THE STAY INTERVIEW
In these tumultuous talent retention times, employees who stick are your company’s strategic advantage. After all, talented people who stay indicate you are doing something very right.
With that, winning companies conduct “Stay Interviews” – where you ask current employees why they continue to work for you and how things can improve – to keep turnover at bay through trust building. Stay Interviews also offer a key plank in any smart talent retention strategy. Stay Interviews, done right, give you a detailed picture of how to focus more on the good things you are doing while shedding the things that cause people to leave.
At a minimum, Stay Interviews should be done with high potential, critical employees and those who might present a flight risk. Having said that, don’t overlook your “steady Eddie’s”— engaging average employees in these types of chats just might help transform them into high performers.
As with any important talent process, the best intentions will fall flat if the Stay Interview process isn’t well conceived. Of course, there are things you can do to ensure your “Stay Interviews” get actionable, positive results:
Positive Result #1:
Stay Interviews require a long-term commitment. Flavor of the month approaches will drive employee disenchantment and ensure failure. Design a process that makes sense for your culture: why it’s important, what is the turnover rate and how it affects the business.
Positive Result #2:
Some Stay Interview questions include
What do you look forward to most at work?
What are some of the challenges you face?
What are you learning here and what else would you like to be learning?
What can I do as your manager to help?
Is there anything that would tempt you to leave the job?
Positive Result #3:
Offer a follow-up and just do it! Don’t leave Stay Interview participants hanging. As consumers, we all know how much we disdain when a customer service rep says “Thanks for your input, we’ll call you back” and the call never comes. Similarly, that will be poison for any Stay Interview effort. Listen to the concerns and follow-up!
Positive Result #4:
Provide feedback to employees so they know that efforts are being made to address the concerns. Be transparent. If employers want feedback, be prepared to deliver it. An enlightened company will listen and explain what you can or cannot do based on what you learn from the Stay Interview.
Positive Result #5:
Finally, on a big picture level, make sure you have a way to consolidate the data and provide themes the company’s leadership team can address.
In the war for talent, we need to remind ourselves that our employees are our true “secret weapons” to win in the marketplace. We know that successful companies are laser-focused on knowing what their customers are doing. Winning companies know that it is no different with talented employees. Enlightened organizations, by using Stay Interviews, will ask: what are we doing right, and how can we do even better? You CAN do this!