By S. E. Slack

When you conduct an exit interview, what you really want to know is why the employee is leaving your company. Then you need to get that information to management so that the appropriate changes can be made before more good employees walk out the door.

When the door closes after the interview, you are left with a stack of information that must be reviewed and compiled into reports for managers and executives. You'll save a lot of time if you automate the exit interview process by using Microsoft Office System products such as Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, and Microsoft Office Access 2003.

Microsoft programs can help control administrative costs

"The toughest aspect of an exit interview is really the administrative piece," says Fred Harmon, president of Human Resources Solutions in Las Vegas, Nevada. "The goal should be to make things as simple as possible from an administrative standpoint so that the cost of conducting an exit interview never becomes an issue for management."

Because of his Las Vegas location, Fred works most often with large companies in the gaming industry. He also consults with a number of smaller companies in the area that span a variety of other industries. Whether it's one of those small companies that conducts less than a dozen exit interviews annually or a casino that conducts more than 100 every month, Fred has to stay efficient and cost effective every step of the way. That's why he has been a fan of Microsoft programs since 1994, when he first began using Microsoft Office Word to conduct exit interviews.

"I use Word to quickly transcribe the information during an exit interview because it's easier for me to capture comments during the interview," Fred says. Then he switches to Microsoft Office Excel and transfers the information from Word to an Excel worksheet. From there, he can create reports by using the graphics functions in Excel.

The easiest way to use Fred's method is to create your exit interview questions in a Word document that uses a table format. This allows you to easily copy and paste the table onto an Excel worksheet. Other HR professionals, however, prefer to use Excel to capture information during the interview. For either way, several worksheets should be set up to keep employee information confidential and separate from the actual answers that the employee provided.

Using a database or spreadsheet?

However, it's important to remember that Excel is not a database management system — it is spreadsheet software that helps you manage lists, such as employee names, telephone numbers, addresses, and interview responses on separate worksheets. Excel will function best if your exit interview information is fairly simple and doesn't require much cross-referencing between data.

Microsoft Office Access, on the other hand, is an actual database program designed for complex querying of data within the database. For example, if you have an Access exit interview database, one table might contain employee names and another could contain employees' interview responses by category, while yet another table might contain the answers assigned to a rating number. Additionally, you might want a table to capture lengthy responses because each employee could make additional comments about a particular question.

You can still use Word as your initial interview document if you use Access. Just save the Word document in a comma-delimited or tab-delimited format and import the Word file into Access in order to create a database. Later, if you decide to create charts and graphs to report the results that you have collected by performing exit interviews, just import that database information into Excel as needed.

Exit interviews are a necessary part of a human resources professional's job. If you can make your life easier by letting Microsoft Office System programs do the compilation work for you, why not start today?

About the author   S. E. Slack is a writer and author with more than 15 years of experience in business writing. She specializes in demystifying technology so that people can both understand and use it. She is also an executive communications consultant to numerous small businesses as well as to corporations such as IBM, Lenovo International, and State Farm Insurance. Her books include The Personal Financial Advisor's Guide to the Microsoft Office System (Agility Press, 2005).