In most NDIS and aged care organisations, when a support worker leaves, the offboarding process goes something like this: they give notice, work out their remaining shifts, return their access credentials, and are gone. Occasionally a manager has a brief conversation about their reasons for leaving. Rarely is that conversation structured, documented, or analysed alongside other exits to identify patterns. This is a significant missed opportunity.
Workers who leave care roles frequently cite "better opportunity" or "personal reasons" when giving notice. These are the socially comfortable answers. The real reasons are more often: a poor relationship with a specific manager; a rostering practice they found unsustainable; a sense that their concerns were repeatedly ignored; a workplace culture they experienced as cliquey or unsupportive; or a safety concern they did not feel able to raise formally. Workers give the comfortable answer because they need a reference, because they will potentially work with these people again in the sector, or because they have learned that raising genuine concerns creates friction.
A useful exit interview is structured, conducted by someone the departing worker trusts (often better done by someone other than their direct manager), documented, and genuinely confidential. Core questions include: How would you describe the support you received from your supervisor? Were there aspects of the rostering or scheduling that made the role difficult to sustain? Did you feel that your concerns or suggestions were genuinely heard by management? Were there any situations where you observed practice that concerned you? What could the organisation have done to retain you?
Exit interviews can surface participant safety concerns that were not formally reported while the worker was employed. Workers who observed or suspected poor practice by colleagues — but who did not feel safe raising it through formal channels — may be willing to discuss it during an exit interview when the power dynamics of the employment relationship no longer apply. Where an exit interview surfaces a participant safety concern, it must be handled seriously and assessed against your reportable incident obligations.
Individual exit interviews have value. Aggregated exit data has transformative value. When you track responses over time — categorising the primary reason for departure across every exit — patterns emerge. If 60% of workers leaving in a six-month period cite the same team leader's management style as a contributing factor, that is a management problem that needs addressing. The care organisations with the lowest turnover in Australia are not the ones that spend the most on recruitment — they are the ones that take the time to understand why people leave, and then actually do something about it.
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