Exit interview form template: questions, ratings, confidentiality

An exit interview form gives departing employees a structured way to say why they are leaving, which is the data you need to fix retention. Qwenvo's free Exit Interview template asks seven questions: who they are, the main reason, ratings by area, whether they would return and what you could have done differently.

The questions in the template

• Name, Team and Last working day: the basics that tie an answer to a role and a date.
• Main reason for leaving: a choice between New opportunity, Compensation, Career growth, Management, Relocation, Personal and Other. One main reason beats a vague list.
• Rate your experience: a Matrix with rows Onboarding, Management, Compensation, Work-life balance and Growth opportunities, and columns Poor, Fair, Good and Excellent. Five ratings in one question.
• Would you consider returning?: Yes, Maybe or No. A warm yes is worth a note in your alumni list.
• What could we have done differently? (optional): the most useful sentence in the whole form.

The template's intro says "Your answers are confidential and shared only with HR." Read the next section before you keep that line.

Make the confidentiality promise true

If you tell people their answers are private, you need to control who can see them. Keep the people who can open this form to HR (see members for how teammates work). The audit log records who published, deleted, exported or changed things, so you can check. Do not route submissions to a shared Slack channel. If you cannot keep the promise, change the sentence to say who really reads the answers, for example "shared with HR and your manager's manager, in summary form."

Copy-ready wording

• Intro: "Thank you for your time here. This takes five minutes. Your honest answers help us improve."
• Reason: "What is the main reason you decided to leave?"
• Ratings: "How would you rate your experience in each area?"
• Open: "If you could change one thing about working here, what would it be?"
• Thank-you page: "Thank you, and all the best in your next chapter."

Logic ideas

1. If the reason is Management, show "Was this about your direct manager or the wider leadership?"
2. If the reason is Compensation, show "Was the issue base pay, bonus or benefits?"
3. If the answer to returning is Yes or Maybe, show "What would need to change?"
4. If the reason is Personal, skip the rating question and go to the open question, because the other answers will not apply.

See conditional logic for how to set these up.

Finding patterns across leavers

One exit interview is a story. Twenty are data. Export the Submissions table to CSV or XLSX, or send rows to Google Sheets or Airtable, and count reasons by team and by quarter. Insights charts the answer split. For the open answers, AI triage gives each response a category, a sentiment and a one-to-two-sentence summary, for up to 10,000 submissions a month, which helps you group themes before reading them in full. An urgent priority, such as a report of harassment, can be routed to up to five named email addresses. Treat that as a prompt for a human to act, not a conclusion.

Keep the data only as long as you need it

The form Settings drawer has data retention, which auto-deletes responses after a number of days. Set a period that matches your policy and local rules. On Tally, data retention is a Business feature at $89 a month; here it is included. You can also restrict access with password protection. See form Settings.

Mistakes to avoid

• Doing the exit interview only on the last day. Offer it a week earlier so there is time to be honest.
• Asking the manager to run it. People rarely criticize the person in the room.
• Collecting feedback and never acting on it.
• Promising confidentiality you cannot keep.
• Treating a single complaint as a trend.

What to know before you use it

Qwenvo is hosted in the United States, and Tally in Europe. If your employee data has location rules, check them first. Qwenvo has no HIPAA offering. Also, it is a form and not an HR system, so it will not manage offboarding tasks or revoke access for you.

Questions people ask

What questions go on an exit interview form?

The main reason for leaving, ratings of management, pay, growth and workload, whether they would return and one open question about what to change.

Should an exit interview be anonymous?

It can be, but then you cannot follow up or connect it to a team. The template asks for a name. Remove it if you prefer anonymity.

Is the exit interview template free?

Yes. Every template and every feature is free. See pricing.