Stay Interviews: Increase Employee Retention and Performance
So you've spent three weeks reading through hundreds of resumes and interviewing a dozen candidates. After in-depth, structured second interviews, professionals references completed an offer is extended and your final candidate accepts. You sigh relief, the position was filled. Fast forward a few months. The new hire has just completed three months in the position and you hear through the rumor mill, that the new hire may be looking for another job. You're concerned and schedule a meeting with the employee. But meetings and deadlines become the priority, and you re-schedule the meeting with the employee. Then one day you receive an email from the new hire with their letter of resignation. This is a situation that I've witnessed many times times in my HR career.
What should the manager have done differently? First, the meeting with the employee should have been made a priority. Second, the manager should have implemented a Stay Interview to gather information about the employee's experience.
The Stay Interview takes proactive steps to gather a new hire's experience and level of satisfaction in the job. Based on the employee feedback, managers have an opportunity, in some cases, to make changes to align with the employee's needs. The Stay Interview can minimize triggers that may provoke an employee to resign.
Suggestions for a successful Stay Interview:
One-on-one meeting between the manager and employee: encourages an open and transparent dialogue. The meeting should be in an office or meeting room with no interruptions or distractions.
Start the Stay Interview with "thank you": take advantage of this time together to thank the employee for their time and honest feedback.
Gather feedback on first few weeks in the job: discuss training, on-boarding process, resources and communication. Ask the employee for suggestions for improvement. Employees will draw from their previous work environments and that experience could benefit your company and/or internal processes.
Earn trust and respect: managers should focus more on building trust and respect with their employees. Stay Interview is a good place to start. The first step towards building trust is maintaining confidentiality. Don't share feedback with the employee's co-workers. Feedback should be shared with human resources to develop an action plan to improve the employee experience.
Below are sample questions:
What are you learning here?
What do you like about working here?
What areas can we improve in?
When did you think about leaving our team? What prompted this?
The difference between the Exit Interview and Stay Interview. The Exit Interview has been a popular tool to gather feedback from employees that are leaving the company. The feedback from an exit interview will be helpful for future hires, but will not retain the employee. The Stay Interview focuses on identifying the triggers that create employee dissatisfaction before the employee resigns. It gives the employer an opportunity to retain the employee and future employees.
