Help Your Managers Understand Why Employees Stay and Why They Might Leave
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Get this free template in FellowHaving a stay interview template can help you avoid this pitfall that's causing U.S. businesses to lose $1 trillion a year.
A 2019 Gallup report indicates that U.S. businesses grapple with employee turnover, costing them a trillion dollars every year.
The problem is likely to compound in the post-pandemic job market. A 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics report indicates a 57% employee turnover across all industries. And it gets worse. It costs at least $1,500 to replace minimum wage workers and up to 60% of their annual salary to replace a full-time employee.
Conducting stay interviews can help you improve job satisfaction and worker engagement, and ultimately lower employee turnover.
A stay interview is a human resource tool to help understand why your employees, especially high performers, choose to stay with you. It's more of an informal conversation than an interview. The manager asks, mostly top-performing employees, a series of preset questions.
Despite what the name suggests, the primary goal of a stay interview isn't to keep your employees from leaving. These interviews are an incredible way to solicit feedback from your employees. The feedback offers deep insights into employee engagement and job satisfaction.
Stay interviews are remarkably different from exit interviews in that they're conducted with current employees. Still, stay interviews are highly effective in reducing employee turnover. But only if you use the feedback to create an enabling working environment and corporate culture.
Stay interviews provide a window into what your employees genuinely desire. It allows you to have a heartfelt conversation with your workers. Acting on the honest feedback from a stay interview can go a long way in helping your employee retention rate.
Here are some additional benefits that will result from conducting stay interviews:
Employees go to great lengths to build their knowledge and hone their skills. They hope to be recognized and adequately compensated for their time and expertise. If not, they're quick to leave an employer who doesn't recognize and appreciate their worth.
Implementing a peer reward program can improve employee engagement and job satisfaction. Happy employees are loyal, productive, and likely to stick with you for a long time, lowering your employee turnover rate.
Asking employees to detail their experience working for your company removes bias and misconceptions. Corporate might think people love the company for its corporate culture, a diverse range of projects, camaraderie, and more.
But in reality, the employees might prefer flexible hours, autonomy, and professional development opportunities. The feedback for a stay interview clarifies the air and keeps you from flying blind.
Low job satisfaction creates an army of disengaged employees. Stay interviews let you zero in on the pain points and take corrective measures long before they compound. You get to identify the reasons that drive employees to resign or decamp to the competition.
Stay interviews only work when employees trust their manager. You also need to act on the information you receive to keep the employees engaged.
Stay interviews are a delicate affair because they call for honest feedback from your employees. Therefore, there must be an element of trust and professional respect between the manager and the employees.
Here are some best practices when conducting a stay interview
The best stay interview questions cover five categories that provide the best feedback for your company. They include
Subsequently, you can only need five questions to make your stay interviews effective. Naturally, you follow up each question with strong probing questions to get all the pertinent information. Only then can you create effective individualized employee retention and engagement plans.
Stay interviews are vital in building a highly productive team. These interviews allow you to create an enabling work environment that inspires employee loyalty and trust. Acting on feedback from the stay interviews bolsters your ability to retain top talents while keeping them happy and productive.
Asking the right questions allows the employees to open up about their dreams, aspirations, and career goals. It also offers insights into the challenges they face so you can take quick corrective action.
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