When employees bid their adieus, HR tends to dive into a whirlwind — deciphering the what-went-wrongs or sprinting to fill that now-vacant chair. But let’s divert the attention from the exit drama to the real head-scratcher: What’s keeping your company’s loyal employees happily rooted? In your mission to dial up retention efforts, stay interviews flip the talent management script and focus on determining the positive aspects that keep your long-staying legends around.

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This article covers the basics, the importance and the most effective questions to include in one-on-one interviews:

• What Are Stay Interviews?
• How To Conduct a Stay Interview
• Key Questions To Ask
• Importance
• Tips To Improve the Process
• Next Steps

What Are Stay Interviews?

A stay interview is a conversation initiated by employers with longstanding and engaged employees to gain insights into their perspectives on responsibilities, teams and the organization. In these individual discussions, managers typically inquire about the factors that drive employees to stay with the company, as well as any potential factors that could lead them to consider leaving.

How To Conduct a Stay Interview

Follow these steps to for effective stay interviews:

1. Select the Organizer

Key Question: Who’ll conduct the interview?

Involving the employee’s manager or skip-level manager in the interview is ideal since they’re more likely to know the employee. While HR folks can also participate in the conversation, letting managers take the reins is the better option since they’re most familiar with the employee’s work.

The caveat here is that trust is the primary X factor that determines feedback sincerity. The employee must feel comfortable with the person who conducts the interview.

2. Identify Who to Interview

Key question: Who are your long-staying employees?

A Frontline Recruiters report found that employees fall into four categories:

• Job Lovers (29%) – “I love my job and I am not going anywhere.”
• Job Opportunists (58%) – “I like my job, but am open to something better.”
• Unhappy Stayers (10%) – “I am unhappy in my job, but am not ready to leave.”
• Eager Leavers (4%) – “I hate my job and am ready to leave.”

Your long-term and high-performing employees should get the first preference. Within this group, the job lovers will help you uncover what they love about their roles and teams. Still, job opportunists reveal the finer details, like what continues to tether them to the ship despite other opportunities.

A good rule of thumb is to wait until after the onboarding or 90-day training period to start these conversations. Give your new hires a chance to settle into their roles and familiarize themselves with key processes, team dynamics and company culture.

Tool to Use: Now’s the time for your talent management system to shine! Use talent analytics or performance KPIs from the performance management module to identify your top employees.

3. Schedule and Communicate

Key question: When and how do you conduct the interview?

Here are the key factors to keep in mind regarding planning and communicating about the interview:

• Duration: The discussion can be anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes long.
• Time Slot: It’s best to involve the employee in deciding a convenient interview time to avoid scheduling conflicts.
• Email: Send a formal email detailing the purpose of the interview, the location and the decided date and time. Be sure to include the interview link if the employee works remotely.
• Frequency: Conducting these interviews annually is ideal. However, set the meetings to recur based on your company’s talent requirements.

Tools to Use: Use your handy office productivity apps for seamless note-taking and efficiently storing feedback gathered during stay interviews. If you’re conducting meetings remotely, integrating video conferencing tools into your talent management system makes interview management a breeze.

To learn more about system capabilities, read our article on talent management system features and requirements, where we cover talent relationship management and integrations in detail.

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Key Questions To Ask

Every question you ask must elicit thoughtful responses. Our list of essential questions to ask employees covers the following key themes. Before we get to the list, here’s why these key themes matter:

• Day-To-Day Work Collecting feedback about job roles helps determine what you can do to provide suitable career development and upskilling opportunities.
• Contributions: Asking your employees about past projects allows you to pinpoint the assignments that boost their sense of accomplishment and pride and will help you assign similar responsibilities in the future.
• Well-Being: Including questions that analyze work-life balance helps you locate areas that need improvement. Be prepared to start some difficult but necessary conversations on benefits and terms of employment.
• Company Culture: Checking employees’ feelings about their job, team and company will help highlight issues that can snowball into bigger problems if they’re not addressed sooner.

Without further ado, here are the top questions to ask to improve retention:

1. What do you like best about your job?
2. In a perfect world, what is the one thing you want to change about your job?
3. What are the three things you want to accomplish here?
4. Is there something beyond your current role that interests you?
5. How well do you think your current responsibilities align with your skills and career goals?
6. Do you think your current responsibilities align with your professional growth?
7. Do you feel recognized for your work?
8. Do you think you’re closer to achieving your goals?
9. What are your top wins from the last three months?
10. On a scale of 1 to 5, with one being the lowest and five being the highest, how well do you think we support you?
11. How would you rate your work-life balance?
12. Can you recall situations where your feedback sparked positive changes or improvements?
13. What is the one thing you want to change about how we do something?

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Importance

Effective conversations with your workforce bring the following benefits to the table:

1. Improves Employee Engagement

Ever catch those employees who seem to be on autopilot, delivering just the bare minimum? Sure, the tasks are getting done, but their enthusiasm is as scarce as Monday morning motivation. These folks are probably doing what experts call “quiet quitting.” According to a recent Gallup report, 59% of the workforce is doing just that.

When employee engagement takes a nosedive, and minds start clocking out long before the workday ends, stay interviews addressing concerns, recognizing achievements and understanding individual needs. This approach enhances job satisfaction and strengthens the overall commitment of employees to the organization.

2. Indicates Positive Company Culture

Trust and transparency depend on how well and often you organize conversations. Seeking feedback from employees about their experiences is an effective way to demonstrate commitment to creating a nurturing workplace. Your workforce will notice your efforts when you let them confidently express their opinions, thoughts and ideas in a safe space and take measures to implement real change.

3. Identifies Warning Signs

Providing your workforce with a platform to share their experiences and raise concerns will help you identify and fix problems ahead of time. You’ll gain tremendous insight into what keeps your top talent engaged and the red flags that might be the enemy of productivity and motivation.

Along with deep insights, periodically connecting with employees allows them to take over the mic and discuss the potential options that will help them get better or solve a specific problem they face.

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Tips To Improve the Process

Still a little confused? Below, we’ll detail the do’s and don’ts to encourage employees to be forthright with their ideas, thoughts and feedback.

Best Practices

Consider the following tips to improve the conversations with your employees during stay interviews:

• Conduct face-to-face interviews. Schedule a one-on-one meeting in person or by using digital video conferencing platforms. This communication format fosters better connections with your employees and lets you pick up non-verbal cues.
• Keep it informal. Aim to use a conversational tone to encourage your employees to share their wins, challenges and thoughts on how things are going in the company.
• Listen more. Strive to pick up cues on what made employees remain a part of the team and what you can do to retain them further.
• Give employees time to think. Be patient and let your employees carefully consider their responses before answering. This will help you gather genuine feedback.
• Follow up. After the interviews, glean your findings and identify recurring trends and problems. Focus on how you can remedy your workforce’s challenges and take tangible action to achieve positive change.

Common Errors

Steer clear of the following during these interviews:

• Don’t ask close-ended questions. Avoid yes-or-no questions that might prevent employees from ideating their thoughts.
• Don’t mention employee performance. Avoid any references to performance reviews. Instead, emphasize collaboration and improvement in your discussions.
• Don’t wait too long. Conduct all the meetings within a few weeks to gather the most current and accurate information.
• Don’t call them “stay interviews.” Ditch the label to adopt a more relaxed and candid conversational approach.
• Don’t be generic. Tailor your questions to each employee, ensuring a more meaningful and engaging stay interview experience.

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Next Steps

Gauging your employees throughout their employment is key to understanding their perceptions and motivations. While exit interviews help you learn from mistakes, stay interviews help you identify, address and prevent employees from walking out the door.

The right talent management software ensures you have access to much-needed talent insights to conduct effective stay interviews and follow up promptly. If you’re ready to step up your talent management game, use our free comparison report for tailored software recommendations.

Now it’s your turn! Do you have a strategy in place for conducting stay interviews? Which do you think are the most important questions? Let us know in the comments.