One of your best employees requests you for a one on one meeting and says, “Hey Charlie, I wanted to talk to you about something very important. I have been thinking of quitting my job here lately. So I’d like to give notice that my last day will be __ ”. It is never easy to see your star employees leave the organization.
It is obvious that they don’t really quote the actual reason behind quitting work. For decades, organizations have been struggling with understanding the real reason behind their employees leaving the organization with various new aspects of HR like exit interviews, employee retention program etc. But without having accurate information from the employees, you cannot do much.
“Nearly 80% of executives rated employee experience very important (42%) or important (38%), but only 22 % reported that their companies were excellent at building a differentiated employee experience.” – Deloitte
Employee experience is an important aspect in today’s competitive world where every company wants to hire the best talent. With various platforms that are out there, to give a glimpse of company culture to the outer world, it is crucial to focus on employee experience which leads to better retention of the existing workforce.
There are a number of strategies to help improve employee retention at an organization. Most managers focus on ensuring that compensation and benefits match or exceed industry standards. One of the most specifically targeted strategies for employee satisfaction and retention at the workplace is ‘Stay Interview’.
A stay interview can simply be defined as an interview between a manager and a valued employee within the organization. Its goal is to learn and understand how employees feel working in your organization and what makes them want to continue to work for you. Stay interviews help you discover the true reason behind employees quitting work and helps you improve your workplace culture to drive retention and engagement.
Also read: Why Are Stay Interviews Essential For Your Organization
Sometimes, regular employee surveys cannot give you accurate insights about your organization. Mostly because the answers are biased based on the fact that employees still belong to your organization and that whatever they say could later be held against them. Stay interviews can help you gain useful insights about things that are difficult to gather during regular surveys.
According to Dr. John Sullivan, an HR thought leader, the “best work of your life” question will help you gain more insight about what your employees expect from the organization. Specifically, asking your employees: “Can you list for me the factors that could contribute to your doing the best work of your life?” could be the top retention factor for top performers according to Dr. Sullivan.
Dr. Sullivan also suggests holding interviews once a year, during a slow business period. He says that it is important to conduct stay interviews with all your key employees within weeks of each other, so that you can take what you’ve learned and promptly implement around that information.
Stay interviews are a great way to collect employee feedback and truly understand what it will take to retain your employees. Managers should put together a stay plan for each employee to ensure their feedback is being implemented to the best of your ability. Feedback should also be shared with company leadership to help identify trends and opportunities for improvement at an organizational level.
Also Read: Drive Employee Engagement with Engagedly
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