Stay interviews are a great way to improve retention, check in with employees, and get a general pulse on how happy people are in your organization. If you find that morale on your team is low and you’ve historically struggled to keep great talent around, there is likely a common reason why. Stay interviews can help you uncover it. Here are our tips for mastering these conversations and driving engagement in your organization:
First, we recommend having a manager or leader in your organization conduct the stay interview, which should play out more like a casual conversation. Keep things friendly, informal, focused, and private to increase the chances that people will feel comfortable sharing information that is helpful.
Work with your leadership team to strategically develop a list of questions you’ll ask employees. These questions should be based on things you’ve heard are both positive and frustrating about working in your organization. Encouraging employees to voice their opinions and give positive and constructive feedback is a critical part of helping your company to continue to improve and evolve for the better.
Here are a few great questions to get you started on having a useful stay interview conversation:
Questions that promote positive feedback:
- What do you most look forward to each day when you begin work?
- When you think about your work and the things you’ve done in the last 12 months, what are you proudest of?
- What is one thing we’re doing well that you really appreciate?
- What are you learning here?
- What would you like the next step in your career to look like?
- What skills or interests do you have that you think we could leverage in a better way?
Questions that promote constructive feedback:
- Is there any part of your job that you dread?
- If you could change one thing about your job or the company, what would it be?
- How would you rate your work-life balance and how could it be improved?
- If you’ve ever thought about leaving us, what prompted that?
- If you had to choose one thing for us to focus on improving, what would that be?
- Where do you see your role evolving at our company? What is the next step in your career?
- Is there anything else you want to share that we didn’t cover?
Giving employees the opportunity to voice their opinions is empowering. If you notice someone who demonstrates excellent communication skills, enthusiasm, and ideas for improvement during the process, then you may have a future leader in the making.
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