Stay interviews are chats with employees. They’re helpful to learn how employees feel about their jobs. The goal is retention of valued employees and to keep turnover to a minimum.
Also called re-recruiting meetings, stay interviews help to energize employees to enjoy their work.
In showing interest in your employees by asking questions, you’re more likely to motivate employees to stay and therefore avert resignations.
Most employees appreciate the opportunity to discuss their jobs with bosses – what makes them happy and what frustrates them – and to be able to discuss career goals.
It’s also a great opportunity for employers to get profitable ideas from employees.
Secrets in Motivating Employees to Offer Profitable Ideas
Instead, all too often, employees feel taken for granted and quit because supervisors don’t engage them with stay interviews.
So, stay interviews are a valuable tool for employers to solve the Great Resignation trend.
Before you conduct stay interviews, keep in mind these six principles:
1. Schedule your stay interviews in advance.
Be sure to alleviate any possible apprehensions. Tell employees they’re not getting a performance appraisal that you just want to ask their opinions and about how they feel about their jobs.
2. Stay focused. Don’t stray off topic by discussing anything else.
Keep meetings informal and light with questions. Ideally, your first question should start with a humorous question. Employees should do 90 percent of the talking.
3. Convey empathy and concern about their welfare.
Let employees know you take their opinions seriously. Have a notepad and write down their responses to your questions. If any issues are discussed, commit to taking action if you can and get back to the employees regarding the results.
4. Plan your questions well.
Maintain good eye contact and listen intently. You’ll get the most-valuable information if you ask informal open-ended questions vis-à-vis close-ended questions that only result in yes or no answers.
5. Strive to learn the employees’ pain points.
Learn about issues in which employees would appreciate your attention.
6. Be sure to follow-up.
Assertively communicate your feedback and conclusions.
Ask these types of open-ended questions:
- “When you’re getting ready for work, to what do you look forward?”
- “What have you learned here?”
- “What do you want to learn?”
- “How do you feel about the company?
- “How do you feel about your job?”
- “Why do you stay here?”
- “Have you ever thought about quitting?”
- “Why would you think about leaving?”
- “What do you like about your job?”
- “What would you like to be different?”
- “What are your suggestions for improvement?”
Have fun and good luck!
From the Coach’s Corner, see these relevant topics:
Affordable Yet Creative and Proven Employee-Loyalty Ideas — Your employees are not different from you as the boss. They have emotions, families and needs. If they feel appreciated, they’ll also value the culture and work environment in your company.
For Best Performance, Inspire Employees with Non-Financial Rewards — Money talks, of course, and is a way to motivate employees. But money is not always the chief motivator. Here’s why plus the four categories of ideas to inspire your employees.
HR Retention: Keys to Profit from Cross-Generational Teams — Today’s cross-generational workplaces present a quandary for employee retention. Promote a trust culture that’s appealing to everyone – young and old.
How to Rock Your Human Resources with Employee Referrals — Admittedly, there’s a myriad of ways to recruit great employees. But no recruitment option surpasses a well-executed, strategic employee-referral program.
Risk Management for When Competitors Raid Your Employees — If competitors are raiding your employees, here are risk-management tips.
“Understanding your employee’s perspective can go a long way towards increasing productivity and happiness.”
-Kathryn Minshew
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I don’t see one word about bigger pay . Why does anybody work? Money! Simply offer more pay Take it from the shareholders and their dividends and give it to the employees . It’s been going the other way since the Reagan years .
Surprise! I think not.
Larry, that’s the whole point about the column — to listen to employees’ pain points, E.g., especially with these principles: #3, #4, #5, and #6.
Also, an employee would have ample opportunities to discuss pay when the boss asks the above suggested questions:
“How do you feel about the company?”
“How do you feel about your job?”
“Why would you think about leaving?”
“What would you like to be different?”
“What are your suggestions for improvement?”
I commented because I find management doesn’t seem to want to recognize the employee’s real need, money. That’s why they work at all.
As for talking with the boss it is too often an unequal ground time to speak so the employee may never be free to say what they mean, in our culture I feel we are still in a owner/slave way of thinking, but here I touch on another topic… 🙂