Stay Interview
Stay Interview
What is a stay interview?
- Ask while they are still here, not after they leave
- Direct leader, one-on-one, five questions
- Listening without acting is worse than not listening at all
An exit interview asks why someone who has already decided to leave is going, so nothing you hear can keep that person. A stay interview reverses the order. It asks people who are still here why they stay and listens in advance for what would make them think about leaving. It also differs from a satisfaction survey. A survey shows the average for the whole organization, while a stay interview hears one person’s situation and that person’s direct manager can act on it right away.
The direct leader holds the interview one-on-one for 20 to 30 minutes. About five questions are enough. Ask what the person looks forward to about coming to work, whether they feel they are learning these days, why they stay with the company, what prompted them if they have recently thought about leaving, and what you could do differently to make their work better. The rule for the leader is to write down answers without defending or explaining, and to close by committing to one or two things within their power.
Choose who to talk to, and when, by priority. Start with key talent, hard-to-replace roles, people in their first or second year, and those whose roles recently changed. Holding it in the same session as a performance review makes candor difficult, so schedule it at least a month away from review and salary periods. Leaders must carry out the actions they promised within two weeks or explain why they cannot. Requests beyond their authority are collected and passed to HR.
Where this goes wrong in practice is when managers listen and then nothing happens. Raising expectations and then doing nothing leaves results worse than never asking. Also, an interview held in a hurry, only with someone who seems about to quit, reads to employees as surveillance or persuasion. It feels natural only when it is held regularly with everyone. Another common mistake is promising on the spot things a leader cannot deliver, such as salary or promotion. Trust holds up better when you make only promises you can keep and say you will check and get back on the rest.
Ara LimExpert in global leadership, AI, and business communication
John KimInstructor John Kim, author of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum Consulting| Category | Stay interview | Exit interview |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Current employees | Employees who have already decided to leave |
| Interviewer | Direct manager | Mainly HR managers |
| Used for | Action for that person | Improving policies for those who stay |
| Limitations | Without follow-through, it backfires | The employee can no longer be retained |
This approach grew out of talent retention practice that aimed to make up for the limits of exit interviews. Richard Finnegan, a U.S. retention consultant, popularized a structured way to run it through works such as The Power of Stay Interviews for Engagement and Retention, published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Sources differ on who first started it.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A, a semiconductor equipment parts maker with 240 employees, lost 9 of its 45 design engineers last year. Seven of them handed in their notice within two months of salary notices, and the exit interview records say only 'personal reasons.'
- The head of HR hands four design team leads a one-page form with five questions. At the top, in bold, is the line "Write it down; do not explain or defend."
- The interviews are held with all 45 engineers, starting six weeks before salary notices. Each team lead handles about 11 people, 25 minutes each, over two weeks.
- The head of Design Team 1 asks, "Has there been a moment recently when you thought about leaving?" A fourth-year engineer answers, "I've been revising drawings for two years now, and I feel like I'm not learning anything."
- The team lead promises on the spot to hand over part of the mechanical design for the new equipment project. On the salary request, the lead says only "I will check and reply within two weeks" and passes it to HR.
- When HR compiles the 45 interview records, 'lack of growth opportunities' appears 19 times and 'after-hours calls' 12 times. The company moves after-hours calls to an on-call rotation and builds a new job rotation plan.
- Of the 58 commitments the team leads made, 51 are carried out within two weeks. That year, design engineer departures fall from 9 to 3, and departures within two months of salary notices drop from 7 to 1.