Yes, Stay Interviews Cut Turnover in Lithuania

I confess I had to look it up on a map. The “instigator” was Valerija Buzeniene and remember her name even if you cannot pronounce it…and I couldn’t at first either.

On her LinkedIn profile, Valerija describes herself as Recruitment Enthusiast | Speaker | Consultant | Co-Author ‘Misija Talentai’…and now knowing her I’m certain she is all those things and more. Valerija’s day job is Human Capital Leader for PwC Lithuania, and a second interest is hosting Podcastas Zmogiskietji Issukiai…which translates into English as Podcast Human Challenges. She is a hustler in every good meaning for that word as well as a warm, smart soul. You can meet Valerija here…in fact send her a LinkedIn invite and you’ll make her day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerija-buzeniene/

Valerija emailed me today and made sure I knew the temperature in Lithuania was -21 Celsius, translated to -6 Fahrenheit, knowing I am a Florida weather sissy.

My Lithuanian experience started when Valerija emailed to ask if I would be interviewed for her podcast. In that email she introduced me to “Instigator #2”, Kristina Juknevičiūtė. Kriistina is Acting HR Manager for PEPCO, a European chain of discount stores. Kristina’s HR responsibilities cover all stores in the Baltic states which number greater than one hundred stores with nearly one thousand total employees.

For those of us who are geographically challenged, those Baltic states occupied by PEPCO include Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. They all end in “ia” if that helps you remember them.

Kristina reports that customer traffic is strong at PEPCO, such that employee turnover is most painful when customers wait in long lines for help or the check out. She consulted with Korn Ferry’s retail turnover benchmarks to learn their turnover was significantly greater than the benchmark, so they needed help.

Kristina and her executives threw many solutions toward turnover including retention goals, creating manager awareness, and reviewing exit reasons…along with improving usual HR processes like recruiting, selection, onboarding, and training.

Then HR manager Neringa Zilinskiene suggested using my book, The Stay Interview, to train managers to leverage the power of Stay Interviews to reduce employee turnover. You can see this picture Kristina sent over the holidays:

The bottom line is PEPCO’s Baltic states’ turnover has decreased by 67%…and PEPCO has yet to leverage the full power of Stay Interviews as they have taken them to the Area Manager and Store Manager levels only. Kristina tells me the likely next step is to implement Stay Interviews to include all PEPCO employees. Kristina explained their turnover-cutting results this way:

We do not have the data how much exactly STAY interviews have added to the employee turnover we’ve managed to cut, but we are sure that is an efficient tool for the manager to build relationships with their employees, gain trust, and know better, how to be a “good” manager for a specific employee.

Kristina realizes that qualifying her first-line leaders to conduct Stay Interviews will require in-depth training on listening, probing, taking notes, and taking responsibility, so she might ask our company to help.

One could say that the power of Stay Interviews speak any language…but we already knew that. Our retention mantra of Cutting turnover 30% and More has proven to be true with our on-site training on all six inhabited continents including nations such as China, Thailand, Chile, New Zealand, France, and South Africa.

For those of you who want to see Valerija in action, you can watch her pre-interview 2-minute chit-chat with me here:https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6750435192428617728/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(ugcPost%3A6742819580936278016%2C6750435053781688320)

Or her full interview with me is here beginning at minute 32:

Sometimes writing blogs brings joy, other times it feels like work. This time we’ve learned that some of our work has brought joy to Lithuania. And that feels good. 

Please email your comments to me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com.  You are also welcome to forward this blog to anyone you believe would find it helpful.