Field note
Exit themes that survive a noisy comment field
Free-text exit notes are uneven. Some leavers write carefully; others leave one sentence. Treating every comment as equal weight leads to plans driven by the most dramatic wording rather than the most common pattern.
Code comments into a short theme list decided before reading: manager relationship, workload, pay, career path, commute, and other. Add new themes only when several notes demand it.
Count themes by department and tenure band, then read a sample of notes inside the largest cells. That sample check catches miscoding without requiring a full qualitative study.
Present themes as concentrations, not accusations. Managers respond better to “twelve of eighteen leavers in this band mentioned schedule predictability” than to a single anonymous quote on a slide.
When comment coverage is thin, say so. A retention brief that admits missing exit reasons is more useful than one that invents certainty.