Understanding the Employee Exit Experience: A Multi-Theoretical and Multi-Stage Review

Abstract

Employee turnover research has traditionally focused on antecedents and outcomes, overlooking the subjective, emotional, and relational dimensions of how employees experience organisational exit. This review reconceptualises the employee exit experience as a temporally extended, multi-stage process encompassing pre-exit cognitive and emotional disengagement, interactional and procedural dynamics during the transition, and post-exit identity reconstruction and narrative formation, integrating five theoretical perspectives, which are the Unfolding Model of Turnover, Psychological Contract Theory, Social Exchange Theory, Employee Voice Theory, and Affective Events Theory. The review proposes a multi-theoretical framework that captures the cognitive, affective, and reputational complexities of exit. The review highlights how pre-exit factors, such as job dissatisfaction, organisational commitment, and perceived support, shape disengagement; how interactional fairness and communication during offboarding influence the affective tone; and how post-exit storytelling and alums relationships impact organisational reputation and talent attraction. It concludes by identifying key research gaps, including the need for qualitative, longitudinal, and cross-cultural studies that examine exit dynamics and reputational spillovers in transparent labour markets. Overall, this review positions the employee exit experience as a strategic and relational phenomenon, reframing exit not as an endpoint but as an ongoing process with enduring implications for individual identity, organisational culture, and employer reputation.