Why employees leave medical device makers and how to understand why

In a device workshop, a resignation rarely shows on the day of the letter. It surfaces three weeks later. A distributor returns a carton of haemostats with gritty ratchets and stiff box-locks. Titanium bone plates queue at the CMM because one inspector alone can write the probe routine. A taluk hospital's ticket on a suction pump stays open, since the engineer who knew its vacuum regulator has joined a dealer.

Instrument, implant, equipment and disposables units lose people over buffing dust, gowning queues, lot travellers, tender overtime and long field trips. The one-line reason at the gate rarely mentions any of these. Below: how to get past the stock answer from each kind of leaver, how to read exits section by section, and who fixes what. The approach follows our plant-wide guide to why operators and technicians quit, narrowed to forceps, femoral stems, patient monitors and syringe barrels.

• Polishers at the buffing lathe. Sisal and cloth mops, compound dust and heat all shift, often on a helper's grade, while their lustre decides whether the lot is accepted.
• Box-lock fitters and jaw grinders. Aligning serrations and setting ratchet teeth takes years, so the workshop two lanes away tempts them with a small raise.
• CMM and bench inspectors. Caught between a production head wanting a pass and a quality lead wanting a hold, and blamed by each.
• Mould setters for syringe and connector tools. Scarce, phoned at night when a cavity flashes or short-shots, and almost never given a deputy.
• Gowned operators on disposables lines. Often in a first job, worn down by re-gowning, pouch sealing and counting, with another factory one bus stop away.
• Calibration technicians for analysers and glucometer readers. They carry drift knowledge kept only in their heads, which makes them a target for larger instrument firms.
• Field service engineers. Nights in lodges near district hospitals and labs, carrying spares and loaner units, with travel hours logged loosely or not at all.
• Design, validation and firmware engineers. They go quietly when the next title never comes.

"Better salary" and "family pressure" are the commonest first answers. Often both hold. In this trade they may also hide a polisher scolded for a slow Tuesday when his rework tags were the fewest in the section. Or an inspector told, once too often, to release borderline bone screws before the container cut-off. Or a firmware engineer who saw a sales coordinator promoted ahead of him.

Ask about events, not motives. Which lots did you run in your final month? How many evenings did you stay back? Who checked your pieces, and what happened when one was rejected? Small facts like these explain more than any answer to a direct why.

Some reasons lie wholly outside the gate: a wedding in the family, a shift to the ancestral village, a seat on a polytechnic course. Note them as given and move on.

• Lustre or count: Did the piece rate push you to rush the final buffing pass? Who noticed when you slowed down to get it right?
• Holding a lot: Were you ever asked to pass plates or screws you would have held? What followed when you held them?
• Gowning and air showers: Did the queue at the change room eat into your tea break or your target?
• Travellers and labels: Did you fill the lot traveller at the bench or at shift end? Were you blamed for a blank someone else left?
• Tender weeks: How was overtime shared before the last hospital tender or export container, and what happened to your hours afterwards?
• Teaching: Did you show newcomers how to set a box-lock or tune a hot runner, and did anyone count that?
• Road time: For field staff, how many nights away last quarter, and was travel time logged the way you were promised?
• Titles: For engineers, what role did you expect by now, and who said it was coming?
• Strain: Mop dust, squinting through a loupe at flash and sink marks, heat at the curing oven. Which wore you down most?

Choose the person by what the leaver might need to say. A polisher who resents the production head will not confide in him. An inspector pressed to release lots may stay guarded with anyone who signs the dispatch note. The welfare officer, the training lead, a senior storekeeper or someone from HR can do this well. For engineers, the owner or a director outside their reporting line usually hears the most.

Use Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or whatever the bench speaks. Keep the sheet to a page, cutting down our exit interview form if it helps. Tell them who reads the notes. In a workshop of sixty or seventy hands, complete secrecy is a promise no one can keep, so avoid making it.

1. 1

   What first made you look elsewhere?

   Ask for the moment, not the date. A held lot, a missed increment or a midnight call from the press shop often marks it.

2. 2

   Which job here did you like doing?

   Tells you what to keep safe for colleagues staying on at that bench or line.

3. 3

   Did the work match what you heard at joining?

   Mismatches tend to involve section, shift, rate or travel promises that shifted later.

4. 4

   How were your finish and your rejects judged?

   Picks up targets that fought with quality, and inspectors who held lots without support.

5. 5

   What did the last rush do to you?

   Covers who got the overtime, the temporary hands you had to mind and the empty weeks that came after.

6. 6

   Who taught you, and whom did you teach?

   Shows whether skill passes on, and whether teaching cost the teacher his piece earnings.

7. 7

   Did the work ever harm your health?

   Mop dust, solvent baths in the ultrasonic room, ovens, long hours at the magnifier. Pass any complaint to whoever runs safety the same day.

8. 8

   Would you rejoin us, and under what conditions?

   Trained hands often come back. Record the answer next to the supervisor's view on rehire.

A single exit describes a person. Five from one bench describe a section. For every leaver, write down the section, bench or line, supervisor, grade, service length and month. Lay these notes beside records the unit already keeps: rework tags, the rejection register, overtime sheets, service-call tickets and the training sign-off book.

Watch the calendar. Do exits bunch a month after a big tender is shipped? After increment letters? After a new final inspector arrives? After a change-room rule shortens the break? Clusters like these are where retention work in device units begins, long before anyone quotes a plant-wide attrition figure.

• Lustre punished by a count target: the production head with whoever fixes rates, who re-examine how the buffing bench is paid.
• Inspectors leaned on to release: the owner, who writes that a held lot never counts against the inspector.
• Change-room queues eating breaks: the clean-area supervisor, who staggers gowning times by line.
• Blame for blank travellers: the quality lead, who checks what induction actually taught before naming anyone.
• Lopsided tender overtime: the plant head, who posts the overtime rota when the purchase order lands.
• Road fatigue: the service manager, who reviews nights in lodges and how travel hours reach the attendance sheet.
• Stalled engineers: the director concerned, with a written ladder and a review date.

Set a month for each first change and a check date. When a change lands, say at the shift meeting that it grew out of what departing colleagues said, without naming anybody.

Short check-ins at fixed points surface these grievances while the person still stands at the lathe or the test bench. Useful points in this trade: after a learner's first lot clears final inspection, after each tender or export rush, after increment letters, and after a field engineer's heaviest month. The process pages for orthopaedic implant units and for monitor and suction-unit assemblers show how it works in two very different shops.

For the whole group, from scalpel handles to hospital beds, see our medical devices and equipment HR page. Wherever you start, judge it one way. Colleagues still at the buffing wheel, the moulding press and the burn-in rack should see something shift because someone spoke candidly on the way out.