Employees Aren't Honest About Why They Quit: How Psychological Safety Can Help

Turnover and retention were on everyone’s mind in 2022, thanks to trends like “The Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting.” Conducting exit interviews is a common way to build a retention strategy for your remaining and future team members, but what if the information you get from those interviews isn’t accurate? According to iHire’s 2022 Talent Retention Report, that may be the case.

In the report, we asked employees who voluntarily left their job in the last year to select their reasons for quitting. We also asked employers to select the reasons they were given when an employee left, and discovered that the answers didn’t match up.

The employers reported that the most common reasons their workers gave for quitting were “personal reasons (health, family issues, etc.)” at 34.5%, tied with “unsatisfactory pay.” But the most common reasons the employees said were “unhappy with their manager or supervisor” at 43.7% and “unsatisfactory pay” at 43.4%. Employers reported hearing “unhappy with manager or supervisor” only 19.4% of the time.

So why are there discrepancies in the answers? It’s likely because the employees don’t feel “psychologically safe” at work.

What is Psychological Safety?

Psychological safety in the office means that employees feel comfortable and secure when voicing ideas, asking questions, or raising concerns. In a psychologically safe workplace, employees do not worry about negative consequences for stepping outside of or going against the norm. If your employees feel psychologically safe, they are willing to brainstorm, share new ideas, and take risks.

Promoting a culture of transparency and honesty will help create psychological safety. Change needs to come from your company’s leaders and managers so make sure they are on board. Then, train them to be open and supportive of outside ideas.

How Psychological Safety Can Help

Once your employees feel psychologically safe, they’ll be more likely to express not just why they’re leaving, but also any other workplace grievances they have. That may not sound ideal at first, but you can’t retain your employees without knowing why they’re unhappy. Hearing some unpleasant truths is better in the long run than remaining unaware of what’s going on. With psychological safety, your employees are more likely to bring up an issue before deciding to quit.

Psychological safety is also important when conducting “stay interviews” with your most valuable employees. Stay interviews are a proactive way to understand any pain points these employees might have so that you can take steps to address their concerns. But without psychological safety, they likely won’t give you the full picture, and you’ll have the same issues as before.

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Exit Interviews and Psychological Safety

Of course, even in the most transparent and honest workplaces, it's not always possible to prevent an employee from quitting. But ideally, if you’ve made the necessary changes to encourage open communication, you won’t have to worry about your employees hiding the truth in their exit interviews. In an ideal world, stay interviews would be enough, but sometimes employees don’t feel comfortable sharing everything until they have one foot out the door.

There is still a silver lining to be found in an honest exit interview – you can use the information to strengthen your employee retention strategy. To ensure your exit interviews are effective, schedule them for your employee’s last day and have a list of questions ready beforehand. Then, most importantly, be sure to act on any insights you gleaned from the interview.

For more Hiring Newsroom pieces and insights into employee retention, head to our Employer Resource Center.