In recent times, stay interviews are gradually being put to use more frequently.
One simple reason:
Organisations today would like to know what propels their existing employees to stay.
As a manager or recruiter, you may consider conducting stay interviews to know the precise reasons for your employees to stay put with you.
The idea of stay interviews is simple. You must occasionally work with your key employees to work and improve upon the number of reasons why they want to work with you. This is also an equal opportunity for you to remove any factors that deter them from being with you.
As a manager, it is necessary that you realise the importance of this trend without assuming that your best employees will stick around with you just because they have been doing so all the while.
Now for some core questions:
What exactly are stay interviews? How do you conduct one and why should you start doing so now?
The answers that you gather from stay interviews will help you employ strategies or bring about changes that will help you retain your best talent.
For most employees, it is indeed a commendable step considering they feel that their organization has time to know them and that their managers have time to consult with them.
This helps minimize the overall time, effort and costs that you would otherwise have to expend on retaining your employee team. Such interviews can be customized to a single identifiable individual and their wants to ensure that the company does not suffer losses due to extreme attrition rates.
Unlike exit interviews, stay interviews are more action-oriented. They help the involved parties to recognize specific actions that can progress your employee’s know-how about work as well as their overall productivity.
Even if there are employees contemplating leaving your organisation, you get to know it much in advance and can take the necessary steps to stall such an action. You also get adequate time as a manager as you can act while the employee is not yet actively interviewing for a job. As against this, an exit interview is only conducted once the decision to leave has been made and conveyed and it is that much more difficult at this stage to try and get your employee back.
In fact, most stay interviews are focused on classifying and strengthening the positive aspects that employees would enjoy about their job. Managers do not need any specific type of training for carrying out stay interviews because it generally involves a casual conversation with the intent to know your employees’ point of view.
No, they do not cost money or investments. These informal interviews don’t require a budget. Most of the time, all it takes is a manager’s and an employee’s time. As compared to exit interviews, a manager converses with an employee one-on-one to discover what workplace benefits are significant to him and what would make him more engaged at work.
Your talent is valuable and it is all the more important for you to retain it which makes stay interviews central to your organisational growth. They are simple to get acquainted with and can be easily implemented, allowing you to substantially reduce your employee turnover rate and save humongous costs by implementing this simple and economical tool. And yes, you can take a safe bet that stay interviews would yield better results than an exit interview if your objective is employee retention.
Have you ever used stay interviews for your organisation? Share your experience with us with your comments.
