Stop Holding Autopsies. Start Taking a Pulse.

Picture the scene. A small meeting room. Two chairs. A box of tissues nobody will touch and a clipboard everybody wishes wasn’t there.

Across the table sits one of your best people. They’ve given their two weeks. The desk plant is already in a box. And you, with the very best of intentions, lean in and ask the question: “So… what could we have done differently?”

Friends, that isn’t a conversation. That’s an autopsy.

I’ve sat on both sides of that table more times than I’d like to admit. And here’s what I’ve come to believe: an exit interview is a lot like a coroner’s report. It’s thorough. It’s well documented. It may even be accurate. It is also, by definition, too late.

Why the autopsy rarely finds the cause

People are polite on the way out

Nobody burns a bridge they might need to drive back across. They need a reference. They know the sector is small — in some towns, it’s one-Tim-Hortons small. So you hear “I found an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.” The real reasons exist. You just won’t hear them today.

The cause of death was years in the making

People rarely leave over one thing. They leave over the fourteenth small thing: the question that never got answered, the growth conversation that kept getting rescheduled, the manager who meant well but never asked. No single conversation on someone’s last Thursday is going to surface two years of quiet drift.

The findings go in a drawer

Be honest. Where do your exit interview notes live right now? If the answer involves the words “somewhere in the shared drive,” you’re not alone. But a report nobody reads isn’t insight. It’s filing.

An exit interview tells you how things ended. A stay interview gives you a say in how they continue.

Louis goes to the vet when he’s healthy

My dog Louis has been my best friend for over twelve years. He’s a senior gentleman now, with firm opinions about the mail carrier and a very strong position on cheese. And every year, he goes to the vet for a check-up. Not because he’s sick. Because I’d like to keep it that way.

Nobody thinks that’s strange. We do it for our dogs. We do it for our cars. We book the furnace inspection before a Canadian winter, not during one. Yet with the people who carry our organizations every single day, we somehow wait until they’re halfway out the door to ask how they’re doing.

Enter the stay interview: a simple, intentional conversation with the people you want to keep, while you still have them. No crisis. No resignation letter on the desk. Just a leader genuinely asking, “What keeps you here — and what might pull you away?”

Five questions worth asking this month

You don’t need a fancy framework. You need thirty minutes, a quiet space, and the courage to ask things you might not love the answer to.

1. 1What do you look forward to when you come to work?
2. 2What's one thing that makes your job harder than it needs to be?
3. 3If you could change one thing about your role, what would it be?
4. 4What would tempt you to leave?Yes, really ask it. They've already thought about it.
5. 5What's one thing I could do more of, or less of, as your leader?

Then comes the hard part: close your mouth and open your ears. Don’t defend. Don’t explain. Don’t say “well, the reason we do it that way is…” Write it down. Say thank you.

And then — this is the part that separates the leaders people stay for from the ones they leave — follow up. A stay interview without follow-through isn’t a check-up. It’s just a very pleasant chat before the autopsy.

So do we scrap exit interviews?

No. Keep them. Just stop asking them to do all the heavy lifting. A few small upgrades make them far more useful:

Have someone other than the direct manager conduct it. People are more candid when they aren’t reviewing the relationship with the other half of the relationship.

Ask, “When did you first start looking?” That one question is gold. The answer tells you exactly when the stay interview should have happened.

Look for patterns, not verdicts. One exit is a story. Five exits from the same team in a year is a diagnosis. Review them together, at least quarterly, and let them change something.

Know the condition of your flock

There’s a line in Proverbs I come back to often:

"Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds."

Proverbs 27:23 (KJV)

It’s shepherd advice, but it’s leadership advice too. Good shepherds don’t count the sheep after they’ve wandered off. They walk among them, every day, paying attention to who’s limping, who’s lagging, and who’s quietly eyeing the fence line.

Culture does not happen by accident. Neither does retention. Both are built one honest conversation at a time.

Because the best exit interview is the one you never have to hold.

I’d love to hear from you: what’s the best question a leader has ever asked you? Tell me, and it might just show up in a future post.

Original writing and illustrations for Work, Considered., the Work, Advised. blog. Personal stories draw on Daniel's own experiences; no confidential workplace examples are used.