A stay interview refers to a discussion between an employee and the employer to collect information about certain aspects of the job. The main idea of these types of interviews is to gather useful insights about the job position from an employee’s perspective. In a way, the structure of stay interviews is similar to exit interviews, but they’re conducted with existing employees.
The main reason for running stay interviews is to increase the employee retention rate of a company. However, these interviews play a crucial part in discovering several meaningful aspects regarding the work environment and culture of a company. Stay interviews can help a company in:
Stay interviews can be an effective tool to find underlying problems that force an employee to quit the position. For instance, stay interviews easily identify common issues like poor management, fewer growth opportunities, and inefficiency within an organization.
Data found from the interviews can help authorities fix the underlying problems with accurate strategies and enhance the employee experience.
Stay interviews help create a good impression among the employees, which can lead to trust and reliability. Top management can show that they care about their workers and value the opinion of the employees to make things better.
Talented employees are considered great assets and have the most meaningful impact on the success of a company. Stay interviews can be a great way to keep them happy by understanding their needs and expectations.
Stay interviews are an excellent method to increase employee morale and improve the working environment of an organization. In this way, employees can directly address their problems and barriers to job satisfaction.
Usually, stay interviews are proven to be more effective than worker satisfaction surveys because they allow an employee to open their minds. These interviews are a form of discussion and conversation that gives an HR official a lot of useful information. Thus, the top management can make accurate action plans to solve existing problems within the organization and achieve employee satisfaction.
While running a stay interview, an HR official has to tackle various types of difficulties. For example, these interviews can lead to distasteful truths and ill feelings toward a particular individual. Besides, an employee can bring up different issues and request a pay raise or increments during the interview. An HR official has to handle these scenarios with patience, experience, and confidence.
The best time to execute stay interviews is when a worker doesn’t feel comfortable within the organization and is planning to leave. This can help the authorities figure out the reason behind the unrest and sort out the problem quickly. Furthermore, stay interviews are needed when a new employee joins the company and is trying to settle in. Most turnovers occur within the first three months of joining, so these interviews can help new employees feel comfortable.
Generally, authorities don’t run stay interviews on a regular basis because they require a lot of time and effort. Top management conducts these interviews occasionally, usually once or twice a year. Besides, when a crisis arises within an organization, HR authorities conduct a stay interview to identify and solve the problem.
For a successful stay interview, it's advised to keep the tone of the discussion simple and jolly. Firstly, the interviewer thanks the employee for their participation and then clarifies what the interviewer wants to achieve. The interview may involve topics like how the employee feels about his position and what can be done to improve it. The questions of the interview should be like this:
To increase the effectiveness and engagement during the stay interview, the following actions can be very useful, such as:
Stay interview is a useful tool for HR personnel to increase employee retention while identifying organizational problems. Information found from these interviews can be utilized by making solid and effective changes within the organization. Most importantly, stay interviews can change the dynamics of a company’s work environment by enhancing job satisfaction, organizational trust, and loyalty.