Exit interview template and best practices for Australian businesses

When someone resigns, it's natural to focus on the mechanics: the notice period, the handover plan, the final pay run, and of course, the farewell card. The exit interview slides down the list, or gets treated as a formality on the way out. That's a wasted opportunity. A departing employee will tell you things nobody still on payroll will, and once they've gone, so has the feedback.

This guide is written for Australian HR teams and managers. It covers what an exit interview is and why it earns its place in offboarding, the questions worth asking (with examples), a five-step process for running the conversation, the mistakes that spoil your data, and three free templates you can download and adapt. It also covers the obligations that sit around a departure in Australia, from notice periods to final pay, because a good exit is more than a good conversation.

What is an exit interview?

An exit interview is a structured conversation with a departing employee, usually held in their final week or two, to understand why they're leaving and what their experience was really like. It's typically run by HR rather than the employee's direct manager, because people speak more freely to someone who didn't write their performance reviews. Some businesses use an external third party for the same reason.

For the employee, it's a rare chance to be candid without consequences. For you, it's primary-source research on your own organisation: what's working, what isn't, and what finally prompted someone to act.

It's worth separating the exit interview from its close relatives:

• A stay interview asks similar questions of people who haven't resigned, so you can fix problems while they're still fixable. 

• An exit survey collects structured feedback through a form rather than a conversation. 

All three have a place, but the exit interview is the only one that combines depth with the honesty of someone who no longer has anything to lose.

Why exit interviews matter

Turnover in Australia is slowing, but it hasn't stopped. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show just over one million employed Australians, or 7.2%, changed employer or business in the year to February 2026. A quarter of everyone who left or lost a job did so to get a better one, or simply because they wanted a change.

That second number is the one I'd sit with. Every one of those departures is a data point about pay, management, workload, or growth that a business either captured or let walk out the door. In Rippling's State of HR report, HR leaders named recruiting and retention as their number one priority. Exit interviews are the cheapest retention research you'll run: specific, first-hand, and free of the flattery that colours engagement surveys.

The commercial case is straightforward. Every departure carries a recruitment bill, months of ramp-up for the replacement, and the knowledge that leaves with the person. If exit feedback helps you prevent even a handful of resignations a year, those half-hour conversations pay for themselves many times over.

Run well, they do two other jobs as well. Patterns across interviews surface problems early, before they show up in your employee retention numbers. One person complaining about a manager is a data point; four people in six months is a finding. And a respectful exit keeps former employees onside. They refer candidates, speak well of you in the market, and sometimes come back with more experience than they left with.

What to ask in an exit interview

You’ll want to capture the admin first: name, role, department, manager, start and end dates, and who's running the interview. Then build your questions around the areas below. You won't need every question in every interview, so pick the ones that fit the person and the circumstances, and let the conversation breathe.

Reason for leaving

Start with the core question: what made them decide to go? 

A better offer, a manager, burnout, family, a career change. The answer shapes the rest of the conversation and tells you which part of your HR strategy needs attention. Listen for the difference between the trigger (the offer that landed last month) and the cause (the eighteen months of frustration before it).

Questions to try:

• What made you start looking, and when did that begin?

• Was there a moment when you decided it was time to go?

• What would have needed to change for you to stay?

Pay and benefits

Ask whether their pay, super, and benefits felt competitive for the work they did. Departing employees are often pretty honest about money, especially if a better offer is what moved them. If the same gap keeps coming up, that's your benchmark data.

Questions to try:

• Did your pay and benefits feel fair for the work you were doing?

• How did the offer you accepted compare, beyond the salary figure?

Role clarity and workload

Did the job match the one they were hired for? Ask about workload, expectations, and whether their skills were used well. Mismatches here often trace back to the job ad or the interview process, which is useful intel for your talent attraction work.

Questions to try:

• How closely did the role match what you expected when you accepted it?

• Was your workload sustainable, and did that change over time?

Management and team

Ask how they'd describe the support, feedback, and communication they got from their manager. Poor management is one of the most common reasons people leave, and it rarely shows up in surveys while people still report to that manager. I’d keep the questions about behaviours rather than personalities though, and ask for examples.

Questions to try:

• How would you describe the feedback and support you got from your manager?

• Did you feel your concerns were heard when you raised them?

Culture and environment

Ask what they'd tell a friend thinking about joining. Answers about workplace culture tend to be more honest at the exit than at any other point in the employee life cycle. Probe for the gap between the culture you describe in job ads and the one people experience day to day.

Questions to try:

• How would you describe the culture here to a friend considering a role?

• What's one thing about working here that outsiders wouldn't guess?

Growth and development

Ask whether they saw a future for themselves in the business, and what training or progression was missing. Stalled growth is a slow-burn reason for leaving. It rarely triggers the resignation on its own, but it makes every outside offer look better.

Questions to try:

• Did you see a path forward for yourself here? What did it look like?

• What training or development did you want but not get?

Suggestions and advocacy

Close with two questions. What one thing would they change? And would they recommend the company as a place to work? The first gives you a concrete action. The second is the bluntest possible read on your employer brand.

How to run an exit interview: 5 steps

A good exit interview is a bit of a process. You don't need a gifted interviewer, but you do need a structure that makes candour easy and follow-through automatic. These five steps cover it.

Step 1: Schedule it before the final-day rush

Book the interview towards the end of the notice period, but not on the last day. By then, people are mentally out the door and surrounded by goodbyes, and the conversation gets the leftovers of their attention. A few days before the end tends to hit the balance: close enough to the exit that they'll speak freely, far enough from it that they're still engaged.

Give them the questions, or at least the topics, a few days ahead. Reflection produces better answers than ambush, and it signals you're taking their feedback seriously rather than ticking a box.

Step 2: Set it up for candour

Hold it somewhere private, or on a video call if the employee works remotely. Use a neutral interviewer where you can; HR or a trained third party gets franker answers than the person's own manager, particularly when the manager is part of the story.

Explain up front how the feedback will be used and who'll see it. Be specific: themes shared with leadership, names kept out of reports, notes stored with limited access. People open up when they know where their words are going. Vague promises of confidentiality do the opposite, because everyone has heard those before.

Step 3: Ask, then listen

Open-ended questions do the heavy lifting. Swap “Were you happy here?” for “What parts of the job did you enjoy, and what wore you down?” Follow up on anything vague, and when they criticise something, ask for a specific example rather than defending it. If they hesitate, pause. Silence feels awkward and works anyway.

If the conversation reaches sensitive ground (a complaint about a named manager, a bullying allegation, anything that could become a formal matter) stay neutral and take it seriously. Ask what happened, when, and whether it was reported. Don't promise outcomes in the room, and don't argue. Some feedback needs escalation rather than aggregation, and knowing the difference is part of the interviewer's job.

Step 4: Take notes worth keeping

Use a structured template (below) so every interview covers the same ground and answers can be compared over time. Record themes and specifics, not just impressions: “felt underpaid after the restructure” is usable, “seemed unhappy” isn't. Note direct quotes where they capture something sharply, and mark anything that needs follow-up.

Remember the notes contain personal information. Store them securely, limit who can access them, and handle them in line with your privacy obligations. A departing employee's honesty is conditional on you treating it carefully after they've gone.

Step 5: Close well, then act

Thank them, wish them well, and mean it. How the conversation ends is what they'll repeat to their network.

Afterwards, look for patterns across interviews rather than reacting to one person's bad quarter. Aggregate quarterly or half-yearly, depending on your headcount, and cut the data by team, tenure, and reason for leaving. Share the themes with leadership, agree on actions with owners and dates, and track whether they happen. Then close the loop with current staff where you can. “We changed the on-call roster because of feedback from departing engineers” does more for trust than any values poster.

Common exit interview mistakes

Most exit interview problems come from the interviewer's side of the table. These are the ones that do the most damage.

Asking leading questions

“You're leaving because of the restructure, aren't you?” confirms your assumptions instead of testing them. The employee, wanting a smooth exit, will usually just agree. Ask what made them decide it was time, then stop talking. If you already know the answer to every question you ask, you're not running an interview, you're running a script.

Defending the company

The moment you push back on criticism, the honest part of the interview is over. It doesn't matter whether the criticism is fair. You're there to collect it, not to litigate it. If something needs correcting for the record, do it later and elsewhere.

Treating it as a formality

If you're reading questions off a sheet while thinking about your next meeting, the employee will match your effort. Flat, rushed exit interviews produce flat, useless data, and they leave the person with a final impression that the company stopped caring the moment they resigned.

Promising confidentiality you can't keep

If a serious allegation surfaces, you may be obliged to act on it, and acting on it may reveal the source. Promise careful handling, not absolute secrecy. “We'll keep your name out of any reporting, but if you raise something serious we may need to follow it up” is honest, and honesty is the whole point of the exercise.

Only interviewing the exits you regret

It's tempting to save the effort for star performers and skip everyone else. That skews your data. The middling performer who drifted away often knows more about your management gaps than the star who got poached. Interview consistently, or your patterns will be patterns in who you asked, not in why people leave.

Collecting feedback and doing nothing

This is the one I'd push hardest on. Employees talk to each other. When departing colleagues' feedback disappears into a drawer, current staff learn that speaking up changes nothing, and your next round of exit interviews gets politer and emptier. If you're not going to act on the feedback, you're better off not collecting it.

Exit interview templates

A template keeps the conversation structured without making it robotic. I’d recommend using it to guide the discussion, follow the natural flow, and ask follow-ups where something deserves more detail. Consistency matters more than you might expect: when every interview covers the same ground, you can compare answers across departures and spot trends, which is where the real value sits.

Here are three to download and adapt:

• Simplified exit interview template: for when time is short or you only need feedback in specific areas. Covers the essentials, reason for leaving, standout positives and negatives, and one improvement, in a format you can run in 15 minutes.

• In-depth exit interview template: the standard option for most departures. Works through all the question areas above, from compensation to culture to advocacy, with room for follow-ups.

• Termination exit interview template: participation after a termination is voluntary, but where a former employee agrees, the feedback can be worth having. The questions are adjusted for the circumstances. You can raise it in the termination letter if it's appropriate.

To customise a template, make a copy, then add or remove questions to suit your industry and the role. Reminder to keep them open-ended, and resist the urge to add so many that the conversation becomes a checklist.

What else happens when someone leaves an Australian business

The exit interview isn't a legal requirement, but plenty of what surrounds it is. Getting the obligations right protects the goodwill the interview builds; nothing sours a warm farewell like a short final pay. Here’s three things you’ll need to have prioritised:

• Notice: Minimum notice periods for employer-initiated terminations are set by the National Employment Standards, and you must give written notice of the termination date. When an employee resigns, their notice comes from their award, agreement, or contract. In a genuine redundancy, redundancy pay may also apply on top.

• Final pay: Unused annual leave is paid out when employment ends, and that includes annual leave loading where the employee would have received it, even if an award says otherwise. Check the relevant award or agreement for how quickly final pay is due, and reconcile leave balances before the last pay run rather than after it.

• Records: Interview notes and offboarding paperwork contain personal information. Store them securely, limit access to the people who need it, and be deliberate about how long you keep them.

None of this belongs in the interview itself. It belongs in your offboarding checklist, running alongside it, so the person's last interaction with your payroll and IT is as tidy as their last conversation with HR.

How Rippling helps you run better exits

Offboarding usually fails between systems. HR closes out the interview, but IT doesn't hear about the departure until after the person's last day, and payroll finds out about the leave balance at the final pay run. Rippling removes the relay race: HR, IT, and payroll run on one platform, working from a single employee record.

Set an end date in Rippling and the rest can follow automatically. Use employee surveys to capture structured exit feedback you can compare across departures, so the patterns in the fifth step I mentioned above surface themselves instead of living in someone's notebook. App access winds back and devices get recalled on schedule. Final pay draws on the same leave balances your HRIS already holds, so nothing needs doing manually.

Custom workflows keep every step consistent, which reduces compliance risk and means no departure depends on someone remembering the process. And because everything runs on one data model, Rippling's AI and reporting tools can answer questions across HR, IT, and payroll without stitching exports together.

Exit interview FAQs

Are exit interviews mandatory in Australia?

No. Nothing in the Fair Work Act or the National Employment Standards requires exit interviews. They're a best-practice step most businesses build into offboarding because the feedback is hard to get any other way.

Do employees have to take part in an exit interview?

No. Participation in exit interviews is voluntary, and you can't compel a current or former employee to attend one. Most people say yes when the invitation is respectful and the purpose is clear. If someone declines, offer a short exit survey instead and leave it there.

How long should an exit interview take?

Exit interviews should take somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour. Long enough for real answers, short enough to respect everyone's time. The simplified template runs shorter, which I’d recommend using when the circumstances don't warrant the full conversation.

Who should run the exit interview?

HR, in most cases, should run the exit interview. A neutral interviewer gets more honest answers than the person's direct manager, particularly when the manager is part of the reason they're leaving. Some businesses use a third party for extra distance, which I think can work well too.

Who sees the exit interview feedback?

Who sees the feedback is your call, but decide it before the interview and tell the employee. A common approach: the interviewer and HR see the full notes, leadership sees aggregated themes without names, and anything serious gets escalated through your normal channels. Whatever you choose, apply it consistently.

What's the difference between an exit interview and an exit survey?

An exit interview is a conversation, live and open-ended, which suits depth and follow-up questions. An exit survey is a standardised form, which suits scale and comparison. Plenty of businesses use both: a survey for every departure, an interview where the role or the reason warrants one.

Should you hold an exit interview after a termination?

You can invite an exit interview after termination, but participation is voluntary and you can't force it. Where the termination wasn't for serious misconduct, some former employees will still share useful feedback. An exit survey is often the more comfortable option for both sides.

Can exit interviews be run remotely?

Yes. A video call exit interview preserves the face-to-face dynamic, and for remote employees it's the natural format. The same rules apply: private setting, neutral interviewer, open-ended questions.