$$ for exit questionnaires??

windjam

My management is wanting to pay $5 to anyone who will return their employee exit questionnaire. Can we do that? How should it be paid - I would think it would need to go through AP as they are already terminated in payroll. Or, if paid through payroll, would it be classed as reimburseable or is it taxable income??
Their reason for doing this is that our particular industry has high turnover and we have very few opportunities for face-to-face exit interviews. (Too many just disappear into the sunset!)
We are wanting to get feedback so management thought if we offered financial incentive we might get a few more responses. We will be mailing the forms with a pre-addressed postage-paid envelope.
Has anyone tried this? Please give me your good, bad and ugly thoughts so I can pass them on to management.

Gillian3

How about feedback from your current employee's in the form of a third party survey? I think $5 might get you a bit more of the same as what you already get.

JM in ATL

Do you think that $5 will be enough of an incentive? And rather than giving a check through payroll or AP, how about a gift certificate to the movies or the grocery store. That way you can just mail them off as they come in and be done with it. $5 does not need to be claimed for tax purposes. You can give gifts up to $25 before needing to claim them, if I remember correctly. Mabye someone with a better memory can confirm or deny.

Anyway, if it important to you to have that information, I think it would be a good way to at least increase the number of responses you can get, but also consider this. Many ee's who give a 2 week notice may dodge the exit interview just to get their $5.

If the information is not important or if you don't have a plan on what to do with the information, I think you would be wasting your money.

deniseE

I have to agree with the first poster...maybe the solution is not in the people leaving...but those that are currently working. We contracted 2 years ago with an outside group to come in and survey and then develop a plan for improvement based upon the responses. I think we all learned a lot and discovered that retention was possible with just some minor adjustments!