Have you heard about stay interviews yet? These employee retention techniques are designed to help you keep your best workers engaged and retained. Turnover is a costly problem in the United States, but now we have the answer to help you retain your best and brightest long-term. Here is everything you need to know about stay interviews.
What is the Stay Interview?
Unlike the traditional interview with a new potential employee, you conduct a stay interview with your existing workforce. The idea is to help create a career roadmap to help your current employees evolve and move up in the organization. To conduct these interviews, we have a few tips for introducing them to your team:
- Introduce the idea to employees and explain the reasons why the interview is so important.
- Explain that these meetings are confidential and designed to improve the organization and its role within it.
- Schedule the discussions in advance so employees have time to prepare.
- Share the questions you’ll ask, so the employee can give their answers some thought.
- Select a setting where the employee will feel most comfortable.
These five tasks set the stage for a productive, employee-driven interview process. But what should you talk about?
Here are a few questions to ask:
- Is there some type of performance feedback that you’re not getting now that you would find valuable? Most employees thrive on being recognized, so listen closely to the answers to this question and consider acting on these recommendations.
- If we could provide you with opportunities for job-related self-improvement, what would they be? If your goal is to promote from within (and it should be!), this question will give you excellent tips on how to provide additional training opportunities that will engage your workforce for the long haul.
- How can we help you find a better work/life balance? This is a great question because employees are increasingly attracted to companies that let them balance the two. If your company doesn’t offer work/life balance, you’ll hear about it with this question. That’s a good thing because it gives you an opportunity to shift your cultural norms to help support your workforce. This, in turn, will keep people with you longer.
- Where do you want to go in this company? This is a revision of the old “where do you see yourself in five years?” Pay attention to your instincts when your employee answers; look for signs the employee doesn’t want to stick around. Also, if the employee wants to grow into a promotion, the best follow-up question should be designed to help roadmap a plan to help them get there.
- What interests, skills, or talents do you bring to the table that we haven’t utilized? This question will uncover both the employee’s interests and things you can use in your organization that will engage the worker. Everyone wants to bring value to the organization; this question can help you find a way to do exactly that.
The stay interview isn’t something that you do once and forget about it. Instead, this should be a part of an ongoing dialogue designed to engage and retain your existing teams. Talk with PrideStaff about the latest techniques to engage workers and find out how we supply top talent to our clients. Call on us today.