-3

How can I give feedback about employee retention to a company I am leaving?

I am leaving a non-software company after working there as a software developer for a relatively short time due to a variety of red flag issues. Among these issues are problems of poor onboarding and training of new employees, lack of knowledge and/or silo'd knowledge, and certain employees being bottlenecks for others.

In my personal opinion, these issues are in no small part due to being understaffed, as well as having the staff that does exist be inexperienced and unable to train each other. A solution to such a problem would be to hire more quality workers and to invest heavily into them.

I would like to leave constructive feedback with the company as I leave, during the exit interview or through dialog. However, I feel that my feedback would be hypocritical. My advice for solving these problems is to hire and retain more good developers, but I, as a new (and I like to think good) developer, don't want to stay there myself. Under this thought process, the company is in a Catch 22 of needing to hire more good developers to solve their problems, but also need to solve their problems before more good developers may want to work there. This is a paradoxical problem, and one that I myself am perpetuating by leaving.

How can I give constructive, polite, appropriate advice in this situation? Does voicing this opinion make me seem hypocritical, rude, unprofessional, or in any way negative? Is there a better way to positively spin this issue?

Southpaw Hare
  • 1,237
  • 1
  • 15
  • 21
  • If they ask for your feedback then you may voice. I bet your exit interview if you even have one is a junior HR person that has no power to fix anything. And his/her report will never be read. – paparazzo Oct 25 '17 at 14:53
  • Not hypocritical unless they put those processes in place already and you haven't given them a chance to work. – PoloHoleSet Oct 25 '17 at 15:33

4 Answers4

3

As you're leaving, any 'advice' you give them will be probably ignored. All you can do in an exit interview is explain (if asked) why you're leaving, and what they could have done to entice you to stay. Anything else is their problem.

PeteCon
  • 32,805
  • 12
  • 82
  • 116
2

The answer is, you can´t!

Your resignation should neutral an just be confined to the basics. If you decide to part from your employer, you no longer have a stake there. They have to figure it out for themselves.

Anything else you say can, worst case, reflect bad on yourself - and best case, do nothing for you.

See also this Question

Daniel
  • 22,310
  • 11
  • 52
  • 80
1

You are indeed furthering their retention crisis by leaving, but you are not responsible for fixing it. That is the company's task.

It seems you are not leaving the company due to employee retention, but because of the underlying reasons. There is a good chance, whether they want to admit it or not, that they are aware of these problems. If you feel that new starts are not being properly trained or that some critical knowledge is being hoarded by a small number of employees, or indeed that you are not so understaffed, but the existing ones are severely overworked.

It is fair to bring your misgivings up during your exit interview, so long as you are not too insulting, nor are you singling out any particular individuals (again, they probably know who the real problem employees are already!).

1

How can I give constructive, polite, appropriate advice in this situation? Does voicing this opinion make me seem hypocritical, rude, unprofessional, or in any way negative?

Voicing your opinions in a polite way is hardly seen as negative. However, doing so when you are leaving the company may be seen with different eyes than if you tried to address the issue before quitting (probably less receptive, as it may be taken as some sort of mild rant).

A polite way of doing this would be in person with your manager, telling him without going too deep into details or reasons the points you think can help them as a company. Try to phrase them in a constructive way (instead of "X thing is not working" try "maybe doing Y will help you more") to increase your chances of your feedback to be taken positively.

However, have in mind that even though you mean good, they might as well just ignore your advice. It is not so likely that they will listen to your advice if you only gave it once and when leaving the company.

Anyways, I would refrain from giving feedback at all. Personally I would have done it before quitting; saying it now may result in some sour experience or if they take it wrong even some bridge burning.

DarkCygnus
  • 83,211
  • 31
  • 198
  • 309