Company: Pinnacle Retail (fictitious)
A mid-sized chain of department stores with 3,500 employees across 40 outlets, retailing apparel, home goods, and consumer electronics.
Background
Neha Sharma has spent two years as a category manager at Pinnacle Retail. By most measures, she has been a strong performer: her merchandising decisions have been sound, her relationships with vendors solid, and her category numbers consistently above target.
She has also spent two years watching her supervisor take credit for her ideas.
Her supervisor, Rajeev Bahl, is considered one of Pinnacle’s most effective senior managers. His results are strong. His visibility with leadership is high. And for two years, Neha says, the strategies she developed, the analyses she ran, and the recommendations she made have been presented upward as his own, with no acknowledgement of where they originated.
She never raised it internally. She was worried about what it would cost her.
Instead, she found another job and put in her papers.
It was only in the exit interview, with nothing left to lose, that she told HR what had happened. She was calm, specific, and prepared. She shared a folder of emails: strategy documents she had authored, forwarded by Rajeev to senior leadership without her name, alongside messages where he had explicitly taken ownership of her thinking in front of others.
She made one thing clear: she was not looking for intervention. She was not asking for her job back. She just wanted someone to know.
HR now has to decide what to do with that.
The dilemma
Should HR investigate the allegation, treating the documented evidence as credible and acting on it regardless of the fact that Neha is leaving and has asked for no intervention?
Or should HR set it aside, reasoning that a departing employee may not be an entirely neutral source, and that disrupting a high-performing manager on the basis of exit interview feedback creates more risk than value?
And if neither option feels right, is there a middle path: acknowledging the feedback formally, flagging it to senior leadership as an organisational signal, and monitoring Rajeev’s behaviour without launching a formal investigation?
What’s really at stake
This is a test of whether exit interviews are genuine feedback mechanisms or HR formalities that organisations quietly ignore when the findings become inconvenient.
Neha is leaving. She has documentation. She wants nothing in return. That combination is unusual, and it matters. Most employees in her position say nothing, keep the relationship intact, and protect their reference. The fact that she spoke up with evidence makes this harder to dismiss than a routine exit complaint.
But the organisation’s discomfort is also real. Rajeev is a high performer. Investigating him on the basis of a departing employee’s account carries risk: to his reputation, to his team’s stability, and to the implicit message it sends about how Pinnacle treats its senior managers.
There is a deeper pattern worth examining too. If Neha felt unable to raise this for two years while she was still employed, that is not just a story about one supervisor. It is a signal about the kind of culture Pinnacle has built, and whether people inside it feel safe enough to speak before they have already decided to leave.
Exit interviews that produce only comfortable feedback are not exit interviews. They are farewell conversations.
The deeper question is harder to avoid: if an organisation cannot act on credible, documented feedback simply because the person sharing it is on her way out, what exactly is the exit interview for?
We asked three HR leaders how they would approach this dilemma.
What HR leaders said
Praveen Purohit, CHRO, Vedanta Aluminium, Power, Ports & Mines
“In large organisations, feedback of this nature is not uncommon. Employees regularly share both positive and negative experiences, and HR’s responsibility is to ensure such inputs reach the appropriate leaders for review and action.
If I received this feedback, I would not treat it as gossip or dismiss it because the employee is leaving. The fact that someone has chosen to share documented evidence makes it important enough to examine. Whether the behaviour was deliberate or unconscious, leaders must understand how their actions impact their teams.
The larger purpose of acting on such feedback is not merely to resolve one case but to prevent similar situations from affecting others in the future. Insights from these incidents should help shape leadership expectations across the organisation.
In my experience, progressive organisations view exit interviews as an important source of organisational intelligence. The reality is that most employees do not reveal their true reasons for leaving while they are still employed. Many remain diplomatic, avoid confrontation and leave the door open for a future return.
This is why some organisations conduct follow-up interviews a few months after separation, often through independent third parties. Employees tend to be more candid once they are no longer associated with the company, allowing HR to uncover patterns that may otherwise remain hidden.
The danger lies in treating exit feedback as casual conversation. When organisations fail to act on recurring concerns, they lose an opportunity to protect culture and strengthen leadership accountability.”
Shailesh Singh, CPO, Axis Max Life
“For me, the answer depends on a fundamental question: are we trying to run a business transaction, or are we trying to build an institution?
If we are building an institution, we cannot afford to ignore information that points to a potential systemic flaw. Institutions are built on values, processes and accountability. If an organisation conducts exit interviews but disregards uncomfortable feedback, the process becomes a hollow ritual rather than a meaningful mechanism for improvement.
Therefore, I believe the allegation must be investigated. Not because the employee is leaving, but because the feedback highlights a possible values issue. If a leader is presenting work as their own when it was actually done by someone else, that gap between behaviour and values can damage the organisation over time.
That said, fairness is critical. The objective should not be to disrupt the business or punish a high performer based on an accusation alone. The complaint should first be assessed for merit. If the evidence suggests there is substance to the claim, the matter should be discussed openly with the supervisor, who must be given an opportunity to explain and respond.
I would caution against rushing to judgement. At this stage, there is an allegation, not a conclusion. A fair process requires listening to all sides, reviewing evidence objectively and allowing facts to determine the outcome.
A truly high-performing leader should also be willing to learn from feedback. If a mistake has been made, acknowledging it and correcting course is a sign of strength, not weakness.”
Viekas K Khokha, CHRO, Sharda Motor Industries
“If I were conducting this exit interview, my first step would be to probe deeper. I would want to understand what the employee means when she says her supervisor was taking credit for her work. Leadership accountability often means managers are ultimately responsible for team outcomes, so it is important to distinguish between ownership of results and unfair appropriation of an employee’s contributions.
I would ask what specifically prompted her decision to leave. Was it a lack of recognition? Was it inadequate developmental support? Did she feel her work was not being acknowledged despite delivering results?
To me, the larger concern may not be the supervisor’s behaviour but whether the employee received regular coaching, developmental feedback and growth opportunities. If those conversations and documented development plans were missing, there is clearly a leadership gap that needs attention. A manager’s responsibility is not only to deliver results but also to build and develop people.
The evidence she has provided cannot simply be ignored. However, before arriving at any conclusions, HR must understand the context, performance history and the nature of the interactions between the employee and her manager.
More broadly, organisations should recognise that exit interviews often suffer from bias. Employees who are still serving notice periods may hesitate to be completely honest due to concerns about references or relationships. Feedback is often more candid when gathered after the employee has left, particularly through an independent third party. Technology and AI-driven interview tools can also help eliminate interviewer bias and encourage more open responses.
Most importantly, employees must feel psychologically safe while sharing feedback. Unless they trust that their comments will be handled fairly and confidentially, they are unlikely to reveal the real reasons behind their departure.”
If you were the CHRO at Pinnacle Retail
You have been asked to decide how to respond to Neha’s disclosure before she completes her notice period.
Do you:
- Investigate the allegation formally based on the evidence provided?
- Escalate it as a leadership concern and monitor for broader patterns?
- Treat it as exit feedback rather than grounds for a formal inquiry?
Or is the deeper question this:
If employees only feel safe enough to tell the truth on their way out, what does that say about the organisation they are leaving?
Share your perspective in the comments or on LinkedIn using #HRKathaCaseInPoint.