All About Disciplinary and Exit Interviews

1. Define your purpose.

For the disciplinary interview, this is in order to

• improve performance and, where possible, prevent further breaches of company policy
  
  
• let the employees come to terms with what has gone wrong so that they can correct their behavior
  

For resignation and dismissal interviews, your purpose is to

• get feedback from former employees about any hidden management problems
  
  
• learn about selection procedures in order to improve them
  
  
• give the employee a fair hearing, and
  
  
• improve the image of the company
  

2. Plan the interview.

• Satisfy yourself that you have given the employee every opportunity to change his or her behavior or improve his or her performance, and that you have removed any obstacles to their achievement.
  
  
• Make sure that, in dismissing the employee, you are acting within the law. Dismissals are fraught with legal pit falls, which makes some managers think they can never fire anyone. In fact you can dismiss unsatisfactory employees, but you first must ensure that you are not contravening employment protection legislation.
  
  
• Learn as much as you can about the individual that is relevant to the forthcoming interview. This entails consulting the work records and personnel file, and finding out from his or her supervisor and others about the employee's recent behavior and performance. It may also mean finding out about family background, but only as it affects the outcome of the interview,
  
  
• Gather as much hard evidence as you can about the circumstances leading to the disciplinary or exit interview. The employee is more likely to accept the facts if you have them at your fingertips than if you are merely leveling vague accusations.
  
  
• Be sure to bring with you to the interview all relevant records and files for easy reference.
  
  
• From what you know about the individual and the circumstances, plan how you intend to pace the interview and what questions you will ask. Write them down if necessary, but do not attempt to learn them off by heart.
  
  
• Do not conduct the interview on the spur of the moment, when you may still be full of anger. Arrange it in advance, when you will have had time to calm down. It is part of the false machismo in some management to dismiss subordinates in an apparent fit of rage, enjoying the sense of power it gives them. They also hope that the employees will tell others, so that the management's reputation for toughness will get around in that particular industry. This is an altogether wrongheaded and absurd view of what management is all about and in the end it does the organization no good at all, because good people will not want to work for it.
  
  
• There is never a good day or a good time of day to fire someone, but if possible avoid just before the weekend or a holiday. Dismissing employees late on a Friday means they have all weekend with little else to do but brood which, if you want the interview to have ultimately a positive outcome, is neither wise nor fair.

• Choose an office where you can be sure of privacy. This is definitely not the time to have to contend with constant interruptions and distractions. Some writers recommend that you use an office which is neutral to both of you, as this will reduce the inequalities and make for a more positive and mutually acceptable outcome.
  
  
• Resolve to go into the interview with an open mind and not to prejudge any of the issues.

If you have prepared properly for the interview, you will have established as much as possible of the background leading to the discipline, dismissal or resignation, and will have brought with you all the relevant records so that you can refer to them if necessary.

Your next step is to ask questions which will obtain (1) the interviewee's confirmation of the facts, and (2) his or her reasons for what has happened.

Questions perform another valuable function at these inter views: they take the sting out of the hurt and anger. As long as you are calmly asking them and the interviewee is answering them, neither of you can get into pointless rows and recriminations.

If the purpose of the interview is to discipline employees, you have to find out whether or not they know

• what the job required
  
  
• what stopped it from being performed properly
  
  
• what they are willing to do in the future to ensure that the job is properly performed, and, most important,
  
  
• what options are left to you if they do not do so
  

This last question leaves the interviewees to state the consequences of lack of proper performance, namely dismissal.

Eliciting this from them in this way is far more effective than threatening that, if they don't do better in the future, you will have to fire them.

If the dismissal results from doing something that were against the policy of the company, your questions will be directed towards establishing two vital issues;

• whether or not the interviewee knew what that policy was, and if not, why not
  
  
• that the interviewee knew that the actions complained of were in breach of that policy
  

In the case of resignation interviews, where employees are leaving for their own reasons (as when they have been offered another job at a better salary or are moving to another part of the country), you can find out from them a lot more about the way your organization works than you can from someone currently employed there. The interviewees will not have any bitterness towards it, and in fact may feel well disposed towards it, but at the same time will have the benefit of hindsight as well as a more objective viewpoint on which you can base future management decisions.

You will want to find out what the circumstances were that led to the resignation; and, if it has come without warning, you will also want to know what prevented the leaver from speaking to you sooner.

In more general terms, you will also want to know

• what, in the interviewee's view, creates a productive working atmosphere
  
  
• to what extent these features were present in the interviewee's own circumstances
  
  
• to what extent they were missing and why
  
  
• how far the leaver was supported by management (this may include you, so be prepared!)
  
  
• what changes could be made to improve working conditions
  
  
• if the leaver is going to another job, what benefits were offered in case you can match them, in the future if not now
  

For disciplinary and exit interviews, your questions should strive for mutual understanding, not confrontation. Remember, this is an interview, not an interrogation. In particular, you should ask:

• Open questions which will allow the erring employee to accept the facts and, in a disciplinary interview, agree to change his or her behavior. For example: 'Why do you think this happened?', 'What do you think led to this?', 'What are your feelings about this?', 'What are you going to do to change?' This way you do not impose your view on the events, nor do you tell employees what has to be done, but you leave it to them to come to decisions about their past and future behavior.
  
  
• Clear and unambiguous questions. If the interviewee is taking the interview lightly, or being aggressive or facetious, you may have to repeat your questions, perhaps in a slightly different form, to indicate how seriously you treat the matter. For example:
  

'What happened between you that led to the fight in the canteen?'

'The place just isn't big enough for the two of us.'

'Could you please tell me how the fight started?'

'What difference does it make? It's over with, isn't it?'

'You wouldn't be here if it was. The fight may be over but the consequences aren't. So how did it begin?'

Do not ask:

• Leading questions that force interviewees to answer as you want them to. For instance, if you had asked, 'What made you start that fight in the canteen?' you would be making the assumption, perhaps incorrect, that the interviewee was the responsible party.
  
  
• Questions that trap the interviewee, 'Would you describe yourself as honest?' Interviewees are unlikely to answer negatively, which means they are tricked into defending themselves even before they know what the specific accusation is.
  

Trick questions also include those that indicate by the way they are worded how you want the interviewee to reply: 'Is this the sort of thing an honest person does?'

• Vague questions: 'Been in some trouble lately, I hear?'
  
  
• Self-incriminating questions that force the interviewee to admit guilt: 'Everyone I've spoken to says you started the fight. Are you calling them all liars?'
  

Disciplinary interviews, despite their apparent negative elements, are in fact positive in outcome, because, as we have seen, their purpose is to produce change in the behavior or performance of employees. When they do not succeed and employees have to be dismissed or they decide to leave, the exit interview can still be useful in that it can help to encourage continued change and growth in employees after they are no longer in your employ.

Even if you dismiss this as an idealistic goal, exit interviews should still be conducted, if only to allow employees a final opportunity to give their side of the story.