Free Exit Interview Template for Small Business
3 free exit interview templates: face-to-face guide, written questionnaire, and anonymous survey. Download as DOCX. Built for small businesses without HR.
Exit Interview Templates
3 free templates for small businesses. Download as DOCX or copy-paste.
Most small business exit interviews go one of two ways. Either the departing employee says "everything was great, just a great opportunity I couldn't pass up" while the owner nods and shakes their hand. Or there is an awkward 20 minutes where the owner, who is also the manager and the HR department, tries to get candid feedback from someone who is being careful about what they say because they want a good reference.
Neither version produces useful information. At FirstHR, we built our onboarding platform for small businesses that handle all of this without dedicated HR. Exit interviews are part of that same reality. The three templates below are designed for it: different formats for different team sizes, practical guidance for when you are the interviewer and potentially the reason someone is leaving, and a direct connection between what exit interviews reveal and what your onboarding should fix. Research shows that most turnover is preventable with the right feedback loop in place (Gallup).
Which Exit Interview Format Should You Use?
The right format depends on your team size. Anonymous surveys are meaningless at 8 people. Face-to-face conversations are unrealistic at 45. Use the format that matches the reality of how well everyone knows each other.
3 Free Exit Interview Templates
Download all three as a single Word document or copy individual templates. Each template is designed for a specific team size and interview format. Do not mix formats. Using a 50-question survey in a 10-person company produces worse results than a 15-minute honest conversation.
Template 1: Face-to-Face Exit Interview Guide
For teams of 5-15 employees. Includes a scripted opening for when you are the manager and interviewer simultaneously, 15 questions with follow-up prompts, and a post-interview notes section that connects findings to onboarding improvements.
Template 2: Written Exit Questionnaire
For teams of 15-30 employees. Employee completes independently. Mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions across 7 categories. Reduces interviewer-employee awkwardness while maintaining structure.
Template 3: Anonymous Exit Survey
For teams of 30-50+ employees where anonymity is credible. Rating scales plus open questions. Designed to be aggregated quarterly for pattern analysis. Includes an onboarding retrospective section absent from most competitor templates.
What Every Exit Interview Should Cover
Every exit interview format, regardless of size or style, should cover seven categories. The most commonly skipped is the last one, which is also the most actionable for a small business trying to improve retention.
| Category | Questions to cover | What the data tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Reason for leaving | Primary reason, how long they considered it, what triggered the search | Whether the departure was preventable and what the root cause was |
| Role and clarity | Were responsibilities clear, did they have what they needed, workload assessment | Onboarding gaps, role definition problems, resource failures |
| Management | Feedback quality, support, recognition, relationship with supervisor | Management effectiveness, which managers need development |
| Culture and team | How they'd describe the culture, whether they felt valued, referral likelihood | Culture health, employer brand, whether departures are likely to generate negative word-of-mouth |
| Growth and development | Visibility of career path, development opportunities, learning support | Whether you're losing people to growth opportunities you're not providing |
| Compensation | Market competitiveness, benefit adequacy | Whether compensation is a recurring departure driver |
| Onboarding retrospective | Whether expectations were clear from Day 1, first 90-day support quality | Onboarding failures that feed into later departures |
For a complete library of questions to use across any of these templates, the exit interview questions guide covers 50+ questions organized by category with guidance on how to interpret responses. Note that certain questions are legally prohibited under federal employment law (EEOC). For the broader offboarding process that surrounds the exit interview, the offboarding best practices guide covers the complete employee departure process from notice to final day. Final pay requirements vary by state and are governed by the FLSA and applicable state wage payment laws.
Small Business Exit Interview Realities
Every existing exit interview template assumes you have a trained HR professional conducting the interview in a company large enough to have one. For a 15-person company, none of that applies. Here is what actually happens and how to handle it.
The most important habit is tracking exit interview data over time. A single exit interview is anecdote. Three exit interviews citing the same issue is a pattern. Five is a crisis. For a tool to track turnover patterns and their financial impact, the cost of employee turnover guide quantifies what each departure costs and where the highest-leverage retention investments are.
Turning Exit Interview Data Into Onboarding Improvements
The most underused connection in employee management is the link between why people leave and how people start. Exit interviews are retroactive. Onboarding is prospective. When you build a feedback loop between them, each departure makes the next hire's experience better.
No competitor exit interview template makes this connection explicit. Here is a direct translation table from common exit interview findings to onboarding changes.
| Exit interview finding | Onboarding fix to make |
|---|---|
| Employee says role responsibilities were unclear in the first month | Add a Day 1 agenda item: explicit discussion of 30/60/90 day expectations. Update the onboarding plan template for this role. |
| Employee says they did not feel supported in the first 90 days | Increase check-in frequency in weeks 2-4. Add onboarding buddy assignment to pre-boarding checklist. |
| Employee says compensation was below market | Review offer letter process. Consider adding compensation benchmarking to hiring workflow before offers go out. |
| Employee says they did not see a path to grow | Add a 90-day review discussion item: where does this role lead? What does the employee's growth path look like? |
| Employee says they did not feel their work was recognized | Add a recognition practice to your manager checklist: public acknowledgment of good work in team meetings, specifically in weeks 2-8 when new hires are most uncertain. |
The practical implementation: after each exit interview, add one row to a simple spreadsheet tracking departure reasons and one item to your onboarding review queue. Every quarter, review both and update your onboarding plan template to reflect what you have learned. For the onboarding plan that absorbs these improvements, the new hire onboarding plan guide shows how to structure the first 90 days. For the specific onboarding checklist that captures compliance and task-level work, the employee onboarding checklist provides the task framework.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should be included in an exit interview template?
Every exit interview template should cover seven categories: reasons for leaving (primary and secondary), role clarity and resources, management and feedback quality, culture and team dynamics, career growth and development opportunities, compensation and benefits assessment, and an onboarding retrospective asking whether expectations were clear from Day 1. The onboarding retrospective is the category most commonly missing from competitor templates, and it is often the most actionable for small businesses.
Should exit interviews be anonymous?
For teams under 15-20 employees, anonymous exit interviews are largely ineffective because departing employees know their responses are identifiable regardless of what the form says. For teams of 15-30, written questionnaires provide some separation between the employee and interviewer without false promises of anonymity. For teams of 30-50+, truly anonymous surveys become viable and tend to produce more candid responses. The three templates in this article are designed for each of these size ranges respectively.
Who should conduct exit interviews in a small business?
In a small business without an HR department, the exit interview is typically conducted by the business owner or the departing employee's direct manager. If the owner is also the direct manager and may be a reason for the departure, acknowledge this dynamic explicitly at the start of the interview. Use the scripted opening in Template 1, which includes language for exactly this situation. A trusted colleague or business partner can also conduct the interview if the owner-as-interviewer dynamic is too uncomfortable.
Is an exit interview mandatory?
No. Exit interviews are voluntary. You cannot require a departing employee to participate as a condition of receiving their final paycheck or a reference. Most employment attorneys advise framing exit interviews as optional. That said, voluntary participation rates are typically higher when the interview is framed as a genuine improvement tool rather than a formality, when the interviewer is not the direct supervisor, and when the timing is before the last day rather than on it.
How many questions should an exit interview have?
For a face-to-face interview, 10-15 open-ended questions over 30-45 minutes is the right range. More than 15 questions in a conversational format feels like an interrogation. For a written questionnaire, 15-20 questions including both multiple choice and open-ended takes about 20-30 minutes to complete. For an anonymous survey, 20-25 questions with a mix of rating scales and open fields. The templates in this article are sized appropriately for each format.
What should you not ask in an exit interview?
Never ask about protected characteristics: age, religion, disability, national origin, marital status, pregnancy status, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Do not ask questions designed to gather competitive intelligence about the employee's new employer. Do not ask leading questions that assume specific reasons for leaving. Do not press for details after an employee has declined to answer a question. The templates in this article are written to avoid all of these categories. Do not improvise additional questions without reviewing them first.
What is the difference between an exit interview and an exit survey?
An exit interview is a face-to-face or phone conversation between the departing employee and a manager or HR representative. It allows for follow-up questions and produces qualitative, context-rich information. An exit survey is a written questionnaire, often anonymous, completed independently by the departing employee. It produces quantifiable data that can be compared across employees and time periods. For small businesses, exit interviews are generally more useful because the information is immediate and actionable. Exit surveys become valuable once you have enough departures to identify patterns.
When is the best time to conduct an exit interview?
The best time is one to two weeks before the employee's last day, not on the last day itself. Last-day exit interviews produce less candid feedback because the employee is preoccupied with wrapping up, saying goodbyes, and returning equipment. Scheduling the conversation earlier when the decision is made but the emotional goodbye has not happened yet produces more thoughtful and useful responses. For written questionnaires or anonymous surveys, sending after the last day and allowing two weeks for completion often produces the most candid results.