Surveys
Exit survey
The real reason someone leaves usually isn't the first one they give. Asking for the main reason as a choice and then 'anything else' as free text gets closer to it.
- Questions
- 4
- Takes about
- 2 min
- Style
- One at a time
- Scoring
- None
Free, no card. It lands in your workspace as an editable draft.
What's in it
Before you go
Welcome screen
- 1
What's the main reason you're leaving?*
Compensation · Career growth · Management · Work-life balance · +3
Multiple choice
- 2
Would you recommend this as a place to work?
Opinion scale
- 3
What one thing would have made you stay?
Long text
- 4
Anything else you'd like to say?
Long text
Thank you
Ending
How to use this template
Open it as a draft
Press "Use this template" and it lands in your workspace as an editable form with all 4 questions already in it. No card, and nothing is published until you say so.
Cut what you do not need
Every question you remove is one fewer reason to abandon the form. It takes about 2 minutes to fill in as it stands, and that is the number worth protecting.
Add from the question bank
Pick what you are missing from the questions below. Drag any of them in, change the wording, and use conditional logic so people only see the ones that apply to them.
Share it, or put it on your own site
Publish to get a link, or embed it in a page you already have. Answers arrive in your dashboard, and you can send them on to anywhere else with a webhook or an integration.
32 exit survey form questions to choose from
An exit survey is the one time somebody has nothing to lose by telling you the truth. Most are wasted on process questions that HR already knows the answer to.
Ask when they decided, and what would have changed it. Those two answers are worth the rest of the form.
Why they are going
- What is the main reason you are leaving?
- When did you first start thinking about leaving?
- What was the moment that decided it?
- Was there anything that could have changed your mind?
- Did you raise any of this before deciding?
- If you did, what happened?
- Is there anything you wish you had said sooner?
- Are you leaving for a specific opportunity?
Where they are going
- What appealed about the new role?
- Is it more money?
- Is it a bigger title or more scope?
- Is it a shorter commute or better flexibility?
- Is it a different industry?
- What does the new place offer that we did not?
- Did you look for long?
- Would you consider coming back?
The job itself
- Did the role match what you were told at interview?
- Did you have what you needed to do it well?
- Was your workload reasonable?
- Did you get useful feedback?
- Did you feel recognised?
- How was your relationship with your manager?
- Was your pay fair for the work?
- Did you see a path for yourself here?
What to change
- What is the one thing we should change?
- What should we keep doing?
- What should we tell the next person in your role?
- What would you warn a candidate about?
- Would you recommend us as a place to work? (0 to 10)
- Is there anything we have not asked that we should have?
- Can we contact you after you leave?
- Would you like an exit conversation with someone outside your team?
Exit Survey form questions, answered
- What should an exit survey ask?
- Why they are leaving, when they decided, and what would have changed it. The timing question is the useful one: a decision made nine months ago points at a different problem from one made last week.
- Should exit surveys be anonymous?
- Aggregated and anonymous for reporting, but a named conversation gives you detail a form never will. Running both, and saying which is which, works better than choosing.
- When should I send an exit survey?
- In the final week, or shortly after they have gone. Too early and they are still negotiating; too late and the detail has faded along with the motivation to help.
- Who should see exit survey results?
- Someone outside the leaver's reporting line, and the themes should reach leadership. If the only reader is the manager being described, you have built a form that collects nothing.
- Is this exit survey form template free?
- Yes. Use it, publish it and collect answers on the free plan with no card. Paid plans add things like payments, scheduling, removing our badge and your own domain, but none of them are needed to run this form.
- Do I need an account to use it?
- You need one to edit and publish, because the form has to live somewhere and the answers have to come back to you. Signing up takes about a minute and does not ask for a card. The people filling your form in never need an account.
- Can I change the questions?
- All of them. The template is a starting point, not a fixed form: add, remove, reword and reorder anything, change the look, and use logic so people only see the questions that apply to them.
- Can I put it on my own website?
- Yes. Embed it in a page you already have, or share the link. On a paid plan you can serve it from your own domain so the address says your name rather than ours.
- Where do the answers go?
- Into your dashboard, where you can read, search and export them as CSV. You can also have each response emailed to you, pushed to another tool with a webhook, or sent to a connected integration.
- How long does this form take to fill in?
- About 2 minutes as it stands, across 4 questions. Every question you cut brings that down, and shorter forms get finished more often.
Worth reading next
- 18 Survey Question Types, and When Each One Earns Its PlaceMultiple choice, scales, matrices, rankings and open text, with the specific failure mode of each and how to avoid it.
- 30 Customer Feedback Questions That Get Real AnswersQuestions grouped by what you are trying to learn, and the wording changes that stop people giving you polite nothing.
- Writing questions people answer honestlyHalf of bad form data is not carelessness. It is people giving the answer the question seemed to want.