Why you should avoid exit and engagement surveys altogether

SummaryWhat if the most honest feedback about why people leave your company isn't in the exit survey at all—it's in the Slack threads, Zoom transcripts, and emails already happening every day? In this episode of the WorkOps Podcast, host Jeet sits down with David Hanrahan, SVP of People Success at SolarWinds, for a candid conversation about one of the most broken processes in HR: the exit survey. David walks through his years-long love-hate relationship with exit surveys, including a moment at Zendesk where he got so frustrated with the bad signal that he actually told the team to stop running them altogether. He and Jeet get into why exit data is so unreliable, how bias from both departing employees and their managers rewrites the real story, and why he believes the future is in predictive signals from real conversations rather than post-hoc questionnaires. David also shares a contractor agent pilot that SolarWinds recently shelved, what it taught them about where AI belongs and where it doesn't, and how he's coaching his business partner team through the shift from tactical request-handling to strategic HR. And he closes with a line that stuck with me: in this era, people leaders need to think of themselves a little more as technologists and a little less as psychologists. If you lead people ops, build HR systems, or are just trying to figure out where AI fits, this one's worth an hour.Timestamps00:33 From accidental psychology major to SVP of People Success02:13 Why SolarWinds calls it "People Success" instead of HR03:02 The exit survey problem at Zendesk and why David shut them down06:16 How bias from both employees and managers corrupts exit data12:34 Why employees are more comfortable asking AI sensitive questions16:16 The contractor agent pilot SolarWinds shelved and what it taught them21:05 Freeing up business partners for strategic HR through automation23:33 Flipping exit surveys on their head with predictive signalsTakeawaysInterrogate the data you're treating as gospel; exit surveys carry more bias than most HR teams admitStart with one high-impact area when adopting AI instead of trying to flip everything at onceUnderstand where a human needs to stay in the loop before building an agent—narrow scope without judgment design usually failsBe explicit with your team about why you're automating; relinquishing work requires trust in what comes nextLook for retention signals in the conversations already happening, not in surveys you have to force people to fill outThink of yourself a little more as a technologist and a little less as a psychologist in this era of HRGuest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhanrahan/Company website: https://www.solarwinds.comSponsorThis episode is brought to you by Kinfolk, the AI service desk built for HR.See more at kinfolkhq.com