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Exit Interview Form & Question Bank for India

The exit interview is the last structured conversation you will ever have with somebody, and it is where things get said that were never said before. Most of it is feedback. One kind of thing is not, and the form most companies use files it in a spreadsheet with a manager's name on it. This is a form that knows the difference.

A form you can use on Monday, Parts A to D
Thirty questions, each with what it actually produces
Seven questions not to ask, and why

Instant download. No card needed.

Attendo presents

Exit Interview Form & Question Bank

For Indian employers

questions, with notes

ATTENDO PRESENTS

What's inside

What is in the file

Editable Word. Every placeholder is in [CAPITALS IN SQUARE BRACKETS] and names itself, so Find and Replace is safe.

Section 2

The form, in four parts

Part A is the twelve facts you need before the conversation, each one there because something downstream needs it. Part B is the conversation with room to write. Part C is the close. Part D is the interviewer's routing, which is not part of the attrition record and is the part that decides where anything difficult goes. It sits alongside the relieving letter rather than replacing anything in it.

Section 3

Thirty questions, and what each one gets you

Grouped by what you are trying to learn: why they are really leaving, the manager, role and growth, pay, culture, process, and the close. The third column is the point. Half the questions on a standard exit form produce a polite answer and nothing else, and this says which ones and what to ask instead.

Section 4

Three things that leave the exit process

A disclosure of harassment, a claim that money is owed, and anything about access, files or customer data. None of these is an exit interview finding. Each has somewhere else to be and a clock or a duty attached, and the pack says where each one goes and what you record instead.

Section 5

The clocks it sits inside

Wages within two working days, and leave encashment within two working days of its own under a different Code. Gratuity within thirty days where there are five years of service, and the duty to work out the amount does not wait for the employee to ask. A service certificate within ten days, but only at three hundred workers and above. None of them runs from the interview: they run from the separation, and they are usually running already. The leave encashment calculator does the last of those.

At the end

Seven questions not to ask

Including the line that appears on almost every exit form in India: 'I confirm I have no dues and no outstanding grievances.' It does not do what people think. It cannot foreclose a complaint under the POSH Act, to whichever committee covers you, and it cannot waive wages the Code on Wages makes payable. Asking somebody to sign it mainly signals that you expected a problem.

Attendo

Exits that close themselves

The settlement clock starts the day the resignation is accepted. Attendo holds attendance, leave balance and payroll together, so the final figure is ready when the date arrives.

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Why this matters

Why most exit interviews produce nothing

Three reasons, and none of them is the questions. The first is who runs it: if the reporting manager conducts the conversation you get a polite version of the truth, because the person opposite still needs a reference. The second is that the questions change every quarter, so no two leavers can be compared and the file becomes an archive nobody reads. The third is that nothing was decided in advance about what happens to the answers, so the interviewer hedges and the leaver notices.

Comparability is the whole value. One exit interview tells you about one person and is mostly noise. Ten of them asked the same way tell you that four people in the same team gave the same reason, which is a finding you can act on. That is why the pack says to pick ten to fifteen questions and keep them stable, and why the reason list is ten items rather than twenty: a taxonomy with twenty entries produces twenty buckets of one.

The question that earns its place is not 'why are you leaving'. It is 'did you raise any of this before you decided, and what happened'. The answer tells you whether your escalation routes work at all, and a run of people saying they raised nothing is not an attrition finding. It is a finding about whether anybody in your organisation can raise anything, which is a larger problem and a more fixable one.

Then there is the part nobody plans for. Ask somebody on their way out whether anything happened that was not okay, and sometimes the answer is yes. At that point you are not collecting feedback any more. Section 9(1) of the POSH Act gives an aggrieved woman three months from the incident to complain in writing to the Internal Committee, or to the Local Committee where the employer has fewer than ten workers or the complaint is against the employer, extendable by three more if the Committee records why, and if she cannot put it in writing a member of the Committee has to help her. None of that starts until it reaches the Committee, and a sentence typed into an exit form does not reach anybody.

So the form in this pack has a route out, and Part D records that something was routed rather than what it was. That is not caution for its own sake: section 16 of the same Act keeps the contents of a complaint and the identities of everyone involved out of publication, and section 19(i) makes sexual harassment a matter for the disciplinary process, which is where a written warning and the rest of that machinery lives, rather than for an attrition report.

Preview

The questions that earn their place

Four of the thirty, with the note that comes with each. The note is the difference between a question bank and a list of questions.

'What made you start looking?' asked before 'why are you leaving' gets you the trigger rather than the justification, and the trigger is the one you can do something about.
'Did the job turn out to be the job you were hired for?' is the best single predictor of an early exit, and it points straight at your job descriptions rather than at your pay.
'Is there anything you want recorded, and anything you want kept out of the written notes?' Ask it explicitly. It is the honest way to run the record, and it tells you what may and may not go in the tracker.

Question bank

What you are trying to learn	The question	What it actually produces	Ask it of	Group	In the file
Why they are really leaving	What made you start looking?	The trigger, not the justification	Everyone	1 of 7	Yes
Whether anyone can raise anything	Did you raise any of this before you decided?	Whether your escalation routes work at all	Everyone	1 of 7	Yes
Role and hiring	Did the job turn out to be the job you were hired for?	Early-exit cause, and a job description problem	Under 2 years	3 of 7	Yes
The record itself	Anything you want kept out of the written notes?	What may and may not go in the tracker	Everyone	7 of 7	Yes
All thirty	Grouped by purpose	Each with its own note	Pick 10 to 15	7 groups	Yes

Key stats

Three numbers that decide what happens next

3 months

to complain in writing to the Internal Committee, or to the Local Committee where the employer has fewer than ten workers or the complaint is against the employer, running from the date of the incident and not from the day somebody finally tells you. An exit interview is often the first time anybody hears it, and by then the window may be closing. The Committee may extend it by three more, for reasons it records in writing.

Source: POSH Act, 2013, s.9(1) and its second proviso

2 working days

to pay wages after resignation, removal, dismissal or retrenchment. Not two days after the exit interview, and not after the last working day if that comes later. The clock is usually already running by the time you sit down.

Source: Code on Wages, 2019, s.17(2), subject to s.17(3)

300 workers

is where the Model Standing Orders start to apply, and with them the service certificate within ten days. Below that there is no ten-day rule, and a great many exit checklists promise one anyway. Check before you put it in yours.

Source: Industrial Relations Code, 2020, s.28(1) with s.29(2)

Common mistakes

6 Exit Interview Mistakes Indian Employers Make

The manager runs the interview

The person opposite still needs a reference, so you get a polite version of the truth and none of the difficult part. Somebody else conducts it: HR, a skip-level, or a peer from another function.

A 'no dues and no grievances' line on the form

It cannot foreclose a complaint under the POSH Act, to whichever committee covers you, and section 60 of the Code on Wages makes any agreement giving up an amount due under it null and void so far as it reduces the liability to pay. It cannot waive wages that section 17 of the Code on Wages makes payable. What it does do is tell the person signing it that you expected a problem. Delete it.

A disclosure goes in the same form as everything else

Section 16 of the POSH Act keeps the contents of a complaint and the identities of those involved out of publication, and section 19(i) makes sexual harassment a disciplinary matter rather than an attrition statistic. A form with nowhere else to put it puts it in the tracker, and the tracker gets shared.

The questions change every quarter

Comparability is the only thing this data is good for. Ten leavers asked the same way is a finding; ten asked differently is an archive. Pick ten to fifteen and leave them alone for a year.

A ten-day service certificate promised by everyone

That rule comes from the Model Standing Orders, which apply to industrial establishments with three hundred or more workers under the Industrial Relations Code. Below the threshold there is no ten-day rule and you are working to your own policy or your state's shops and establishments Act, which is a different answer in different states.

An involuntary exit dressed as an exit interview

Where somebody is dismissed, discharged or made redundant, this is not a feedback conversation and calling it one helps nobody. That is a different process with different rules, and it belongs with the termination letters rather than here.

Comparison

A form off the internet against this one

A downloaded exit form

Twenty questions, no notes

Rating scales that produce a 3 out of 5 and nothing else
'Do you have any complaints?' as a yes or no box
A 'no dues and no grievances' line that waives nothing
Nowhere for a disclosure to go except the same form
No mention of the clocks already running on the exit

Free either way

This pack

Form, thirty questions, editable Word

Open questions, each with a note on what it produces
A real disclosure route, and what you record instead
Seven questions not to ask, and the reason for each
Part D routing, kept out of the attrition record
The two clocks, with the threshold one of them turns on

The interview is the easy part

Wages in two working days, leave encashed in two working days, and a final figure that has to be right the first time. Attendo keeps attendance, leave and the payroll register in one place, so the settlement is ready on the day.

FAQ

Common questions

Is this exit interview form really free? +

Yes, completely. No card and no trial. The form asks for your name, work email, phone and city, then the Word file downloads straight away. The Attendo team may follow up about payroll software, and you are free to say no thanks.

Is an exit interview compulsory in India? +

No. No Indian statute requires one, and running one discharges no duty you owe on somebody's exit. What the law does require, on a clock, is the money and the paperwork: wages within two working days of resignation, removal, dismissal or retrenchment under section 17(2) of the Code on Wages, 2019, and leave encashment within two working days under section 32(1)(vi)(a) of the OSH Code, which is a second deadline in a different Code rather than a part of the first. Gratuity is thirty days where there are five years of service, and resignation counts. A service certificate within ten days is a Model Standing Orders rule, and those apply to industrial establishments with three hundred or more workers, so check whether it reaches you before you promise it.

What questions should I ask in an exit interview? +

Pick ten to fifteen and keep them the same across leavers, because comparability is the only thing this data is good for. The pack gives thirty grouped by what you are trying to learn, each with a note on what it actually produces. Two worth having whatever else you choose: 'what made you start looking' gets you the trigger rather than the justification, and 'did you raise any of this before you decided, and what happened' tells you whether your escalation routes work at all.

What if someone discloses harassment in an exit interview? +

It stops being feedback. Do not write it into the exit form, do not put it in the tracker, and do not tell the manager. Tell her three things in the room: which committee is hers and how to reach it, that a complaint is made in writing and that a member of the Committee must help her put it in writing if she cannot, and that the time limit in section 9(1) of the POSH Act runs from the incident rather than from today. It is three months from the incident, or from the last of a series, and the Committee may extend it by three more for reasons it records. Which committee is hers is not always the Internal one: under section 6(1) an establishment with fewer than ten workers has none, and a complaint against the employer himself goes to the Local Committee whatever the headcount. Then record only that a disclosure was made and routed, and where.

Should the manager conduct the exit interview? +

No. If the person they are leaving runs the conversation you will get a polite version of the truth, and you will not hear the thing above at all. HR, a skip-level manager, or a peer from another function. And an involuntary exit is not an exit interview: where somebody is dismissed or made redundant, that is a different conversation with different rules, and dressing it as feedback helps nobody.

About Attendo

Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) is payroll and attendance software used by 40,000+ businesses across manufacturing, hospitals, retail, IT services and hospitality. This form is one of the free HR downloads we publish, each built from the statute rather than from other templates.