Bernd is 32 years old. He is starting to think about getting married, but unfortunately he doesn’t have the right woman. This is tragic because he has had relationships with at least 10 women in the past 15 years. Sometimes they lasted longer, sometimes a little shorter. For his last girlfriend, he had thought of something special. When she abruptly broke up with him, he handed her a questionnaire. “Janine, of course it’s a pity that you want to leave me. Unfortunately, you are not the first one to break up with me. Therefore, I would like to ask you to fill out this questionnaire carefully so that I can systematically learn what I have to do differently in the future”. The questionnaire was professionally presented. It included questions like: What are the three most important reasons why you are leaving me? Do you have a new boyfriend? If so, what does he have that I don’t (please tick the three most important categories)? Would you still recommend a girlfriend to get into a relationship with me?
That was the end of the matter. Janine’s reaction followed directly: “This shitty questionnaire is another reason why I’m leaving you. You are simply not interested in me”.
Companies that hand out a written exit questionnaire to their voluntarily departing employees have probably never been interested in their employees. Companies that only conduct written employee surveys to understand employees‘ experience are not really interested in their employees. Companies that only ask customers for feedback with questionnaires are not interested in their customers (even if a hotline employee reads out the questionnaire in person).
If you are really interested in people’s opinions and perspectives, you talk to them. It’s as simple as that and most readers of this post knew that before reading it. So why do so many companies rely on these widely used, long-handled tools? That’s something we should seriously think about.