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As a standard part of your work as a librarian and manager, you should always be seeking and receiving feedback on your performance, both on the individual and departmental levels. Maintaining an interest and willingness to change, based on the feedback of employees as well as customers, is an essential ongoing activity for all managers. Often this is accomplished through the performance management system or annual performance reviews, where you have the opportunity to give and receive feedback to and from your employees.
There is one key opportunity to receive employee feedback that is not always realized, though. That occasion occurs when an employee chooses to take a position elsewhere; therefore, you have one final opportunity to formally receive an employee's feedback to help you to improve their position and the library's work environment.
This particular information-seeking activity is known as the exit interview, and it is an HR best practice that many organizations try to implement. You probably hold informal discussions with parting employees, but do you make a formal practice of soliciting their feedback? Few organizations really seem to understand and act upon the valuable information obtained through the exit interview, however. Your human resources department may have a policy and procedures on holding exit interviews, or you may need to devise a policy specifically for the library. Regardless, if you understand the value of feedback and are willing, it is very easy to hold formal exit interviews with departing staff to help the development of your library.
There are many reasons for holding exit interviews, and it's not only to find out why a particular staff person is leaving the organization. Obviously, an employee's reasons for leaving a position in your library is something you should want to understand, and it may not always be simply that they found a better position elsewhere. The exit interview may even be the opportunity to retain an employee you don't want to lose. If you are willing to understand the reasons why the employee wishes to depart, and are able to offer some change to their position that will suit both you and the employee, your exit interview policy will have paid off.
In most cases, the exit interview provides an employee with the opportunity...