Frequently Asked Questions
Why did we start this company?
People leave jobs every day for a wide range of reasons. Some are personal, but some are because of serious problems. We have seen too many examples where those problems aren’t mentioned and go on too long. We challenged ourselves to understand why employees tend not to raise these issues and what we could do to solve the problem.
The TL;DR version is that valuable information is walking out of the door; denying you the chance to fix things.
Have we had any positive surprises?
Yes, we’ve been really delighted to see some of our clients using our product to measure the effectiveness of their retention initiatives. One new client had given employees substantial salary increases to reduce attrition in one of their technical functions. This initiative had not been successful. The data we provided supported the design and implementation of a new, far more successful and far more cost-effective initiative.
Is the survey really anonymous?
Yes, it really is. We generate a survey code and send that to our client. Our client then sends this survey code to all employees who leave within a defined period (typically 3 months). When an ex-employee uses this code, all we know about them is that they left a particular company within a three-month period. The company they used to work for, has no way of knowing whether they have accessed the survey or not.
Yes, but surely the company will be able to tell based on the response received?
We do ask ex-employees if they would be prepared to provide some demographic data, such as department, length of service etc. but we “bucket” this data (e.g. less than 1 yr, 1- 3 yrs, 3+ years). We do not provide information to our clients unless there are a minimum of 10 responses per “bucket”. So, for example if 11 people leave the sales organization in one reporting period but those 11 people are spread across all 3 time buckets then we will not provide a breakout by time bucket.
We do enable ex-employees to provide free text responses, but we never quote these responses verbatim to our clients. Instead, we use artificial intelligence to extract the essence of the comment in a way that completely prevents identification based on language used.
I see that the survey is anonymous, how do you stop malicious responses?
Anonymity is essential to the integrity of our product. People will not tell the truth if they fear repercussions. The risk that this anonymity creates is that people can say things that they don’t have to stand behind and, unchecked, this can be a serious issue.
We have designed our processes to minimize the impact of any malicious responses. Firstly, we aggregate data, so if we have 1 malicious response to 9 neutral ones, then the impact of that malicious response is reduced. Secondly, we compare data over time (what we call longitudinally) and across different data sets, so this eliminates the impact of “typical” malicious activity on the results. Finally, we have protocols in place to identify the type of unusual activity that would be required for malicious activity to impact our reported results.
What are these protocols?
When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to define pornography, he responded: “you know it when you see it” and we can say much the same here. We do these surveys day in day, day out. We have very clear patterns of response behavior, and we know when something doesn’t look right. We know how many people typically respond and when they do so. We know the types of issues people typically raise and we know how often they typically name individuals (the most pernicious type of malicious response). If responses deviate too far from these norms, then we conduct an additional review.
We will say this, it is extremely rare to find truly malicious responses. Rather what we typically see is an unusual pattern of behaviour that flags as potentially malicious but on further analysis is related to issues that have been already raised, albeit in a less provocative way.
Can you give us an example?
Yes. We received a flurry of responses complaining about a specific individual. The responses named the person and accused them of behaving in an unacceptable way. Our systems flagged these responses, and our initial review suggested that they were indeed malicious. However, on further analysis we were able to see that they were similar (albeit more explicit) to information we had received previously. On this basis, we contacted our client and explained the situation. Our client told us immediately that these concerns were not new, but that nobody had come forward with a specific allegation before. On the basis of the information we provided, our client did a detailed investigation and found that the allegations were factually accurate and they took appropriate action. Once the individual had left the company, many other employees came forward to share their experiences.
We can just run a survey like this ourselves, why should we use you?
Companies can run this survey. However, our clients tell us they appreciate our service for two primary reasons, firstly the anonymity we provide does encourage people to be more forthright in their answers and secondly, we are able to compare results with other companies, providing valuable additional context. Often when attrition is high, it is easy to assume it is based on broader economic factors (ex: the Great Resignation). Our contextual reports give companies specific, actionable data.
Completing this exit interview process like this feels impersonal, perhaps even disrespectful?
We recommend that all our clients take the time to explain to their employees that:
- collecting data is an important part of their decision making,
- that they recognize that providing honest feedback is not easy, and
- they have taken action to make it as easy as possible.
We also recommend that our clients maintain an alumni organization so that they can keep ex-employees up to date with exciting developments at the company. It is not at all uncommon for an ex-employee to feel that they have made a mistake and want to return. Maintaining contact is an important way to make them feel they can ask.
How much does this service cost?
We offer a fixed fee based on company size, but our offering can be tailored to suit each individual client – for example, surveys in different languages, the option for respondents to speak to an individual rather than complete a survey and the option for us to provide additional consulting services based on the results we gather. Our typical annual fee ranges between US$15,000 to US$50,000 per annum. To put this into context, Gallup found that the cost of losing an employee ranges between 40% and 200% of salary. Our clients report that the data we provide helps them directly address the causes of attrition, and to measure the effectiveness of their initiatives. Our clients also tell us that they have been able to reallocate staff from conducting exit interviews, to allow them to focus on developing solutions to address the concerns we’ve identified.
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