How do you keep your awesome employees from thinking about leaving? A stay interview is a staff retention tool to find out why staff may be thinking of leaving. The stay interview format is a series of targeted questions to find out what you can do better as an employer to come up with actionable plans for improvement. Here are examples of essential stay interview questions to retain staff.
The benefits of a stay interview
Here’s an open leadership secret – your great employees are very marketable and can find future employment elsewhere. Your mediocre or bad employees can look elsewhere – at not much of a long term loss to you.
A stay interview is similar to an exit interview – it is a fact finding mission. The real difference is during a stay interview is that the objective is to retain employees, rather than change to retain current employees after a high performer has already left.
A stay interview helps affirm that you appreciate the staff for their hard work and loyalty. Their opinion is important to you and you want to take the time to make their voice heard to find out what you can do better.
This is different than a staff satisfaction survey. Those are diluted with all employee’s thoughts and opinions. During a stay interview, we want to focus specifically on what the high performing employee thinks. A stay interview can be conducted with a group of high performing individuals and aggregate the results, or performed for specific employees.
The best way to find this information out? Ask the employee directly. You can either do this one-on-one with the employee, or if you get a sense that you may not get honest answers, Human Resources can take this one.
The reason that this feedback is so valuable is that you can target what your high performers think. If you are able to adjust to their needs, you may even get the added benefit of attracting more high performers through professional reputation and word of mouth.
How do you know someone is thinking of leaving?
If you are tuned in to your team, you can just feel the difference. A star employee first becomes frustrated, and then becomes complacent. Complacency is the death of an industry and it will bring down your team.
The last place that you should address this is in the frustration phase, it should never get to complacency.
How to set the stage for a stay interview
If you are going to have this one on one, you can make it formal or informal. You know the employee best. Would they be more candid in an informal setting, for instance, over coffee that is away from the office? Or, would they respond better if you are in a conference room writing down their answers because it feels more official and they have been heard?
Remember, if Human Resources conducts this on your behalf, it will be a formal interview.
Check out how to give meaningful feedback to high performing employees during performance reviews.
A good strategy for encouraging candor during this process is for HR to interview multiple staff. This way staff will feel that their answers are more confidential because you will not be sure which staff member said that your leadership skills were comparable to a wet mop
Let the employee know ahead of time that you want to have a stay interview with them, whether formal or informal. Be clear on the purpose behind your request. Let them know that you think they are a high performer, but may not be completely satisfied in their role and you want to find out what you can do to improve this.
Provide assurances that this is confidential and will not impact their employment at the organization. Employees that do not completely trust the openness of the organization may be very hesitant to participate. If you do not have any takers, continue soliciting anonymous feedback from the whole team. Ask single questions to the high performing employee when opportunities present themselves in the day to day work. Take action on the feedback they provide in those moments. Once trust is built incrementally with the employee, you can approach them again for a stay interview because you value their feedback as a high performing employee.
Stay interview questions
Here is a list of essential stay interview questions to retain staff. Feel free to add any additional questions or alter slightly for your specific company, department, or industry. Remember to ask for elaboration so that you get a clear picture of the answer so that you can come up with an action plan. Do not put it solely on the employee to come up with an action plan.
Encourage the employee to expand on their answers. “You think that your manager is the equivalent of a wet mop? What makes you believe that? What could they do differently?”
How to formulate questions using the common reasons that staff leave
According to this article, there are six main reasons that employees leave:
- They are overworked
- Lack of challenge to their role
- Their initiative is being suppressed by their superiors
- Lack of opportunity to learn or develop
- Work or contribution not recognized
- They know their value, and are not being compensated for it
With these reasons in mind, a list of essential stay interview questions to retain staff has been developed. Ensure that you have a preamble so that the staff know that you value their time and feedback.
The 6 Essential Stay Interview Questions to Retain Staff
Preamble: I want to thank you for taking the time to talk today. Our goal is to use your feedback as a high performer to find out what we can improve to keep you on our team.
Question 1: Do you feel like you have adequate resources to do your job?
Rather than just asking, “are you overworked”, this encourages discussion of resource allocation. The answer to “are you overworked” almost always is a yes, and since you don’t necessarily have the funds to hire more staff, this answer will get you know where . By asking about the resources, you may find out that they are frustrated by the antiquity of a program that causes them to go slower than they want and their task completion rate suffers.
Question 2: Do you have any skills that you do not feel are being used in current role?
This is a great way to find out if there is a missed skill set that they could be using. It would be a win-win for both of you to find out how the employee can bring even more to the table. It may also be a way to bring a challenge to their role.
Question 3: Are there any barriers for you to suggest or begin process improvements?
This question can bring different insight on how their creative efforts or drive for process improvement may get derailed. It may be that their peers react negatively towards ideas “because this is how we always do it” or you as a leader may inadvertently discourage them.
Question 4: Are you happy with the continuing education opportunities provided to you?
High performers typically are motivated individuals who want to learn all that they can. Make sure you keep fueling this enthusiasm with courses, workshops, speakers, etc.
Question 5: How would you like to be recognized as a high performer?
Different employees are motivated by different types of recognition. Some people like public accolades, others will take offense if you point out how great they are, “because they are just doing their job”. Ask your high performers directly on how they want to be recognized.
Some employees may want all others to know how valuable they are – and some may quietly like to take a higher rate of pay.
Question 6: Do you think that you have a fair compensation?
Don’t ask if they are happy with their compensation – ask about fairness. Everyone would like to make more money, but their perception of how they are compensated compared to their teammates and others who perform the same job at different companies matters.
A stay interview may feel odd to staff, and in time, they may not feel that they need a formal process to come and speak with you about their concerns that may lead them to look elsewhere. The stay interview questions are just a jumping off point for what hopefully will be a great conversation and an even better action plan development so that you can keep them and future high performing employees from leaving.