Career and Job Search Help Blog

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While financial gain is one of the prime reasons for people staying in their current occupation, this doesn't necessarily translate into job satisfaction or fulfillment. If you are bored, disengaged or feel unappreciated and undervalued in your job, chances are money will not make you happy in the long run.

Today, companies are struggling to keep not only their brightest and best employees but also the middle employees who form the backbone of any organization. 

In Hello Stay Interviews, Goodbye Talent Loss, authors Kaye and Jordan-Evans point out that "it is well documented that it costs 70 percent to 400 percent of an employee's annual salary to replace him or her." The hard costs are easy to measure but the soft costs can cost even more especially when you lose talented people. Their expertise and knowledge goes with them not to mention reallocating the work to other employees, waiting for and training the replacement or having other talent follow suit.

The bottom line is, employers need to be more proactive in retaining these employees.  One way is incorporating what is known as a "stay interview" into an organization's best practice procedure in order to keep valued employees from leaving. A stay interview is a one-on-one meeting between a manager and an employee. During this one-on-one, the manager can find out more about the employee's immediate concerns, such as what excites them about their job, what factors might motivate them to leave the company or what is/isn't working for them at present. Its aim is to find out why they would stay, why they would leave and decide upon a plan of action. This is an opportunity to find out where the company or department excels in from the employee's perspective. 

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The stay interview is a chance to start the conversation with exceptional employees, build trust and assess the degree of employee satisfaction and engagement that exists in a department or company. 

The goal is to make the lives of your employees more rewarding and comfortable. Stay interviews should also be an ongoing management priority with follow-ups and retention actions that will minimize the departure of key employees.

Employers should make it part of their performance appraisal or part of a monthly one-on-one meeting with key employees they don’t want to lose. While stay interviews is an effective strategy to implement, it can only work if the organization has a culture that encourages open communication and employee participation. It will not be effective in an organization that has an environment of mistrust and low morale. Before considering stay interviews, these organizations should dedicate some time on trust and team building/collaboration activities first. This will help boost team morale and cooperation.

Some of the benefits

• Customized to a single identifiable individual and their wants.
• Encourages both parties to identify actions that can improve the employee experience and actions that can help eliminate any major barriers or turn over triggers.
• Identifying and then reinforcing the positive factors of the employee’s job.
• Inexpensive.
• Lower employee emotions – meeting takes place well before the employee has made the decision to leave.

What to consider:

• Managers should be trained on how to conduct an effective stay interview. Knowing what questions to ask, how to strengthen trust and confidence as well as, how to actively understand and listen to what your employees are saying, will make the procedure a constructive and meaningful event. 
• Be ready to take action when you conduct stay interviews with people you hope will stay and play on your team.
• Build a positive and loyal environment and support employee development and growth.
• Stay interviews should be ongoing, proactive, realistic and reliable.
• A stay plan should have an objective; customized for each employee; written actions to be taken by manager and employee; dates of activities to be taken; and in writing.

If implemented properly stay interviews can be an effective employee retention tool. 

To learn more about this topic, check out these new titles at Toronto Public Library.