The Value of Stay Interviews in Building Engagement
What if there was a tool to help determine if an employee has one foot In and one foot out of your organization?
There is and it’s called a stay interview. Are you taking advantage of one of the easiest retention tools available to employers today? If not then consider that research from human resources firm Nonprofit HR found that the use of stay interviews increased from 33% in 2022 to 46% in 2023. You’re probably already doing exit interviews with employees that have decided to leave your organization. The concept of stay interviews is very similar but instead of a lagging indicator – capturing the reasons why someone already decided to leave the organization – you’re relying on leading indicators because you’re collecting the information while the employee is still actively working. A stay interview is a planned discussion with an employee to learn more about how to strengthen their engagement and retention with the organization.
Stay interview expert Richard P. Finnegan states that “Stay interviews will not lead to perfect outcomes, but they will certainly improve engagement and retention in your company. And they will do this by helping your leaders build more productive one-on-one relationships with their employees.
Plan
For stay interviews to be effective, there needs to be buy from leadership. Much like other engagement tools, the worst thing that can happen from conducting stay interviews is failure to make any changes or improvements based on the feedback. Trust is damaged when employees don’t see what they shared having any impact on the organization.
Be familiar with the policies and tools already in place at your organization. This may include policy and process around your job postings, organizational philosophy on development opportunities, mentoring program, skill development, tuition reimbursement policy (if available), and creation of “stretch” assignments –projects designed to help an employee expand their skill set.
Ensure your managers are ready to conduct the interviews. To perform effective stay interviews your managers will need to have effective interview skills. That means that they recognize they will be listening 80% of the time, and asking clarifying questions. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) offers examples of clarifying questions that may include the following:
- Tell me more about why this is so important to you
- How important to you is that on a scale of 1-10?
- What are three ways I can be a better manager to you?
SHRM also suggests that it might be good for your managers conducting the stay interviews to have participated in one previously.
Be intentional with the invitation to participate in a stay interview. Consider the population of employees you will offer this to. Will you limit use to a troubled work team, to those considered high performers or to all (my recommendation)? With what frequency will you use this tool? Annually is often effective but if you’re trying to change organizational culture, more often may be needed. Depending on your approach you’ll want to spend some time developing the why for this initiative. This may be a new concept for employees so your invitation should be focused on gaining their trust and buy-in. Include in the invitation the timeline for completing these interviews and what employees can expect to follow once the interview is complete.
Conducting the Interviews
This tool is best used in an in-person conversation. Most interviews can be completed in under 30 minutes.
The people management platform, Lattice encourages employers considering stay interviews to adopt a few approaches to ensure best practices in the process.
- Keep an open mind. Adopt a curiosity mindset so you approach the feedback with a “how could we do something with this feedback?” instead of immediately dismissing it.
- Avoid blaming language. When following up on information employees share use proper pronouns, like “we” and “I,” rather than creating a separation between upper level leadership and yourself.
- Be ready to do something with the feedback you collect. Workplace and schedule flexibility is the number one policy reason why employees leave.
- Be prepared for positive change. You’re collecting individual feedback from your employees that may seem like individual solutions but if you’re using the stay interview consistently you’ll likely see patterns in the feedback. This could lead to meaningful changes in departmental and company policies.
Follow-up
Once you’ve completed the stay interviews you’ll need to spend some time with the feedback. Are there other resources you can consult with to create a fuller picture? Are there data sources you can consult? For the more qualitative feedback, it may be difficult to hear, especially if you’re a smaller organization with closer ties. You’ll want to provide time and space for the emotional reactions to the feedback. Brené Brown has a great tool for knowing when you’re ready to give feedback but it also works for processing feedback. It’s important to have your emotional response but then once that’s done, get back to looking at the data. After all, that’s what good feedback is, data! If you can take action on things the employee found important enough to address that will go a long way towards demonstrating you value them and their insights.
Conclusion
Stay interviews can be a valuable tool for your organization. Managers learn to incorporate their role in engagement and retention efforts. It also creates an opportunity for more connection between employees and leadership and ultimately can go a long way towards building trust. If you’re ready to take action but want some guided support, reach out. I can help!