Best Practices for Conducting Stay Interviews

One common problem companies across industries are facing is retaining top talent. While traditional exit interviews offer valuable insights into why employees leave, they often come too late in the game. Enter stay interviews—a proactive and powerful tool that enables organizations to gather real-time employee feedback, identify potential concerns, and take actionable steps to enhance job satisfaction and boost retention.

Stay interviews focus on understanding what motivates employees to stay with the company, what aspects of their role they enjoy, and what improvements could be made to enhance their experience. By regularly conducting stay interviews, organizations can create a thriving work culture where employees feel valued, engaged, and supported.

What Are Stay Interviews?

A stay interview is a structured conversation between a manager and an employee, designed to understand the employee’s experience within the company, uncovering what motivates them to remain and what might encourage them to leave. Unlike performance reviews or exit interviews, stay interviews are forward-looking, focusing on improving the employee’s ongoing experience and addressing concerns before they escalate into dissatisfaction or turnover.

Stay interviews aim to:

Identify factors that make employees stay.
Understand challenges or frustrations that may affect their engagement.
Provide a safe space for employees to express their career aspirations and ideas for improvement.
Foster stronger communication between employees and management.

By acting on the feedback gathered in stay interviews, companies can address issues early, improve retention, and strengthen overall employee engagement.

Why Stay Interviews Matter for Retention Strategies

Employee retention is a key concern for organizations as turnover comes with significant costs, including recruitment expenses, training, and lost productivity. Stay interviews provide a critical advantage in retaining top talent by offering an avenue to capture employee feedback before they become disengaged.

According to a Gallup report, only 36% of U.S. employees are engaged in their work, and disengagement is often a precursor to voluntary turnover. Stay interviews are a powerful tool to reverse this trend by allowing companies to understand the factors influencing employee satisfaction and making improvements before it’s too late.

By integrating stay interviews into your broader retention strategies, you can:

Improve Employee Engagement: Understanding what drives employees to stay enables managers to tailor their approach, enhancing engagement and job satisfaction.
Reduce Turnover: By addressing potential issues before they lead to disengagement or resignation, stay interviews can significantly reduce employee turnover rates.
Boost Morale: When employees feel heard and valued, their morale and motivation improve, contributing to a more positive and productive workplace culture.

Best Practices for Conducting Effective Stay Interviews

To ensure your stay interviews are successful and lead to actionable insights, it’s crucial to follow some best practices. These guidelines will help create a positive environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, ultimately providing you with valuable information to improve their work experience and your retention strategies.

1. Set Clear Objectives

Before conducting a stay interview, it’s important to establish clear objectives. Consider what you hope to achieve with the conversation. Are you aiming to identify current pain points, understand long-term career aspirations, or explore how to better align the employee’s role with their interests? Defining your goals ahead of time will ensure the interview is focused and productive.

Some common objectives include:

Identifying potential flight risks.
Understanding employee aspirations and long-term career goals.
Gathering feedback on company culture, work-life balance, or management style.
Exploring ideas for improving workplace conditions or processes.

Having clear goals will also make it easier to evaluate the success of the stay interview and follow up with actionable steps.

2. Choose the Right Time and Setting

Timing plays a crucial role in the success of stay interviews. Avoid conducting them during stressful periods, such as right before major deadlines or during performance reviews. Instead, select a time when both the manager and employee can engage in a relaxed, open conversation without the pressures of daily tasks.

The setting should also be comfortable and private. Stay interviews should feel more like a conversation rather than a formal performance review. Opt for a one-on-one meeting in a quiet setting, whether it’s an office or a virtual meeting room. The key is to create an environment where the employee feels comfortable enough to share their thoughts honestly.

3. Create a Safe, Non-Judgmental Environment

Employees need to feel safe and confident that their feedback will not result in negative repercussions. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to foster trust and emphasize that the conversation is meant to support their growth and well-being, not evaluate their performance.

To encourage openness, assure the employee that:

Their responses will be confidential (within reason).
The feedback they provide will be used to improve their work experience.
Their honesty is valued and appreciated.

You can also kick off the conversation by expressing appreciation for their contributions and framing the stay interview as an opportunity to further invest in their success within the company.

4. Ask Open-Ended, Insightful Questions

The quality of the information you gather from stay interviews depends largely on the questions you ask. Avoid closed-ended questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” Instead, focus on open-ended questions that encourage employees to reflect on their experiences and share more detailed insights.

Some effective questions include:

What do you enjoy most about your job?
Is there anything about your role that you find particularly challenging or frustrating?
What aspects of our company culture do you value? Are there areas you think could be improved?
Do you feel supported in your career development? How can we better support your goals?
If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be and why?

These types of questions encourage employees to provide thoughtful feedback, helping managers uncover hidden challenges or opportunities for improvement.

5. Listen Actively and Show Empathy

Active listening is a key skill in stay interviews. Employees need to feel that their opinions are genuinely valued and understood. As the manager, resist the temptation to interrupt or defend the company’s policies if the employee expresses dissatisfaction. Instead, listen attentively, ask follow-up questions for clarity, and acknowledge their feelings and concerns.

Showing empathy is essential, especially when employees share frustrations or struggles. Use empathetic language to validate their experiences, such as:

I can see how that would be frustrating.
It sounds like you’re feeling overwhelmed with this aspect of your job—let’s explore how we can address that.

By actively listening and showing empathy, you build trust and encourage employees to be more forthcoming with their feedback.

6. Take Notes and Follow Up

During the stay interview, take detailed notes on key points, suggestions, and concerns raised by the employee. These notes will help you track trends across multiple interviews and ensure that you follow up on specific issues discussed.

The most critical aspect of a stay interview is the follow-up process. Without taking meaningful action based on the feedback, employees may feel that their opinions don’t matter, leading to disengagement. After the interview:

Summarize the key takeaways and share them with the employee.
Communicate what changes or improvements will be made as a result of their feedback.
Set up a follow-up meeting to review progress on agreed-upon actions.

By taking action and keeping employees informed, you demonstrate that you value their feedback and are committed to creating a better workplace.

7. Regularly Schedule Stay Interviews

One stay interview is not enough. To build a culture of continuous improvement, schedule regular stay interviews (e.g., every 6 to 12 months). This ensures that you maintain ongoing communication with employees and keep a pulse on their evolving needs, concerns, and aspirations.

Regular stay interviews also give employees confidence that their voice matters and that the company is dedicated to supporting their long-term success.

Key Benefits of Stay Interviews

When done effectively, stay interviews offer numerous benefits for both employees and organizations. Here are some of the key advantages:

Early Detection of Problems: Stay interviews help managers detect potential issues before they escalate into major problems, allowing for timely intervention.
Improved Employee Retention: By acting on the feedback gathered, companies can address factors contributing to turnover and create a more supportive work environment.
Enhanced Employee Engagement: Employees who feel heard and supported are more likely to remain engaged and committed to the organization’s success.
Stronger Manager-Employee Relationships: Stay interviews foster open communication and strengthen the bond between managers and employees.

Incorporating stay interviews into your employee retention strategies is a proactive way to enhance engagement, reduce turnover, and build a stronger, more satisfied workforce. By conducting stay interviews with clear objectives, asking insightful questions, actively listening, and following up with actionable steps, organizations can create a workplace culture where employees feel valued and supported.

Ultimately, stay interviews serve as a roadmap for understanding what keeps employees engaged and how to continually improve their experience. By prioritizing these conversations, you’re not just reducing turnover—you’re investing in the long-term success of your people and your organization.