most companies and that's without you going in and telling hr how terrible they are. Chances are yours wouldn't even make the drawer.
Also down the road If you were looking for a reference ( bosses leave) it would be hr who would be approached

It would achieve absolutely nothing and risk coming back to bite you down the track.

Just decline the exit interview and move on

that will be loud enough to hear outside the building i suspect

They haven’t even bothered to find out whether the company is desperate to keep me or thrilled to be rid of me.

they have OP. Otherwise why would they be sending the most junior member of staff.

You sound about 15.

I bet the OP is the kind of person who doesn't clear their table in a cafe because "that's what they pay those people for".

Christ, some people really get their kicks out of playing the school bully.

You sound like you don’t understand the real world.

I’ve said nothing of the sort.

oh to be a fly on the wall at both the HR meeting and, more joyously, the office following DD (Departure Day).

That is quite an extrapolation from 4 valid words

Somebody was very reactive at MNHQ last night - did they even read posts before deleting?
It's a shame because the OP has failed to accept the way they communicate is problematic. It's not an HR problem, it's more likely, based on the communications on this thread - an OP problem. But given my other posts were deleted - I fully expect this one to be zapped too! Maybe OP next time you want to ask for advice - try not to insult other people by for example, referring to them as secretaries to devalue their role - it does not make you look big or clever.

Some of the deleted posts weren't in breach of talk guidelines, so I can't work out why they went. 🤷‍♀️

FWIW, my exit interview was alright yesterday.