- Please describe your work history, beginning with your first job. …
- What skills have you acquired over your entire work history? …
- What were the greatest successes or accomplishments in your entire working history? …
- What were the greatest challenges you faced at work? …
- What were you working at when you most enjoyed work?
Most people should prepare for retirement decades before it arrives. The truth is, people usually wait until retirement is right around the corner to get their financial house in order. As an employee’s retirement approaches, the employee or their financial advisor may begin to flood you with questions about your company retirement plans. Some you can prepare for, others you cannot and should not even try to answer.
Below are some of the most common questions and concerns you can prepare yourself to address.
EXIT INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO ASK A LEAVING EMPLOYEE
The Retirement Exit Interview – What’s It All About Anyway?
There are all kinds of flavors and levels of detail that retirement exit interviews can come in. They usually come across as benign efforts to improve the company from an employee’s point of view or gauge whether they are hitting the marks they hoped to hit. Some might just be that, but often there are hidden agendas that are also being deployed. Agendas that aren’t going to do any good for you or anyone you like and leaving behind on the job.
Generally the things they want to know revolve around your reason for retiring, whether you felt you received the proper support and resources to do your job, and if you have any ideas that would make your job or workplace better. They can also question your opinion about the company’s leadership and direction; and your thoughts about your manager, work team, company culture, work-life balance, training, pay, benefits, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with these kinds of questions. But you want to go into this with a straight head and look at it strategically.
Depending on your work experience you will have an emotional reaction ranging from –
I certainly had feelings from both of these extremes when I retired. Instead of blindly letting emotion dictate how to handle your retirement exit interview, first ask yourself some questions to ensure you are not saying something that you will later regret.
Was employee opinion surveys part of the company’s operation?
If they never cared before about how anyone felt while a dedicated employee, why would they care when I’m retiring?
When employee surveys were a normal policy –
How did the company respond to employee concerns, suggestions, and/or positive results?
Did they make positive changes to correct employee concerns or deploy what my and many other companies do, the beatings will continue until morale improves?
Did they only report all the positive employee survey results but ignored bad ones?
You may have had a great experience with your work and employer. In that case you will most likely not run into any problems honestly answering retirement exit interview questions. But for most workers their employer and workplace relationship was more complicated. That’s when you want to be more guarded.
In the end, the only thing we might want or need from the company we are retiring from is whether we are classified as rehirable. In my case I knew I wanted to live a retire early and often lifestyle. At least for the first years of my early retirement. I had valuable skills I built over a lifetime of education and employment. But I also wanted to protect my rights from any behind the scenes negative agendas.
You still need to be careful even if you don’t intend to ever work in retirement. Burning bridges by unloading all of your grievances will do more harm than the momentary euphoria of letting then have it. They will have the power to spin your answers any way they want. You won’t be there to defend yourself. You don’t want any corporate retribution putting a stain on your years of work. Even though your retirement exit interview results should be confidential, it could be in your file for many years. Details could get out for one reason or another and you will not be the one who looks good.
It’s better to hedge your answers to your advantage. Why say anything that can get out and tarnish your reputation, work legacy, or even your social life. Many people we work with may cross our paths throughout life.
We have to consider why they might really care about our retirement exit interview answers. Especially if there has ever been company shenanigans that we endured during our employment. We have to remember the only reason HR is there in the first place. It exists to protect the company, not you. They want to gauge whether we have any intention to sue or file a complaint at a later time. Both glowing answers and ones of contempt can be used against us and spun in the company’s favor should a future legal issue arise. Sadly, even if that isn’t anything on our radar, we could be part of an ex-co worker’s complaint against the company and we should consider the possible long-term implications. The biggest thing to remember is this – there is really nothing in a retirement exit interview for you to justify going out on a limb either glowingly or damning.
Unless there is something specific in your employment contract, which is highly unlikely, submitting to a retirement exit interview is not mandatory. Minus that, it’s should be fine to politely decline. Just keep things professional but also overly kind.
Thanks, I appreciate your wanting to talk with me but I hope you can understand that I am busy focusing now on the future.
Thanks but I can’t make time. I’m very busy with transitioning my work to team members, saying my goodbyes, and I still need to pack up my workplace.
Thank you for asking but I have shared everything I can with the organization over my years here and have nothing more of value to offer.
If for whatever reason you aren’t comfortable openly declining, then you can still stealthily move things in that direction. Simply delay it as long as possible. The company usually wants to do it just before leaving anyway. Set the time as late as possible and just slip out. What are they going to do, fire you?
If you feel you better do the retirement exit interview then keep your answers as neutral as you can when answering questions about the company and your experience. When it’s in a written form with a sliding scale of 1 to 5, just rate things right down the middle. If it is a face to face interview try to answer as vaguely as you can. Use escape phrases when pinned-down like, I never gave that much thought before so I can’t really answer that. When you can, push to talk about the future and focus positively on yourself. Be brief and don’t ramble on about things. Elaboration isn’t something that favors us in a retirement exit interview. It’s OK to use awkward long moments of silence to try to end the interview quicker.
When I was asked why I was retiring I told them I had planned for my early retirement many years ago and successfully reached this point where I could retire. I also directed the conversation when I could to talk about my being excited to see what happens next in my life. Everything I told them was true.
I certainly had my issues with my experience and the company was fully aware of how they treated things and people over the years, both good and bad. I was happily leaving on my terms and them knowing that fact was enough for me.
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How much can I save in my 401k?
There is an $18,500 limit (for 2018) on how much employees can contribute to a 401(k) plan. Workers 50 and older can add $6,000 per year in catch-up contributions.
Rationale for the Retirement Assistance and Exit Interview Process
The offered retirement assistance will help make the retirement transition process as understandable and non-traumatic as possible. Exit interviews are an opportunity for the university to enable transfer of knowledge and experience from the departing faculty and administrators. Many universities have found that retired faculty and administrators are delighted to participate in exit interviews, share their knowledge, help their successors, and offer suggestions. Exit interviews yield useful information about the university, including suggestions for improving the quality of the university. Experience indicates that retired faculty and administrators generally are more forthcoming, constructive, and objective than staff still in their jobs. Perhaps because retirees are liberated from university politics and promotion & tenure policies, they are willing to provide more candid, objective feedback than do employees when interviewed during annual evaluations. The many reasons for instituting the Retirement Assistance and Exit Interview Process include:
FAQ
What are 5 typical questions asked during an exit interview?
- 1) Why Did You Start Looking For Another Job?
- 2) Why Are You Leaving?
- 3) What Does Your New Position Offer That Influenced Your Decision To Leave?
- 4) What Could We Have Done Better?
- 5) Would You Ever Consider Returning To This Company?
What kind of questions are asked on an exit interview?
- What prompted you to begin searching for another opportunity? …
- Do you feel your manager gave you what you needed to succeed? …
- What did you like best and least about your job? …
- Do you think your job has changed since you were hired?
What questions should I ask HR about retirement?
