“I didn't feel I had anyone at work.” An exit interview produces that comment, and the company decides to organise more team socials. Finding a venue, chasing responses and running the event all fall to a team leader who is already stretched. An effort to understand why someone left has added more work for the people who stayed.
Before choosing a response, ask when the person felt alone and what help they needed at the time. Did they want someone to talk to over lunch? Or was there nobody to answer a work question? The same phrase can point to very different changes.
If you are responsible for employee retention, or a team leader asked to put a new initiative into practice, start with three things: better interview questions, a closer look at how work gets stuck, and a check on the workload any proposed solution will create.
Turn “I had nobody at work” into a specific experience
Before summarising the problem as “not enough social interaction”, invite the person to describe one incident, as far as they feel comfortable sharing.
“Can you think of a recent time when you felt you had nobody at work? Who could have helped, and what would have made a difference?”
For example, these are three different problems:
- They spent breaks alone and found it hard to join conversations. An easy, informal opportunity to talk might help.
- They did not know whom to ask about an unfamiliar assignment and kept searching for answers on their own. The team needs clear points of contact, their areas of responsibility and someone to cover when they are away.
- They put forward a proposal but received no response, leaving a decision on hold. Check who is responsible for replying, by when, and how they will explain a decision not to proceed.
“I never get any new work” needs the same care. Does the person want more to do? Are repetitive tasks leaving them without a sense of progress? Or do they want more responsibility for decisions? Ask both what work they want to take on and what they would like to do less of. That makes it less likely that a request for development will simply turn into extra tasks.
An interview that feels like an interrogation makes it harder to speak openly. Let people skip questions. Explain in advance who will use the notes and for what purpose, when information may need to be shared, and the limits of any confidentiality you can offer. Record what the person said separately from the company's hypotheses. Do not rewrite their words as what you think they “really meant”.
Follow one piece of work to see what “I couldn't get help” means
People can get along well while work remains stuck. Someone may be comfortable chatting with their manager, yet get no answer when they need a decision about a deadline or an exception. Being able to raise a question and being able to move work forward after raising it need separate attention.
Consider an assignment due on Friday. The employee asks for approval on Tuesday, follows up on Wednesday, then has to redo the work when the requirements change late on Thursday. When they say afterwards that nobody helped them, approval delays and rework may be part of the problem.
Choose one such assignment and briefly map what happened:
- What decision was needed, and when was help requested?
- Who had authority to decide, and when did they respond?
- What stopped while the employee waited, and what had to be redone?
- If it happens again, who can step in and make the decision?
The line manager may also be waiting for approval from someone more senior. Telling a team leader to “respond faster” can add responsibility without giving them authority. Clarify which decisions they can make about budgets, deadlines and changes of assignee. Set an expected response time and a route for escalation if that time passes. Both are needed to help employees get out of a cycle of chasing answers alone.
The UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identifies six areas to examine in work design: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change, including how organisational changes are managed and communicated. Its framework is not a test for determining why an employee left. It can, however, help you look across working conditions rather than putting every problem under “relationships”. See the HSE Management Standards.
One exit interview cannot tell you what the whole company needs
An individual's reasons for leaving contain information that matters to them. On their own, those reasons do not establish that every employee needs the same intervention. Pay, working hours and future prospects may also be part of a combination of factors.
If someone says waiting for answers was difficult, ask people who remain about a recent piece of work that caused trouble and what happened after they sought help. Where necessary, compare those accounts with records of approval times and rework. If the exercise becomes a search for who complained, people will be less willing to speak next time. Avoid putting identifiable comments or unnecessary case details into improvement proposals that will be shared.
For example, consider both the recorded fact that there were three last-minute changes on Friday afternoons and the person's experience that “there was no point asking for help”. Keep both in view when asking whether changes could be communicated earlier or the amount of work accepted could be adjusted. Records should help identify what the company can change, rather than be used to dismiss how someone felt.
If you add an initiative, make time for the people delivering it
A team social can give people a chance to talk to colleagues they have not met. If that is what employees need, it is a reasonable option. Before approving the idea, though, count the work involved in making it happen.
Booking a venue is only the start. Someone must ask about preferences, send invitations, collect responses, run the event, handle expenses and communicate with people who cannot attend. If every small task goes to the person who is easiest to ask, the people supporting improvements become busier still.
Include four points in the proposal:
- The specific problem to address, such as not knowing whom to contact in another department.
- Who will prepare and run the initiative, how much time it is expected to take, and what work will be reduced to make that time available.
- Whether people can genuinely choose not to attend. Consider cost, travel and time outside working hours.
- What you will review afterwards to decide whether to continue or change the approach.
Calling an event “optional” does not make it easy to decline if people are repeatedly asked why they are not coming, or attendance is treated as evidence of commitment. Make sure employees can get essential information and find the right person to ask for help through other routes too.
If you are asked to organise the initiative, a useful question is: “I can prepare this. Which of my current tasks should that time replace?” Without an answer, the cost of a well-intentioned idea can emerge later as the organiser's overtime.
Start with a small change, then decide whether to expand it
If people do not know whom to ask, put responsibilities and backup contacts on a single page. If approvals are slow, agree on expected response times and how to communicate when a decision will be late. If there are too many meetings, review recurring meetings that have outlived their purpose before adding another discussion session.
Define the scope and duration of a trial so an unsuccessful approach does not continue out of habit. For example, try it in one team for two weeks. Check how often people had to search for a contact, how long responses took, whether the same questions had to be asked again, and how much extra time the arrangement took to maintain. This duration and these measures are examples for a trial, not criteria that guarantee lower turnover.
If you test a social event, attendance alone is not enough. Ask separately whether it helped a work conversation with another department move forward, or whether people enjoyed it but still faced the same difficulties in their work. Do not judge it solely by whether resignations immediately decrease. Look at what happened to the specific problem and to the workload created by the initiative. Continue examining other issues, including employment conditions, alongside that review.
Treat a reason for leaving as a starting point for understanding a problem. At the next retention meeting, bring more than an event idea: bring the situation in which someone needed help, the decision that was holding up work, and the tasks you will reduce for whoever delivers the solution. The first result of a retention initiative should not be more overtime for the people who stayed.
