Most unhappy leavers would still recommend you.
Leaver surveys are read for what went wrong. Read what people say about the organisation itself, and most of those who left unhappy are still on your side.
In twelve months of exit data from five UK organisations, 59% of unhappy leavers would still recommend the organisation, against 94% of happy ones. Split your results, fix the one or two drivers, and treat the advocates as alumni.
Across 1,228 leavers in 5 organisations, 59% of those who left unhappy said they would still recommend the organisation as a place of work to their friends and family. Among leavers who left happy, the figure was 94%. The gap is real, but the floor is higher than many would expect, and it is goodwill that is easy to overlook.
What we looked at
The figures come from LastOpinion exit questionnaires completed over the twelve months to the end of October 2026, in five UK organisations from five different sectors, each with at least fifty leavers in the year. Every leaver was asked whether they were leaving because of dissatisfaction with the job, with the organisation as an employer, with both or with neither (in one questionnaire, as their main reason for leaving); we call those who named the job, the organisation or both “unhappy leavers”. Every leaver was also asked, in the same words in all five questionnaires, about the organisation itself: would you recommend the organisation as a place of work to your friends and family?
The pooled figures are weighted towards the larger organisations, so we also looked at each organisation on its own. The pattern held. In every one of the five, unhappy leavers were markedly less likely to recommend than happy ones, by close to 30 percentage points at the narrowest. In three of the five, more than half of the unhappy leavers would still recommend the organisation, and in all five more than a third would. Happy leavers were consistently positive: above 85% in every organisation.
Why the floor is so high
Leaving unhappy is not the same as leaving hostile. Seven in ten of the unhappy leavers said their dissatisfaction was with the organisation as an employer, alone or alongside the job, and close to half of them would still recommend it; among those unhappy only with the job, nearly nine in ten would. When we look at what lay behind the unhappiness, it differed from one organisation to the next: in some it was progression, reward and the chance to grow; in others it was how colleagues and managers worked with people. Those are parts of the experience, and people can be let down by one part and still think well of the whole.
That matters for three reasons. Leavers talk to the people you want to hire next, and most of them, even the disappointed ones, say they would recommend you. Some of them will come back, and that goodwill is where a return starts. And the specific thing that disappointed them, unlike general disaffection, is something you can do something about.
What to do about it
Split your leaver results in two
Report happy and unhappy leavers separately. An overall “would recommend” figure hides the most useful comparison you have. The unhappy-leaver benchmark check shows where your share of unhappy leavers sits against other organisations.
Find the one or two drivers behind the unhappy group
Not the full list: the one or two that most of them name. That is your fix list and, in our experience, it is usually narrower than the exit comments make it feel. How to read a leaver analysis report covers how to separate a pattern from noise, and what would have kept them shows what leavers in other organisations say.
Treat the advocates as alumni, not losses
An unhappy leaver who would still recommend you is a candidate for a returner conversation, a referral and a fair word in the market. Keep in touch with the ones who agree to it. The returner opportunity sets out what that looks like in practice, using NHS data, and the same logic applies in any sector.
Ask the people who are staying
The drivers that disappointed your leavers are probably affecting people who have not left yet. Stay interviews ask the same questions while there is still time to act on the answers.
great{with}talent LastOpinion exit questionnaires: 1,228 leavers in 5 UK organisations from 5 sectors, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026; no organisation with fewer than fifty leavers, none named and no single organisation’s figures shown. “Would recommend” is the share answering yes among those who answered the question. For independent exit questionnaires and leaver analysis, see LastOpinion.
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