Building Stronger Teams Through Stay Interviews

A stay interview focuses on the employees you want to keep. Employees can share honest reasons why they want to stay or leave. Acting on employee feedback improves the workplace and strengthens retention.

A manager, supervisor, executive, or other leader conducts a stay interview with a direct report to uncover specific actions they can take to strengthen engagement and retention. Understanding how the direct hire prefers to be managed supports productivity, performance, and collaboration. These factors elevate job satisfaction, employee morale, and company culture. ?

Along with regular one-on-ones with your team and innovative approaches to performance reviews, stay interviews strengthen company loyalty. Implementing each employee’s preferred management techniques helps customize stay plans. These activities reduce hiring, onboarding, and training costs and elevate the bottom line.

Benefits of Stay Interviews

Stay interviews provide many benefits:

• Leaders who openly communicate with their team strengthen trust and respect.
• Employees understand that leaders care about them and want them to remain long-term.
• Team members whose leaders implement their feedback when possible are likely to stay.
• Leaders drive improvements in employee engagement and retention.

Guidelines to Conduct a Stay Interview

Follow these guidelines to conduct a stay interview:

The top executive conducts the first stay interview

The top executive should conduct the first stay interviews with their direct reports. Then, the stay interviews should cascade down to first-line supervisors with their direct reports.

Following the cascade method provides each leader with an example of a stay interview. Then, leaders can conduct stay interviews with their team. The process can continue until every employee has experienced a stay interview.

Set expectations for stay interviews ?

Leaders should provide their teams advance notice that they will schedule an in-person stay interview with each employee to determine how they can strengthen engagement and encourage long-term tenure. Emphasize the focus on things the leaders can control or influence rather than broader company policies.

Schedule the stay interviews

Leaders should schedule 20-30 minutes for each stay interview. Also, consider scheduling a meeting with a top performer first to build confidence in structuring the conversation. Then, work on engaging and retaining other employees.

Request constructive feedback

Focus on identifying specific methods to elevate employee engagement and retention. Ask follow-up questions and repeat what was said to confirm understanding.

Consider which pieces of feedback can be implemented. Then, take action accordingly.

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