On the surface, it looks like good news for retention: fewer people are quitting.
The U.S. quits rate held pretty low and steady at 1.9% in August (about 3.1 million people), according to the latest JOLTS report, and hiring has slowed too relative to recent years, with employers adding just 29,000 jobs in September, per the BLS jobs report.
But someone who isn’t quitting isn’t necessarily happy, engaged, or planning to stick around. Plenty of them may just be waiting for the right offer (which wouldn’t show up on a report).
The only way to find out is to ask, which is exactly what stay interviews do. In this week’s post, we’ll cover who to talk to first, when to do it, what to ask, and what should be done with the info collected, too.
Nearly Half of People Who Quit Were Never Asked How Their Job Was Going
This even surprised us! Gallup surveyed 717 people who had voluntarily left a job in the past year, and 42% said their manager or organization could have done something to prevent them from leaving. Even more telling, 45% said that in the three months before they left, no manager or other leader proactively talked with them about their job satisfaction, performance, or future.
So nearly half of the people who left never had anyone check in with them before they did. How do you change that?
Regular check-ins with managers are critical, and stay interviews add something regular check-ins usually can’t: a designated time and space to bring things up. It’s awkward to say “I’m not happy with this” naturally while you’re talking about work assignments, and the timing never quite feels right.
A stay interview gives people a set time to air out their thoughts and feelings about their job, long before they start looking for something else. Job hunting is nobody’s idea of a good time, so people usually only start once they’ve decided something isn’t going to change.
What Stay Interviews Are (and Aren’t)
So is this some new trendy thing? The name might sound like one, but the practice isn’t new. SHRM published a book on stay interviews that’s now in its second edition, and at its core it’s just good leadership: asking people how it’s going before it’s too late.
It’s a short, one-on-one conversation where a leader asks a current employee what keeps them here, what might pull them away, and what would make their job better.
It gets mixed up with a few other things, so here’s how they differ:
- An exit interview happens after someone has already decided to go. It’s useful (we wrote about how to get more out of them), but it’s a look back. A stay interview is your chance to prevent the loss.
- A performance review is about how someone is doing. A stay interview is about what you can do for them. Keep them as separate meetings, because mixing the two makes people guarded and you stop getting honest answers. (We covered how to run annual performance reviews the right way in a recent post.)
- An engagement survey is like an NPS score: it shows you the big picture and which way things are trending across the team or company. A stay interview is like the comment behind the score, where one person explains in their own words what’s really going on and what would change it. You want both.
Who to Talk to First
We get it, you don’t have unlimited bandwidth. The good news is you don’t have to sit down with everyone on day one. Start where a loss would hurt the most, in this order:
- Employees in critical roles. In our post on A-roles, we talked about how only about 10 to 15% of roles are truly critical to driving results. If one of those seats goes vacant (or ends up with the wrong person), it disrupts revenue and delivery, and creates bottlenecks for everyone around it.
- Ready-now successors. In your talent review (the 9-box from our succession planning post), these are the people who are ready now for a critical role and rated above target (roughly the top 20%) or on target (the middle 60%). A succession plan is only as strong as your successors’ willingness to stay, so find out now if someone you’ve built a plan around is thinking about leaving.
- Future successors. Same ratings, but these are the people who could move up a level within about two years. Keep them excited and engaged, especially if they’re on track for a major role you’ll need soon.
- Well-placed people. Think of the executive assistant you couldn’t live without. Just because someone has done a job for 10 years doesn’t mean they’ll be there forever (especially now that pensions are rare). Especially when the company is going through a lot of change, checking in with your well-placed workhorses keeps operations running smoothly.
If you can, talk to everyone else too. It’s more doable than it sounds because managers will run these for their own teams (more on that next). That includes your below-target people, since maybe they’re underperforming because they aren’t set up to succeed. Just keep it about what’s getting in their way, and save the performance talk for a separate meeting.
Who Should Run the Stay Interviews
Believe it or not, the best default is their direct manager, not HR. Richard Finnegan, author of SHRM’s book on stay interviews, recommends that leaders run these themselves, so employees hear directly from their boss that they’re valued and managers own retention on their own team.
The tricky part is when the manager is part of why someone is unhappy, because employees rarely say that to their boss’s face. Gallup found managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement, so it’s something to expect often. Here’s how we’d handle it:
- Start with the manager, so preserving retention stays with the person who can best act on it.
- Look for the exceptions. If one manager’s team has low engagement or more turnover than the others, the issue could be that manager. (Our exit interview post covers tracking patterns by manager.)
- In those cases, have someone else ask. Culture Amp says a skip-level manager (the manager’s manager) can do it, and the Work Institute suggests a trained HR professional or outside consultant.
- Not sure? Ask the employee who they’d feel most comfortable talking to.
A few other basics: keep it one-on-one and in person if you can, plan on about 20 minutes (block 30), and tell them why you’re doing it, something like “I’d like to hear what’s working for you and what isn’t.” Take notes and ask the questions live. Experts are split on whether to share questions ahead of time (Finnegan says no, Culture Amp says yes). Our recommendation is to share the purpose and what to expect (so they’re not caught off guard), but not a script.
When to Conduct Stay Interviews
Once a year with your key people is a good baseline, but a few moments are worth an extra conversation:
- Around day 90 for new hires. Mike Dixon, our President & COO, talked about this on the AI Growth Blueprint with Yacine Hacene. Mike often tells clients, “just because you got the hire, that’s just the beginning of the game. And those first 90 days are absolutely critical for getting that person productive and ensuring that they’re going to stay in your organization.” A stay interview at day 90 is a great way to catch problems early (our post on the ROI of onboarding goes deeper).
- After raises and bonuses go out. This is when people find out where they stand, and not everyone will be happy about it. A conversation a few weeks later can tell you whether this created any deeper friction points.
- After a big company, department, or role-level change. A reorg, a promotion someone didn’t get, or a respected teammate leaving can all shift how people feel about staying.
What’s Driving People Out
Employees won’t always bring these up on their own, so it helps to know what to listen for. Research on why people leave keeps pointing to the same few themes:
- Pay and benefits. The most common thing leavers told Gallup could have kept them (30% of the actions they named). In a Pew Research Center survey of people who quit in 2021, 63% cited low pay.
- No path forward. Another 63% of Pew’s quitters cited no opportunities for advancement.
- Their manager. Gallup’s leavers pointed to more positive interactions with their manager and fewer negative ones, and 57% of Pew’s quitters felt disrespected at work.
- Workload. Too many hours or too little staffing, which Gallup’s leavers and 39% of Pew’s quitters mentioned.
- Flexibility and in-office rules. 45% of Pew’s quitters didn’t have enough flexibility in when they worked. In a Gallup survey from early 2022, 54% of fully remote employees said they’d likely look elsewhere if remote work ended.
These come from different surveys and years, so treat them as a guide for what to listen for, not a forecast for your team. You also don’t need a separate question for each one. The questions below already open the door to most of them, and if pay comes up, listen and take it to leadership instead of promising anything on the spot.
After a big change, you may consider asking more directly. If you just rolled out a return-to-office policy, restructured a team, or froze raises, don’t wait for people to bring it up. Try something like: “We recently moved to [X] days in the office. How’s that working for you?” Some people love it and others have a long commute, and you’ll want to know which is which before it turns into a resignation.
What to Ask in a Stay Interview
You don’t need a long list. A handful of good questions and a lot of listening is the goal. What matters even more is keeping it natural, human, and conversational, not a stiff, scripted Q&A. Most importantly, keep in focus what exactly you’re trying to learn (especially if you suspect something is off).
Here are a few questions to get you started:
- What keeps you here? What makes a good day?
- Is there anything on your team or in your work that hasn’t gone the way you pictured? If so, what is it?
- Do you see a future for yourself here, and is it clear what that path looks like?
- What’s getting in your way, or making your work harder than it needs to be?
- Where would you like more (or less) feedback from me?
- What can I do differently to support you?
The second question can feel the most awkward to ask, because it’s really getting at whether someone is thinking about leaving. So start softer and let them take you there. If they open up and there’s trust, you can ask more directly whether any of it has made them think about looking elsewhere.
A few other tips to keep it honest:
- Say up front that this isn’t a performance conversation. The goal is to make their job better, so this is their chance to give feedback on the job, team, and company (not the other way around).
- Give them room to answer, even if they first say “nothing comes to mind.”
- Don’t over-probe. If they come up empty, try: “That’s okay. If something does come to mind later, let me know, or we can always set up a chat with HR if you’d prefer.”
- Notice what’s missing. For instance, if someone never mentions their future here, that yellow flag is worth a gentle follow-up too.
- Never retaliate. You’re asking for their honest opinion, and they’re entitled to it, even if you disagree. Don’t take it personally, and never hold it against them.
Before you start, make sure managers are trained to run these conversations (HR can lead this). SHRM also has more sample questions in its guide to stay conversations.
What to Do With the Answers
Asking is the easy part, and people will only keep being honest if they see something happen afterward. The tricky part is that not everything you hear is something you can fix, so sort it into three buckets:
- Fix it now. These are things you control, like a project, a schedule, more feedback, or a tool they need. Pick the one or two things that matter most to them and make those changes soon. (If HR ran the conversation, make sure the manager follows through.)
- Explain why not. Some things can’t change, and that’s okay. Tell them so, and tell them why, because silence is even worse. For example, if someone dislikes a task but no one else has the knowledge or time to take it, explain why it has to stay with them, then offer some more exciting work to balance it out.
- Take it to leadership. Pay, titles, promotion paths, and headcount usually aren’t the manager’s call, so they shouldn’t promise any of it on the spot. Bring it up the chain with specifics, and then circle back with them.
Then write a one-page stay plan for each person: what keeps them here, what could pull them away, what you’re doing about it, and by when. (Our guide to preventing employee turnover walks through this.) For tracking, Culture Amp suggests rating each person’s flight risk green, yellow, or red after the conversation and revisiting it later, so you can see whether what you did actually moved the needle.
And here’s a bonus: of the people who left and did have some conversation with a leader, fewer than 3 in 10 talked about the future of their career with the organization. A stay interview is a natural place for people to share their goals, which makes succession planning, added responsibility, and promotions much easier to plan.
Ask Before They Leave
Most people don’t leave without warning signs. They just leave without anyone asking. A stay interview is one of the simplest and least expensive ways to change that.
If you’d like help training your managers to run these conversations, or building a retention approach that fits your team, we’re happy to talk!
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