What is keeping employees at your organization? Employers often spend tremendous time and energy on engagement, sometimes with little or no measurable results. To be effective, efforts must consider real employee motivators. Do you know what is keeping top performers at your organization? What makes them frustrated or brings them joy? Conducting stay interviews is a great way to learn the answers to these questions directly from the source—employees themselves.

What Is a Stay Interview? 

Stay interviews are one-on-one conversations with a leader or HR professional that elicit employees' thoughts and perspectives about the organization, their relationship to leadership, and their role. They aim to answer, in broad strokes, the tenets of what the employer does well and what they can do to improve. They can be formally structured with a set of defined questions to achieve uniformity in the data, or they can be more conversational to pull the interests and concerns from the employee's individual perspective. 

While stay interviews might seem identical to employee surveys, the two are used for different purposes and have different impacts. Richard P. Finnegan, author of "The Power of Stay Interviews for Engagement and Retention," differentiates the value of a stay interview over an employee survey in three key ways: they deliver information that can be used today; they give practical insights for engaging and retaining top performers; and they provide managers with a reliable process for developing individual stay plans. 

There will always be a place for the aggregate data collected from the broader employee engagement surveys, but with anonymity comes generalization. The stay interview bridges that gap. If an employer wants to retain specific high performers, a stay interview can provide valuable information to help with retention.

Benefits of Stay Interviews

• Firstly, most employees, albeit not all, value the opportunity to be asked for feedback and recognized as someone whose feedback is worthwhile. Employees' loyalty to an employer increases when they share their specific levers to engagement and feel heard.  
  
  
• Change is not always easy—at an individual or company level. Organizations benefit from illustrating their openness to change by staying curious and having a proactive pulse on the information that would prompt change within the employee population.  
  
  
• Finally, most HR professionals can recall when a high performer unexpectedly resigned and expressed needing more from the company. Too little, too late is never the ideal. Stay interviews keep employers on the proactive side of understanding how to meet the needs of prized employees.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Stay interviews create magic when the approach is customized to the organization's goals. Below are some stay interview methods that may align with the information your organization desires: 

• Shiny and New. After a prescribed timeframe post-onboarding (often 90 to 120 days), interview all new hires. This method helps identify challenges and barriers to onboarding success before the new hire accepts the normalization of "the way it's always been done." It can bring fresh perspectives and new ideas. 
  
  
• All in! This stay interview method involves hearing the voice of every employee directly. Of course, depending on the organization's size, this can be a significant investment of time. Smaller organizations may find this strategy more effective. 
  
  
• Rising to the Top. If the real goal is retaining key talent, conducting stay interviews specifically with the organization's top performers can provide a good return on investment. It produces data from the vital voices that most employers value. When using this strategy, a subtle approach will help avoid potential disappointment and disengagement from those who did not make it into the sessions.
  
  
• Random Acts. In this strategy, the employer interviews a certain percentage of randomly selected employees. This certainly can be an equitable, time-saving, and easy-to-sell approach. However, this method may not work well in an organization that has an abundance of low-performers because feedback is usually most productive from high-performers.
  
  
• Make Your Voices Heard. Another method is to ask for volunteers. This can include sending out an all-call to the staff and inviting people to engage if they can contribute to a more thorough understanding of things that matter in the organization. While this approach gets willing participants who will likely speak volumes, it naturally stands as a more biased sample, as their willingness to participate is typically driven by the desire to share specific information. 
  
  
• Slice and Dice. Gaining the perspective of a few from each department in the organization (or a small set of departments if the critical mass is not there), this method provides a good cross-section of data and will illustrate differences between departments.  
  
  
• Combo Deal. Choose a combination of options from above.  

Stay in it to Win it! 

No matter the organization's goals or stay interview approach, the following factors can assist in making the most out of these conversations:  

1. Listen. This is not the time to defend the organization. To solicit open and honest feedback from employees, the interviewer should listen, take notes, and ask follow-up questions. The interviewer should affirm that they are listening and resist the urge to explain why something is done a specific way. 
   
   
2. Don't ask Questions You Don't Want the Answers To. The goal of these efforts is to create positive change. While not every topic the employee presents will be action-worthy, the intent should be to develop achievable organizational and individual action plans that matter in the employer's efforts to improve and retain. If, for example, financial constraints will prevent the organization from adding or changing benefits, the interviewer should avoid inquiries about the benefit offerings. If the issue arises naturally, feedback can be taken and documented. Setting expectations at the beginning of the interview can help facilitate a common understanding that not every string of feedback is resolvable. 
   
   
3. Seek to Understand. The interviewer should let the conversation develop and continue to inquire deeper and deeper into the responses. Phrases such as "Tell me more" and "What else?" "How so?" "Any other thoughts?" and "Explore that further" can assist in probing for more information. 
   
   
4. Do Not Guarantee Confidentiality. Stay interviews are intentionally performed to create data, see trends, improve circumstances, mitigate risks, and remove barriers. The information should be used for these purposes and not to tee up discipline (for leaders, co-workers, etc.). However, if an employee discloses information that could indicate a workplace conflict, performance issue, harassment, or discrimination, the employer must take action and investigate. As such, the interviewer should make clear at the onset of the interview that there is no promise of confidentiality. 
   
   
5. Document, Document, Document. Ensure that feedback can be traced back to each participating employee. As the goal of a stay interview is primarily retention, knowing the detailed responses of individuals will assist in meeting that aim on their behalf. That said, it is crucial to protect the stay interview process's integrity by ensuring the data's positive use without retribution. 
   
   
6. Year Over Year. Establish a reliable cadence of stay interviews to build trust and maintain momentum. 

Wrapping Up

Investing in stay interviews can heighten engagement, which alone is a worthy goal. The paramount objective, however, is action! Organizations should aim to be the best for their high performers. While implementing this process has no inherent retention guarantee, results will progress when there are authentic, visible, and communicated action plans. Undeniably, there are benefits to stay interviews as voices heard are voices retained. 

Archbright partners with its members to support efforts to achieve a healthy, engaged workplace. Our HR Consultants are experienced in stay interviews and are ready to share their expertise. To learn more, contact info@Archbright.com.