Are stay interviews the secret to retaining the best talent? Let's explore this method for creating open dialogue and constructive feedback.
There is nothing more frustrating than when your best employees leave.
To avoid that, organizations use multiple retention strategies: providing flexibility, introducing career development programs, and, of course, offering a competitive salary.
But there is one more strategy which you might not be familiar with - the "stay interview".
So let’s discuss stay interviews (also called stay conversations) and explain why they are a great tool for helping with employee retention, and even for humanizing resource management.
A stay interview is a one-on-one meeting with a current employee, conducted by a manager or an HR representative, during which the employee is encouraged to openly share their thoughts about the company and their role in it.
This conversation gives them a chance to express what they like about their job and team - and what they would change if they had the opportunity to do so.
Roughly speaking, a stay interview can be called an employee feedback session where people can discuss things in a friendly, no-pressure environment.
That’s what makes them different from engagement surveys or performance reviews. Stay interviews take a personal approach, and give the employee the chance to talk and be heard, ask questions, and discuss details.
Stay interviews are conducted to assess employees' experiences and collect information about the current state of the company. They help a manager learn about both the challenges and risks employees face and about company-level problems, like a potential need to hire more specialists or improve strategic planning.
The purpose of a stay interview is encoded in its very name – these interviews are conducted to collect honest feedback and understand why people decide to stay at the company. They are an important mechanism of employee retention, as they help boost morale within the team.
By letting employees share their concerns, managers show them their opinions matter and are respected – and then they can take measures to fix already existing problems and to prevent possible future ones, mentioned by the employees.
Stay interviews and exit interviews are similar, but they are not the same thing. While exit interviews are conducted with employees who already are leaving, stay interviews are for current workers.
The big difference is, with an exit interview, it's almost "too late", so to speak - you can discuss reasons why an employee made the decision to move on, but by that point there's nothing you can really do to convince them not to leave.
If you choose to act on any of feedback brought up in an exit interview, it may benefit existing and incoming employees, but it's not going to help you retain the outgoing employee.
With a stay interview, though, your current team members can tell you not only what makes them want to stay in their current position, but also aspects of the company that cause disengagement and frustration. This means that you can catch any potential dissatisfaction and nip the causes in the bud - before your most valuable players decide that they'd rather seek opportunities elsewhere.
Stay interviews can generate valuable insights that can help your organization stay afloat in difficult times. Employees are often directly in the weeds with multiple work processes, which means that they might have some ideas for practical solutions to various issues that may have otherwise escaped your notice.
And, of course, by creating an open dialogue with employees, you can get a better understanding of the culture that actually exists in a company - which may look and feel different in reality from the values and intentions stated on paper.
If conducted right, stay interviews can be an incredible tool for helping with employee retention and introducing positive change at various company levels.
Let’s take a look at some benefits of stay interviews and see why HR and resource management professionals should add this practice to their toolbox:
An opportunity to candidly talk about things that bother you and not be judged for that creates an environment of psychological safety where talents flourish. People trust managers who make them feel safe – and trust, in turn, creates a feeling of loyalty.
Letting people give suggestions and share ideas, thus contributing to decision-making, is very motivating. It helps folks feel like they are making a difference. When you can influence things and processes in the company, you will not just stay passive - you will actively engage in the company’s life. Employee empowerment inspires.
In this respect, stay interviews are especially useful for introverted employees who are naturally quiet and don't feel comfortable drawing attention to themselves in a public forum: they may have brilliant ideas to share, and feel most able to doing so in a personal, 1:1 setting.
Sometimes, management is unaware of issues at the company. Conversations with employees let managers stay informed and take measures before it’s too late.
Outdated approaches to work processes, a lack of touch with the customers, and a need to transform your workforce – these are some of the things you might be missing out on but things you can learn from your direct reports at a stay interview.
Anonymous employee surveys may give you a vaguely true impression of what is going on in the company. However, a face-to-face conversation can be eye-opening – after all, body language doesn't not lie, and you never get that benefit while reading written feedback.
The health of your teams is crucial for your organization’s success. A lack of trust, besides obvious interrelationship issues, leads to actual work problems – because people do not share information on time, or refuse to delegate and overwork themselves, or avoid cooperating with someone whose skills would help them do their tasks sooner and better.
Unproductive conflicts (which is, conflicts that are never solved so they keep getting worse) provoke politicking and back-stabbing.
A toxic work environment means one thing – people will not want to come to work. And eventually they will get sick of it, hand in their resignation, and find a place where they feel more comfortable. That's why people-first culture is so important.
Further reading: our ultimate guide to building healthy teams ➡️
Topics for discussion at stay interviews may vary based on your organization. You may want to talk about the health of your teams, or your employees’ career goals, their attitude to leadership, or about all of these things at the same time. Everything will depend on the context.
Here are some questions you can use:
You want your employees to be able to trust the stay interview process and feel confident sharing their feedback, even if it's not 100% positive. This means that you should implement stay interviews in a planned, intentional, and structured way (i.e. this is not something you can do ad-hoc and spring on people at the last minute!).
Here's a short step-by-step guide to walk you through how to implement stay interviews in your organization:
Your employees must clearly understand what a stay interview is and why they need it, otherwise you can achieve the opposite effect:stressing them out. Awareness is the key.
Inform people of your stay interview program - clearly explain the rationale behind it, and what you're hoping it will achieve. Let people know that the intention is to create positive improvements.
Decide how often you plan to conduct stay interviews, who’s going to be interviewed (for instance, individual contributors and managers might be interviewed on a different schedule or cadence) and who’s going to conduct the interview (a manager or an HR team member.) Make sure everyone involved will have the interview on their schedule.
Don't walk into the interview cold - take some time to prepare and reflect on the questions you want to ask.
A stay interview is not an interrogation – it’s a meaningful dialogue. You should be ready that your conversation will not necessarily go as planned, taking a natural curve.
A person might want to discuss one problem over another. They might need to vent, or might get stuck on a topic while sharing ideas. To be genuine during a conversation, people need time and space.
Ask questions to ensure you understand things right, or to help the conversation develop. Be empathetic. Take notes so you don’t forget what’s being said. Try to understand the reasoning behind the person’s words.
A stay interview should not be a mere formality. It’s not feedback for the sake of feedback – you gather information to use it later. So take your time to reflect on what was said. Maybe you will see some things that keep popping up in conversations with most employees, like red threads. Crystallize the main ideas you hear at each interview and draw conclusions.
After that, you can take action, making necessary changes, based on your own decision or employees’ recommendation. However, it’s important to let people know that not all of their recommendations will be considered.
Stay interviews can drive a significant positive change in your organization, increasing employee engagement and motivation, which will inevitably be reflected in performance. By analyzing what makes your company great, and by showing people that their opinions matter, you ensure that your high-performing employees stay - and this is an important step on your way to success.
