A Genuine, Gripping Story About What Employees Talk About Over Dinner

This story happened six days ago. Below is a quote from the HR executive I was talking with on the phone last week.

I totally get what you mean when you say what matters is what employees talk about over dinner. My husband and I work for the same company though he works in a different division and a different location. It seems each night he complains to me about his boss over dinner.

Mostly it’s about communication and respect…or lack of it. One day recently his boss walked into his area during the busiest part of the day and said “Stop what you are doing and come into my office. Performance reviews are due this Friday”. He just wishes his boss had respect for him, his experience, and ideas he could contribute…and would listen to what’s important to him and his co-workers.

So at some point I switched from being an HR person to being his wife, and I asked when he was going to quit. He said he knew the date, and during his exit interview he wouldn’t say a thing, just wanted to get out.

Knowing the level of this man’s professional job, I’m going to guess he earns upward of $150,000 per year. So if we apply the old standard of exits cost one time’s annual pay, this story is about flushing that much money.

Let’s assume those dollars are gone…and the now-exiting $150,000 will not be spent to improve equipment, do additional research or development, or raise pay for others who deserve it. What steps could that organization have taken to save this employee?

• Conduct an engagement survey? His anonymous response on a five-point scale regarding communications would be buried amongst those of his peers.

• Or send his manager to supervisory training like Situational Leadership where that manager would learn four types of issues and four types of employees so the manager then chooses the correct approach… but of course the manager must recognize that there is an issue first.

• Or maybe someone should have just fired his manager, although Gallup tells us just 10% of managers enter their jobs with a natural ability to do them…so we’d have to fire a bunch of managers.

In February of this year, a Forbes Magazine columnist mentioned my opinion about the value of what employees talk about over dinner in this way:

“Dick Finnegan, the Stay Interview expert, writes, ‘The greatest reasons why employees quit is what they talk about over dinner.’ Even those of us who love hard data must acknowledge this, which reinforces the old adage that people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. And it is those bosses they talk about over dinner.”

The columnist mentioned Stay Interviews first, and this is meaningful because a Stay Interviews might save this employee. And I can’t think of anything else that would. While we recommend managers ask just five highly-targeted questions, the true power of Stay Interviews is the skillset leaders must develop to use Stay Interviews appropriately…and those skills include the following:

• Listening by locking your own issues and stories out of the room, being tuned into your employee’s emotions so you know what matters most, and forming your next questions based on what you hear instead of developing questions while your employee is talking.

• Probing by digging deeper with open-ended questions like “Tell me more” or “Can you give me an example?” Or closed-ended ones like “Who is it you like to work with the most?”

• Taking notes so your employee knows what she is telling you matters to you, and also so you can repeat back what you heard.

But the bigger reason why a Stay Interview would matter to our husband employee is because he would learn that his manager cares. Just by introducing the meeting with “I want to have a meeting with you to learn what I can do to make working here better for you” would open communication doors because the employee would know his manager is open to change. 

The world is catching on as our most recent international request for Stay Interview information was from the country of Georgia. Please let me know if you’d like more information, too.

Dick Finnegan is SHRM’s top-selling author and top-rated webcast presenter. Please email your comments to DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com.  Contact Dick to discuss how we can help you retain your valuable employees.  You are also welcome to forward this blog to anyone you believe would find it helpful.