Exit Survey Questions: 45 Employee Exit Survey Questions

The best exit survey questions ask why the person is leaving, what would have kept them, and how they rate the things you can change: their manager, workload, growth, pay and culture. A good employee exit survey has 10 to 15 of these questions, mixes ratings with a few open answers, and goes out in the employee's last week or shortly after they leave. Below are 45 questions grouped by theme, a short core set, and guidance on anonymity, timing and what to do with the answers.

The 10 core exit survey questions

If you only use ten, use these. They cover the reason, the fix and the trend.

What is the main reason you decided to leave? (multiple choice, with "Other")
Were there other reasons? (multiple selection)
What could we have done to keep you?
When did you first start thinking about leaving?
How would you rate the support you got from your manager? (1-5)
How manageable was your workload? (1-5)
How would you rate your opportunities to grow here? (1-5)
How fair was your pay and benefits for the role? (1-5)
Would you consider working here again? (Yes / maybe / no)
Is there anything else you want us to know?

Our employee exit survey template is built around this set, with department and tenure questions at the start for grouping results.

Exit survey vs exit interview

	Exit survey	Exit interview
Format	Online form, self-completed	Conversation with HR or a neutral person
Anonymity	Can be anonymous	Named by nature
Comparable data	High: same questions for everyone	Lower: depends on the interviewer
Depth	Limited to what people write	Can follow up on answers
Best for	Spotting patterns across many leavers	Understanding key or senior departures

Many organizations use both: a survey for everyone, and an interview for regretted losses or anyone who wants one. Harvard Business Review's "Making Exit Interviews Count" argues that many exit programs fail to produce useful information, largely because of poor data quality; asking everyone the same well-designed questions is one way to fix that.

Exit survey questions by theme

Pick the themes that matter for your organization and two or three questions from each. Rating questions use a 1-5 scale unless noted.

Reasons for leaving

What is the main reason you are leaving? (Better pay elsewhere, career growth, manager, workload or stress, culture, flexibility or location, personal or family reasons, relocation, retirement, return to study, other)
Which other reasons played a part?
When did you first start looking for a new role?
Was there a specific moment or event that made you decide to leave?
Did you raise any of these issues with anyone before deciding? What happened?
What could we have done to keep you?

The role and workload

How closely did the job match what was described when you were hired?
How manageable was your workload?
Did you have the tools and resources you needed to do your job well?
How clear were your responsibilities and goals?
How often did you feel your work made a difference?
What part of your job did you enjoy most?
What part would you change for the next person in this role?

Manager and leadership

How would you rate the support you received from your manager?
How often did you get useful feedback on your work?
Did your manager recognize your contributions? (Never, rarely, sometimes, often, always)
Did you feel comfortable raising concerns with your manager?
How much did you trust senior leadership's decisions?
How well did leadership communicate changes that affected you?
What should your manager start, stop or continue doing?

Growth and development

How would you rate your opportunities to learn and grow here?
Did you have a clear path for promotion or progression?
Did you get the training you needed for your role?
Is there a skill or opportunity you hoped to get here but didn't?
Would an internal move or different role have kept you? Which one?

Pay, benefits and flexibility

How fair was your pay for the work you did?
How satisfied were you with the benefits?
Which benefit did you value most, and which did you miss?
How satisfied were you with your schedule and flexibility (hours, remote or hybrid work)?
Does your new role offer something we don't? What?

Culture, team and wellbeing

How would you describe the culture here in a few words?
Did you feel you belonged on your team?
How well did your team work together?
Did you feel treated fairly and with respect?
Did you experience or witness behavior that should be looked into? (Offer a confidential route to report it; see below.)
How would you rate your work-life balance?
How often did you feel stressed or burned out?

Onboarding and offboarding

Looking back, how well did onboarding prepare you for the role?
How smooth has your offboarding been so far?
Is there knowledge or a handover detail that might get lost when you go?

Looking back and looking ahead

Would you consider working here again in the future? (Yes / maybe / no)
How likely are you to recommend this company as a place to work? (0-10)
What should we keep doing because it works?
If you were in charge, what is the first thing you would change?
Is there anything else you would like to share?

The 0-10 recommend question gives you an employee Net Promoter-style score, which you can compare with the same question in your employee engagement survey for current staff.

Questions to avoid

Questions about where they're going and the exact salary. Asking which company and how much they offered can feel intrusive. If you want the information, make it optional: "Roughly how does your new pay compare? (Higher, similar, lower, prefer not to say)".
Leading questions such as "Don't you agree our benefits are generous?"
Questions you won't act on. If nobody will read the open answers about the office, don't ask.
Double questions like "How were your manager and team?" Split them.
Anything that sounds like a test of loyalty or that could affect a reference. Say clearly that answers don't affect references or final pay.

Anonymous vs named exit surveys

	Anonymous	Confidential (named, limited access)	Named
Honesty	Highest	Good if people trust HR	Lowest
Follow-up possible	No	Yes, by HR only	Yes
Breakdown by team	Only if groups are large	Yes	Yes
Best for	Culture and manager issues	Most organizations	Small firms, regretted losses

A few practical points:

Be precise about what "anonymous" means. If you ask for department, tenure and role, a leaver from a five-person team is easy to identify. Either drop those fields for small teams or only report groups with enough responses, for example five or more.
Offer an optional name field at the end: "Leave your name if you'd like HR to follow up." This keeps the survey anonymous by default and lets people opt in.
Separate serious concerns. Harassment, discrimination or safety issues need a proper, confidential reporting route, not an anonymous text box nobody can follow up on. Link to it from the survey.

For setup details, see our guide on how to create an anonymous survey.

When to send an exit survey

There is no single right moment. Each option has a trade-off:

When notice is given: high response rate, but people are still working with their manager and may hold back.
During the last week (the most common choice): still engaged with the company, experience fresh, offboarding tasks give a natural moment to send it.
On the last day: quick reflections, but the day is busy and rushed answers are common.
One to three months after leaving: often the most candid answers, since nothing is at stake, but expect fewer responses and send it to a personal email collected during offboarding.

A combined approach works well: the core survey in the last week, plus an optional two-question check-in a couple of months later ("Looking back, what was the real reason you left?" and "Is there anything you'd tell us now that you didn't then?").

How to get honest, complete answers

Explain the purpose in one or two sentences at the start: who reads the answers, that they won't affect references, and what you've changed from past surveys.
Keep it short. Ten to fifteen questions, five to ten minutes. Mark only the reason-for-leaving question as required.
Send it from HR, not the manager, and never ask the manager to collect it.
Make it easy on a phone. Many leavers will fill it in after hours.
Thank them. End with a real thank-you and good wishes, not a marketing message.

Acting on exit survey results

The survey is only useful if the answers change something.

Code the reasons. Group the main reason and the open answers into a few themes (pay, manager, growth, workload, culture, personal) so you can count them.
Separate regretted from non-regretted leavers, and voluntary from involuntary exits. A pattern among people you wanted to keep matters most.
Look for patterns by department, manager, tenure and role, but only where groups are big enough to protect anonymity.
Compare with current staff. If leavers rate growth poorly and your engagement survey shows the same trend, you have a retention risk, not a one-off. Our employee satisfaction questions help you ask current staff the same things.
Report quarterly to leadership with themes, two or three quotes (anonymized), and one recommended action per theme.
Close the loop. Tell current employees what changed because of exit feedback. It shows the survey is worth answering honestly.

If you're trying to understand why customers cancel rather than why employees leave, that is a different survey; see customer exit surveys for SaaS churn.

How to run an exit survey in FlowyForm

Copy the employee exit survey template and pick the themes above that you need.
Use multiple choice with "Other" for the main reason, rating or opinion scale questions for manager, workload, growth and pay, and long text for "what could we have done."
Add logic so that picking "Manager" as a reason opens follow-up questions about management, and picking "Pay" opens the compensation questions. Everyone else skips them, which keeps the survey short.
Decide on identity. For an anonymous survey, don't ask for names and don't put identifying hidden fields in the link. For a confidential one, pass an employee ID as a hidden field (for example ?emp=1042) so nobody has to type it.
Share the link in your offboarding email or checklist, or embed the form on your HR intranet page.
Route responses to a private Google Sheet or a restricted Slack channel for HR, and export to CSV for quarterly analysis.

FAQ

What questions should be asked in an exit survey?

Ask the main reason for leaving, what would have kept the person, and ratings for manager support, workload, growth, pay and benefits, and culture. End with whether they would return and an open "anything else" question.

How many questions should an employee exit survey have?

Ten to fifteen questions, taking five to ten minutes. Use logic to show follow-up questions only for the reasons a person selected.

Should exit surveys be anonymous?

Anonymous or confidential surveys get more honest answers, especially about managers and culture. Anonymous surveys can't be followed up, so many organizations make them anonymous by default with an optional name field.

When should you send an exit survey?

Most organizations send it during the employee's last week. A short follow-up one to three months after they leave often gets more candid answers.

Is an exit survey mandatory?

Usually no. Make it voluntary, explain why you're asking, and say that answers won't affect references or final pay. Forced answers are rarely honest.

What is the difference between an exit survey and an exit interview?

An exit survey is a self-completed form with the same questions for everyone, which makes patterns easy to spot. An exit interview is a conversation that can go deeper but is harder to compare across people. Many companies use both.

Employee Exit Survey Questions: 45 Questions by Theme