Hiring tools are everywhere. We’ve got resumes, skills tests, behavioral interviews, personality assessments… all in the name of answering two questions:

1. Can they do the job?
2. Will they do the job?

But here’s the real kicker: We’re missing a hiring tool for the most critical question of all.

Will they stay? Not “can,” not “will,” but stay. And not just hang around, they stay and remain engaged.

After decades of working with organizations on retention, I can tell you this question gets skipped way too often. And in healthcare, skipping it can be deadly, literally. If you’re hiring CNAs, nurses, or front-line staff who quit after six weeks, you’re not just wasting time and money, you’re jeopardizing lives.

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Roundtable Replay: Watch the 30-minute Roundtable replay of “Hiring People Who Stay and Self-Engage”.

Roundtable Slide Deck: Download the slide deck from the 30-minute Roundtable “Hiring People Who Stay and Self-Engage”.

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The CNA Turnover Crisis, and What We Did About It

Timothy Juergensen, one of our partners from Covenant Health, hit the nail on the head in a roundtable discussion. He said something I hear far too often:

“How did that person even get hired?”

It’s a fair question. At Covenant, CNAs were leaving in droves within their first two months. So, we worked together to fix it, starting with the hiring process.

What did we do?

We designed a Realistic Job Preview (RJP) for the CNA role. This wasn’t just another glossy recruiting video, it was a true, unfiltered look at what the job really entailed. Managers were trained not just to show it, but to use it to create better interview questions. We asked about tough past jobs, stress, and motivation. And we even invited candidates to tour the floor and see the job in action.

Some said, “No thanks.”
And that was a good thing.

Because when the cost of a bad CNA hire is thousands of dollars, or a patient safety issue, you don’t want to convince someone to take the job. You want to help them make the right choice, for them, and for you.

Three Ways to Hire People Who Stay

In my work, I’ve found that hiring for retention often boils down to three proven practices:

1. Realistic Job Previews – Show the real job. Warts and all.
2. Employee Referrals – People refer others like themselves. Good people know good people.
3. Commitment-Implied Offers – Language in your offer that signals expectations for growth, trust, and staying power.

Ask yourself: Which of these could move the needle the most in your organization?

Motivation Isn’t a Mystery, If You Ask the Right Questions

The Covenant team didn’t stop at previews. They rebuilt their interview training from the ground up, anchoring it to the idea of motivational fit. In short: Does this person want to do this kind of work, in this kind of environment, for this kind of team?

It’s not enough to ask if they’ve done a task before. We need to uncover why they did it, how they felt about it, and what kept them going when it got tough. That’s how you reveal the traits, not just competencies, that lead to long-term retention.

Because here’s the truth: You can train for skill. You can’t train for grit.

Let’s Be Honest: Retention Starts Before Day One

If you’re in healthcare, this isn’t optional. When a CNA walks off the job, your care teams are short-staffed, your costs skyrocket, and your remaining employees burn out faster. You’ve got to make hiring for stay power a core competency.

Let’s not pretend this is just an HR issue either. This is a leadership issue. And like most leadership issues, the solution starts with truth-telling, better questions, and accountability.

So I’ll leave you with this:

What are you doing to hire for stay power?

If the answer is “not much,” then don’t be surprised when your retention looks like roulette.

Want help building realistic job previews or motivational-fit interview questions?
Write me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com. Let’s talk about how to build a hiring process that cuts turnover from Day One.

The post The Hiring Question No One Asks: Will They Stay? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

The top finding is Recruiting a Persistent but Common Challenge. The report further describes this #1 HR challenge:

In 2024, recruiting was the top priority for HR, fueled by the ongoing challenge of attracting top talent in a market where job openings outnumber individuals actively seeking work. Given these conditions, it is unsurprising that only a portion of HR professionals and U.S. workers viewed their organization’s recruiting efforts as effective. These staffing challenges resulted in heavier workloads for some employees, ultimately driving higher burnout rates.

Recruiting tops all other topics which include talent analytics, future of work, employee experience, technology, C-suite/board relations, and more. And not only is recruiting the top challenge, but the description provided above makes clear that most HR professionals who were surveyed do not think their recruiting function is working well.

As a “recovering HR director”, I have clear memories of how my HR team and I would respond to such a report. Armed with a white board and marker, we would identify new ways to recruit, read a best-practices article or two, develop a report, and present that report to the executive team. And then go on the recruit maybe a little bit better but probably not very much.

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Further reading: Message at SHRM24: Stay Interviews Require Accountability

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A Quiz Question That Leads to A Riddle

So to get to our riddle, let’s propose a quiz question with an obvious right answer. Which would be better for your company, in the short-term and especially in the long-term?

1. Continue to improve recruiting as best you can.
2. Improve employee retention so you don’t have to recruit as much.

Every single HR professional I know would choose B. But then they would ask how to improve retention given their limited budgets for pay, benefits, and the rest.

So our riddle is, Where did improving retention rank on SHRM’s list? And the answer is that there is no mention of improving retention or improving turnover on SHRM’s list of 16 practice areas, and those were the topics that were offered for this survey.

So if we take this discussion one step further, the clearly best solution for HR’s loudly-declared greatest problem appears to be less important than, let’s say, C-suite/board relations. Or than future of work. Or any of the other SHRM practice list. This is indeed a head-scratcher, even for my balding head.

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Further reading: The Room-Silencing Question at SHRM Las Vegas

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Seeing Light Through the Dark

In fairness, though, there is a clear reason for this massive oversight. And that reason is that until now employee retention has been seen as a combination of doing the rest of the list. Using some other list examples, employee turnover will improve if you do for example performance management/total rewards/talent management/learning and development, and more.

Reality, though, tells us that assumption is false. Because if it were true, then recruiting wouldn’t be so hard because employee retention would be making recruiting easier. But employee turnover continues to be high, while employee engagement is at an 11-year low.

It’s time, then, for employee retention to earn its well-deserved promotion to every important HR list, including SHRM’s practice list. To earn this promotion, employee retention needs a true fix, a research-based solution that as a solid track record of success, and here it is:

Convert turnover to dollars, develop retention goals, and then hold first-line leaders accountable to achieve those goals. Train those leaders to conduct Stay Interviews with each member of their teams to develop individual stay plans, and teach them also to forecast how long each employee will stay. Then hold those leaders accountable for achieving their retention goals and developing accurate forecasts.

For HR to do this, they must find the courage to influence their executive teams to say “yes”. HR must walk across the bridge from the HR-only side versus develop more of the same regarding onboarding, new benefits, and even fresher pay studies…because research tells us the #1 employees stay or leave is how much they trust their boss. HR can’t do this unless they build the case for executives to hold those bosses accountable for retention, as well as for engagement.

This is the way to improve recruiting…and it’s the permanent way.

Employee Retention for Organizational Success

Now is the time to plan how you will retain your best workers now to mitigate the numbers you will need to hire in the future. If you know you need to address turnover or improve engagement but aren’t sure where to start, email me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and I promise to help you start your employee retention strategy now, so you can see results this year.

[i] https://www.shrm.org/content/dam/en/shrm/topics-tools/research/2025-shrm-state-of-the-workplace-research-report.pdf

The post Riddle: Find the Hole in SHRM’s Annual State of the Workplace Report appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Or might it become a 3-D printer-plus, and actually make your next car from scratch? Just pour in a bunch of steel and tires into a mythical blender and…puff…there’s a Lexus.

This massive-change speculation brings to mind two previous technology booms that turned out to be busts. The first is when “PCs”…personal computers…first hit the business scene when a report said we would all be working fewer hours. It was yes, we can be more productive but no, that doesn’t mean someone won’t give us more work.

They seemed to have forgotten the Wall Street never sleeps thing, that investors expect more and more profits, versus now that we have new technology we can go home early and take a nap.

The second was the sudden invention of robotics when 60 Minutes showed several reports of the incredible things robots could do now and soon after into our futures. Lists immediately appeared of which jobs would go away the fastest.

And now regarding AI, it’s impossible to separate scientific potential from true science fiction, in part because I’m quite sure no one really knows.

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Further Reading: How Much Are Worker Shortages Impacting Customer Service Today?

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Except the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, They Know Workforce Numbers

In a special report just two days ago, the BLS released a detailed study including their heavily-researched position on AI’s impact on the future US workforce.[i] Their study notes that the initial attention-getting foray into AI was the deployment of Open AI’s ChatGPT in November, 2022, and that speculation has grown since. Their study focuses on the computer, legal, business and financial, architectural, and the engineering occupational groups.

Here is their major conclusion:

Over the 2023–33 projections period, AI is expected to primarily affect occupations whose core tasks can be most easily replicated by GenAI in its current form. These occupations include medical transcriptionists and customer service representatives, whose employment is projected to decline by 4.7 and 5.0 percent, respectively, through 2033.

Then they go on to report these specific projections in this lengthy paragraph:

Other occupations also may see AI impacts, although not to the same extent. For instance, computer occupations may see productivity impacts from AI, but the need to implement and maintain AI infrastructure could in actuality boost demand for some occupations in this group. Among legal occupations, paralegals and legal assistants are likely to experience lower employment demand because of LLM adoption, while lawyers are expected to be less affected. Within business and financial operations occupations, insurance adjusters and appraisers are expected to see reduced employment demand, with AI being able to quickly produce monetary estimates of property damage. Meanwhile, other occupations in this group, such as personal financial advisors, will likely continue to see strong employment growth because demand for human counsel in complex financial matters will persist, particularly for older clients. Architecture and engineering occupations may see some productivity gains from GenAI, but these gains will likely be in line with those afforded by software and other technological advancements in prior decades. As a result, occupations in this group are not expected to see substantial GenAI-driven reductions in employment demand over the projections period.

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Further reading: Today’s Riddle – What is America’s Greatest Business Challenge?

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So How Will This Impact Future Job Growth?

Like the initial impact of robotics, I read this to say that outside of medical transcriptionists and customer service representatives, most jobs will see small increases or decreases overall. And that no one who has their heart set on those two noted jobs should re-direct their career choice given that reductions of 5.0 percent max still leaves a lot of those same jobs to be filled.

It’s essentially what is becoming the repeating how-automation-impacts-jobs story, that technology advances we can’t yet imagine continue to put an end to some jobs while creating new ones. And that overall, the required educational levels keep going up.

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Further reading: Fewer Students, Fewer Workers, and a Hiring Crisis Ahead – Are You Ready?

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What Does Our Future Hold for Workforce Availability?

This aligns spot-on with last week’s report here about colleges closing their doors, mostly because our plunging birthrate has led us to a shortage of 18-year-olds. And that shortage will continue not just as they get older, but that decreasing birthrate provides no indication that more babies are coming our way.

All of which takes us to this major conclusion, and one that is unpopular with some:

The first-world country that attracts the best and brightest immigrants will win.

What’s the best thing that you and your company can do? RETAIN YOUR BEST WORKERS NOW.

Employee Retention for Long-term Success

Now is the time to plan how you will retain your best workers now to mitigate the numbers you will need to hire in the future. If you know you need to address turnover or improve engagement but aren’t sure where to start, email me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and I promise to help you jump start your employee retention strategy now, so you can begin seeing results this year.

[i] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2025/article/incorporating-ai-impacts-in-bls-employment-projections.htm

The post Will AI Replace Enough Jobs to Fix Worker Shortage? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

• At least one US college closed or merged with another during the first half of 2024.
• The Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve predicts the number of college closures will accelerate rather than slow down.
• US colleges are admitting a larger percentage of applicants than in the past, meaning our standards are slipping.
• The US has fallen to ninth among developed nations in the proportion of its population with some education after high school.
• A higher percentage of future US jobs will require post-high school education than projections indicate we will have qualified workers to fill them.

Fewer Births Means Fewer Future Workers

The real culprit here is America’s declining birth rate, resulting in a cliff of 18-year-olds who would normally be enrolling in college.

This diminishing supply of young people will contribute to “a massive labor shortage,” with an estimated six million fewer workers between now and 2032 than there are jobs needing to be filled. As just one example, McKinsey warns that production at a new $40 billion semiconductor processing facility in Arizona has been delayed due to worker shortages.

This so-called demographic cliff has been predicted ever since Americans started having fewer babies at the advent of the Great Recession around the end of 2007 — a falling birth rate that has not recovered since, except for a slight blip after the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control. 

Of course, not all future jobs will require a college education, but 43% of them will require at least bachelor’s degrees by 2031. That means more positions in the workforce will demand some kind of postsecondary credentials than Americans are now projected to earn. Shortages are predicted in teaching, health care and other fields.

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Further reading: Colbert, “Work Breaks” and Birthrates

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We Aren’t Producing Enough Workers to Sustain, Let Alone Grow

Future shortages always include healthcare, don’t they? And at a time when baby boomers are reaching the age where they’ll need more of it.

The strongest message within this data is that the US will continue to drive its world-first economy with a smaller number of workers overall…regardless of the levels of education they attain. We just haven’t produced enough babies who grow into workers who can then contribute to our economy. And that applies to your company as well.

Then here’s the clincher, the great unknown about our future workforce. The number of international students fell by 12 percent when compared to competitor countries during Donald Trump’s first term as president. Now that he is about to start a second term, 58 percent of European students say they are less interested in coming to the United States, according to a survey by the international student recruiter Keystone Education Group.

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Further reading: Without Immigrants, U.S. Working-Age Population Would Shrink

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How Do You Stay Ahead of the Hiring Crisis? Put Employee Retention First

The solution, the answer, always points to the same strategy. Retain your best workers because the future is looking Halloween-scary for sheer numbers of workers to fill the jobs we must fill in order to further our US economy as well as keep our own businesses afloat.

Employee retention is about to move from being a very, very important component to organizational success to becoming the top strategy for each organization’s very survival. And the number one way to guarantee retention success is to give your employees managers they trust.

As our company has proven for a decade-plus, Stay Interviews provide managers with a structured method to learn their employees’ greatest day-to-day needs and then meet those needs. This specific retention solution is to combine the five Stay Interview questions with skill-building for asking those questions, listening to each employee’s responses, probing to learn more, taking a full page or two of notes, and then building individualized stay plans to retain that employee longer.

The Stay Interview goal is to identify and address work-driven issues but the absolute most important goal is develop a relationship with their manager as the absolute best opportunity to retain and engage them.

Employee Retention for Organizational Success

Now is the time to plan how you will retain your best workers now to mitigate the numbers you will need to hire in the future. If you know you need to address turnover or improve engagement but aren’t sure where to start, email me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and I promise to help you jump start your employee retention strategy now, so you can see results this year.

These publications contributed to this report:

Jon Marcus, Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students? The Hechinger Report, April 26, 2024

Jon Marcus, The number of 18-year-olds is about to drop sharply, packing a wallop for colleges — and the economy. The Hechinger Report, January 8, 2025

Robert Kelchen, Dubravka Ritter, Douglas Webber, Predicting College Closures and Financial Distress. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, December 2024

The post Fewer Students, Fewer Workers, and a Hiring Crisis Ahead – Are You Ready? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

I’ve never been a smoker but have been close to people who’ve labored through the quitting process, over and over and over. So changing jobs is 50% more stressful than that?

So let’s say your company’s annual turnover is that same number, 50%, or half that at 25%. What does this new information tell us about how badly your employees want out? How much they disdain working for your company? What could be SO bad that they are willing to drag themselves through half of the same stress level as if they were getting divorced? Or the identical amount of stress from the death of a close friend?

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Further Reading: How Employee Turnover Is Like Losing a Marriage

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The Data Behind the Data on the Stress of Quitting

This study was published in The Atlantic which brings a pristine reputation for data quality. The study was conducted on the Holmes-Raye Life Stress Inventory[ii] which compares life’s common stress events, scoring the top life event which is death of a spouse at 100, and then compares the remaining events to this number. The remaining top five stress events after spouse death are divorce at 73, marital separation from mate at 65, and then detention in jail or another institution along with death of a close family member are tied at 63. 

But we also know that quit stress levels differ among individuals. One study focused on technology workers tells us that just 30% of those who indicated that they would quit within a year actually did quit[iii]…which is why I never quote “January studies” that say a certain percentage of workers intend to quit this year. The more relevant data is how many actually do quit later.

That same study indicated that while many who said they would quit did not quit, that about a third of them had risk-averse personalities that make it even harder for them to quit.

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Further Reading: The Blatant Unfairness of Retaining Poor Supervisors

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So How Do You Prevent Employees from Quitting?

This weekly piece has been packed with employee retention ideas…so given the space available, let me offer the top four:

Sounds easy I know…but there are many obstacles to make that above happen in any organization. Our clients cut turnover by an average of 34% across all industries, so we’ve conquered every challenge that’s included in these top four approaches.

Email me to learn more at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com.

[i] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/job-hunt-quest-meaning/681299/

[ii] https://www.stress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Holmes-Rahe-Stress-inventory.pdf

[iii]https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2843824.2843827?casa_token=YGHnXTTuCXkAAAAA:PrOxMtBqHJXllQrqWsZx5R4a997EWQ3-PQOgu-31C1oPQ3__s2NqS_vSKB4fRQpvwPd_qK-rgUWf

The post How Bad Does It Have to be for Someone to Quit Your Company? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

One executive is quoted as saying, ““It’s not just that HR is kind of the fun crew, organizing picnics and engagement surveys. They’re doing real, proper business work.”

The Spotlight Has been on HR, and HR has Shined

The real point seems to be that external market conditions have put HR under the microscope, and most of HR has shined as a result. None of us wanted that bad bug from China, but the three named examples above are all about how companies responded to that bug which forced HR into the spotlight…which has been a very, very good thing for HR.

Pardon the sports analogy, but it’s often been said that winning the second super bowl is harder than winning the first. What can be that next step for securing one’s all-important seat?

And as important, what’s the next proactive thing HR can do…given that we earned our seat involuntarily based on a hopefully-once-in-a-lifetime event that none of us saw coming? We need a thing, an idea to transform our organizations that we can proactively initiate from scratch versus continuing to respond to outside business conditions, whatever they might be.

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Further Reading: Retention Tops CEOs’ Concerns that HR Needs to Solve

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Move Accountability for Retention from HR to Managers

So as they say, here’s the thing. Convince your executives that the true solution to cutting employee turnover is to hold your leaders accountable to employee turnover goals.

Move them away from believing employees stay because of pay, benefits, and all of those one-size-fits-all events that grow from your employee surveys. Convince them instead that employees stay or leave based mostly on their relationships with their first-line leaders, and that includes every leader from the CEO on down. Start by including your CFO in a turnover cost study so she tells the CEO and the others around the Monday morning table that turnover is one of your highest costs…and it takes more than a few HR programs to reduce it.

For many of us, turnover remains an HR-only issue, one that confounds us but also leaves us lonely because “it’s a people thing” so we on our own are charged with fixing it. And over time we finally figure out that employee appreciation week doesn’t fix recognition, town hall meetings don’t improve communications, and deep down nobody really cares about pet insurance.

Or said another way, everything we’ve been taught about how to improve employee retention is wrong.

Many of you know the story about how I collaborated with a professor at mid-career to discover the real turnover solution, one that sustains over time. And after digging into much academic research based on real-life corporate implementations, the pathway to real retention fixes comes down to this:

• The #1 reason employees stay or leave…or for that matter engage or disengage…is how much they trust their immediate supervisors.

• This does NOT mean each time an employee quits it is because she doesn’t trust her boss…though that might be true.

• It DOES mean each individual leader becomes your very best employee retention solution.

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Further Reading: Correlation Between Culture, Turnover, and First-Line Supervisors

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HR’s Most Important Strategic Issue

Swing big. Consider your absolutely most important business issue and how improving retention addresses it. How often do your managers complain about recruiting? Or pay? Or might your executives be savvy enough to realize that we are running out of nurses, technicians, drivers, plumbers, and other essential skilled workers?

Here’s one off-the-wall example: School districts cannot find school bus drivers because those same drivers have gone to Amazon and other package-delivery companies because they work more hours and don’t have to deal with kids. Would any of us prefer to get up early to drive a bus, then wait around half a day to drive that same bus again?

HR Next Steps to Fix Turnover

Want to know how to prove to your top team that leaders drive turnover and also drive retention? Just how important is pay for retention compared to having a trustworthy boss? Why do one-size-fits-all programs fail compared to having a good one-on-one relationship with your boss?

And let’s add how does one put a cost on turnover. And which retention goals are the best goals.

Email me for answers at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com. I can help, promise.

[i] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/meet-new-c-suite-power-player-chro-fortune-ukp1f/

The post Securing HR’s “Seat at The Table” appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Jassy outlined the reasoning for this in the memo with this thought, “When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant.”

Work-From-Home vs Return-To-Office

For many future years we will read reports and say, “The pandemic caused that” and at top of the list is the work-from-home (WFH) phenomena that today has led to an increased level of tension between employees who have embraced it and employers, like Amazon, who are over it and are mandating return-to-office (RTO).

From the employee side, WFH represents options…for when and how to work, for easier child and elder care, and even for which state to live in. For employers, the combination of WFH + RTO has led to higher turnover, more positions to fill and tougher recruiting, and lower productivity.

Reporting tells us this:

• 42% of companies that have mandated RTO saw a higher level of employee turnover than they had anticipated.
• Almost one-third of companies found recruiting got worse.
• And 76% of employees said they would leave if their company forced them to RTO.
• As a final kick, nearly half of candidates said they would reject roles if there is no flexibility.[ii]

From the start, forced WFH looked like trouble for employers who had zero choice but to permit it during those pandemic months. One of few expected upsides was that money would be saved via reduced office space, assuming workers would remain at home. And while true for some companies, those non-renewed leases are having a massive negative economic impact on our cities which has yet to fully hit home.

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Further Reading: What 60 MINUTES Got Wrong About WFH Commercial Real Estate Crisis

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WFH Hasn’t Improved Employee Engagement

Turnover is up and Gallup tells us employee engagement is down for the first time in a decade, saying this specifically about WFH:

The largest decline in employee engagement was among those in remote-ready jobs who are currently working fully on-site — this group saw a decline of five points in engagement and an increase of seven points in active disengagement. It’s worth noting that exclusively remote employees saw an increase of four points in “quiet quitting” (aka not engaged in their work and workplace).[iii]

Prediction is CEOs Will End WFH

Amazon may be on the forefront of this mandate, but media reports have been clear that we should expect more of this to come. Fortune published a recent report predicting CEOs are running out of patience with WFH, citing the following reasons[iv]:

#1: Remote work is bad for new hires and junior employees.

#2: Workers admit that remote work (sometimes) causes more problems than in-person work.

#3: Remote workers put in 3.5 hours less per week compared to in-person workers.

#4: Productivity plummets on days when everyone is working remotely.

I remember two Wall Street Journal articles that nailed the problem. In one a CEO said he could not imagine a recent college grad developing adequately via zoom meetings versus walking the halls with her in-office, more-experienced colleagues. And the other article profiled four employees who had been hired and then quit within six months because zooming alone didn’t help them build relationships with their managers nor their peers.

Do Employees Have Power Regarding WFH or RTO Decisions?

The major obstacle is workers now have the upper hand. That the sheer number of workers across the U.S. cannot meet the demand for filling open jobs, permitting employees to make decisions that severely impact organizations rather than the traditional other-way-around. And the Census Bureau tells us this won’t change anytime soon because our baby boomers are retiring and there just aren’t enough younger workers to take their places.[v]

The Census Bureau also tells us in the same report that 51% of all new workforce entrants will be immigrants beginning in 2030, and that percentage will increase throughout the foreseeable future. This comes at a time when Americans’ favorable opinion of immigrants continues to go down[vi], likely influenced by the continuous streaming of Mexican border stories across TV news as though these are the only immigration examples.

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Further Reading: How Much Are Worker Shortages Impacting Customer Service Today?

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Regardless of WFH or RTO, Employee Retention Must be Addressed

CEOs are ultimately deciding their organization’s WFH/RTO strategies, choosing from (1) total WFO, (2) total RTO, or (3) various forms of hybrid scheduling. But among the hundreds of online reports about companies’ decisions, little is said about how those organizations should engage employees in order to retain them. Generic recommendations call for managers to build stronger, more personal relationships with their individual team members, yet those same generic recommendations come up short on how to do this.

Stay Interviews are Key to Employee Retention

As our company has proven for a decade-plus, Stay Interviews provide managers with a structured method to learn their employees’ greatest day-to-day needs and then meet those needs. This specific WFH retention solution is to combine the five Stay Interview questions with skill-building for asking those questions, listening to each employee’s responses, probing to learn more, taking a full page or two of notes, and then building individualized stay plans to retain that employee longer.

The Stay Interview goal is to identify and address work-driven issues versus virtual happy hours and other social activities which fail due to their simplicity, their superficial quality. While helping employees meet their peers virtually is a worthy objective, the absolute most important relationship is the one they develop with their manager…and that manager must have training and tools to lead that relationship.

Improving retention and engagement among WFH employees is a very, very tall task. Training managers to facilitate Stay Interviews on a regular schedule provides the absolute best opportunity to retain and engage them.

Need help establishing retention goals for WFH, RTO, or Hybrid?  
Schedule a conversation with me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and we’ll discuss the numbers and needs you should have to evaluate your retention goals. We work with companies in every type of industry to cut turnover by 20% and more by building trust and accountabilities.

[i] https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/amazon-mandates-full-five-day-return-to-office/

[ii] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/we-re-now-finding-out-the-damaging-results-of-the-mandated-return-to-the-office-and-it-s-worse-than-we-thought/ar-AA1eDefg?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=1c82f1dc40644b398135a3d0e5745381&ei=16

[iii] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/468233/employee-engagement-needs-rebound-2023.aspx?thank-you-subscription-form=1

[iv] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/bosses-are-fed-up-with-remote-work-for-4-main-reasons-some-of-them-are-undeniable/ar-AA1cyh0l?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=6ab063aa84fa4eb5abcae434f66ef879&ei=18

[v] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.html

[vi] https://news.gallup.com/poll/508520/americans-value-immigration-concerns.aspx

The post Is Amazon’s Return-to-Office Bellwether for WFH’s Future? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Exit Interviews and Surveys for Employee Retention and Engagement?

Now onto meatier stuff for us regarding the uselessness of exit surveys. The often-applied medical metaphor is that exit surveys are autopsies, meaning they provide the real reasons employees quit so management can fix those reasons and turnover then falls. But to keep up the medical jargon, let’s call exit surveys toe tags instead.

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Further Reading: Exit Interviews – More Like Autopsies or Toe Tags?

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Too harsh? Many times I’ve polled HR audiences on their use of exit surveys by asking these two probes:

1. Please raise your hand if your company does employee exit surveys in any form…to which 90%-plus raise their hands.

2. Now please raise your hand again if you can think of one good outcome for your company as a result of your conducting exit surveys…and less than 5% raise their hands a second time.

On the surface, exit surveys should become strong tools to improve employee retention as long as…

• Surveys are designed to elicit the real reasons employees leave.
• Employees tell the truth.
• And organizations address these newly-discovered leave reasons by solving the problems at their roots.

But none of those things happen and here’s why.

“Better Opportunity” Doesn’t Explain Employee Turnover

Some time ago I went on a google quest to learn the supposed #1 reason employees quit their jobs…and better opportunity was the winner. And it’s the winner because nearly every exit interview questionnaire contains that response, whether the questionnaire is delivered by a person, by an online program, or by a third-person interviewer.

Since we associate opportunity with pay or career, the resulting assumption is that some other company swooped in and made our employee an offer…and that offer was financially enticing or included an exciting, higher-level job. So there’s absolutely nothing we could have done to stop that. Especially the assumed much-higher-pay part.

The truth is that “better opportunity” could have also meant a shorter commute, working with nicer people, or abandoning my jerk boss. Accepting that phrase as a leave reason is mush.

But the greater point beyond “better opportunity” being misleading is that it also implies that a new job just appeared.  And those who are leaving us know this is a safe answer because any short explanation that they provide for accepting their “better opportunity” ends the discussion.

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Further Reading:  Two Real Examples of Stay Interviews’ Connection to Retention Solutions

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The outcome is that “better opportunity” avoids the more deeply-rooted, drill-down discussions that come from asking questions like “Why did you look?”

Most job changes today require the job-changer to go online and click. That first click is the first step toward changing jobs. For a very select few this first step is instead a direct inquiry from another company pitching a job that your employee didn’t know was available and had never considered. But for the great majority of job-changers, the first step is that proactive click. So much better exit interview questions become…

• When did you initiate your job search?
• Why did you initially decide to leave us?
• Was there one trigger event that caused you to seek out other jobs?
• What’s the single-best thing we could have done to keep you?

The one overlap between exit interviews and Stay Interviews is that qualified interviewers must bring great probing skills. They must recognize which broad responses contain juicy behind-the-scenes details that lead to solutions, and then probe their ways down that cookie-crumb trail to learn deep-seated truths…regardless of whether that interview’s objective is to learn why an employee is leaving or how to better help an employee to stay.

So conducting exit interviews in a way that will actually help your company is not, let’s say, an entry-level job, but instead one that requires training, practice, and feedback on how effectively that exit interviewer can seek out the real reason each employee has chosen to look and then to leave.

Truth-Telling is Key for Employee Engagement and Retention Improvement

While the above section addresses a common exit survey design flaw, employees still have little reason to tell their real-life-story full truths…especially when inputting data into a computer or talking to a stranger.

Let’s make a safe assumption here that employees’ greatest frustration with employee engagement surveys…that I told you and you didn’t address my complaint…applies to employee exit surveys as well. Then why would an employee who has already checked out of her job believe that re-canting her story will make things better, for her or the person who replaces here? Besides, she’s already told her story to a few work peers and outside friends and she’s ready to move on with her life.

The survey design flaws combined with many employees’ reluctancy to be open make for an easy way out. If they can get by with “better opportunity” or by clicking just a few keys during an online survey, then telling abbreviated stories or misleading ones becomes easy and OK.

In most companies, exit survey results are tabulated into a report that is delivered upstream monthly or quarterly depending on turnover volume. That report rank-orders the reasons employees leave, often placing “better opportunity”, pay, or career at the top. Next steps are usually to build a few one-size-fits-all programs or to do nothing at all.

The contrast here is that the number one reason employees stay or leave is how much they trust their managers…and rarely are exit survey results delivered to that employee’s supervisor. And if they are, the results are left to that supervisor to read, interpret, and decide what if any future changes he should make to his supervisor style, with little or no coaching coming from above.

So while exit surveys bring a concept that at first glance should be helpful to our overall retention quest, the combination of poor survey design, minimal truth-telling, and the absence of constructive follow-up all dilute their value.

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Further Reading:  Is There An Exit Interview That Works For Turnover?

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The Best Exit Survey Story I Know

Years ago, I was speaking at the Chicago University Club to about a hundred senior managers who were attending a conference there. The topic of exit surveys came up and after extensive group discussion a man in the back right corner raised his arm, stood up and spoke…with great wisdom.

This man explained that he was CEO of a 400-employee consulting firm in Portland, Oregon, and that he needed and cherished every talented employee for his firm to successfully win over and retain top clients. So when an employee quit, he had established a protocol which was widely known throughout his management ranks. No re-hire could begin until he as CEO signed the new-hire requisition order, and his managers understood he wouldn’t sign that order until they had scheduled an in-person meeting with him to discuss why that employee had left and what that manager could have done to retain that employee.

This CEO’s method worked because (1) he was skilled such that he would ask tough questions regarding why each employee left, (2) he was immediately following-up at the likely root cause, and (3) his managers knew that any exit led to an uncomfortable interaction with the CEO, so they were motivated to build trusting relationships with each employee in order to keep them.

A Different Idea for Exit Surveys is Stay Interviews

Not every company’s CEO is going to do what the one in my example did above. For those, who have been told, “HR, go fix it,” there is still another way to tackle the real reasons employees leave your company, pushing turnover higher and engagement lower. Implementing Stay Interviews.

The SI 5 are deeply researched, and we know when combined with solid probing can gather an abundance of important information about each employee. And this information leads to far greater employee engagement and retention.

I recently wrote an article about just one of our SI5, that is the perfect antidote to the Exit Interview question of “Why are you leaving?”

Stay Interviews Question 3 (Q 3) is “Why do you stay here?”, and we train managers to ask it and then wait patiently for the employee’s answer. Most employees can immediately tell you why they might leave, but few have actually catalogued in their minds why they stay. Asking why and patiently waiting for their answer causes these employees to self-search, to go to a place where maybe they’ve never been before. And once they announce to you why they stay they also announce it to themselves…and they tend to never forget it.

There is a lot more that goes into implementing Stay Interviews successfully, including executive buy-in, training, and tracking. But if Exit Survey are giving you “better opportunity” problems to try to solve, Stay Interviews change that to give you the solutions to making changes before your employees leave.  

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Further Reading:  Want to Implement Stay Interviews Internally? Join Me at Disney

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Learn How to use Stay Interviews to Improve Employee Retention & Engagement In-Person Training

No matter what size or type of company – public, private, non-profit and no matter your budget, we will give you 100% of the support and training you need to leverage our solution to do it yourself.

The in-person event is in Orlando, Sept. 25-27 and registration includes all the training, tools, and resources, plus one year enrollment to our Finnegan Institute Stay Interviews Certification course to add to your credentials.

Based on my ground-breaking work with Stay Interviews, our expert facilitators will train you on our entire process so you can return ready to implement an effective and proven retention and engagement strategy.

Some of the most asked questions for the event are answered in our brochure and on our registration page.

I hope to see you in Orlando. If you have any questions or need further information, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at dfinnegan@c-suiteanalytics.com.

The post Requiem: The End of Exit Interviews appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

I know you accept this challenge/opportunity/burden. However, a recent study of HR professionals reveals that the top assignment from CEOs is one that gets the least amount of attention for training: improving retention. And retention is not only the solution to keeping good workers but also to reducing the number of open jobs.

Stay Interviews are a Piece of a Proven Retention Solution

Those who are familiar with our work can anticipate what I write next, that (1) engagement per Gallup has been completely stuck for 22 years, (2) that only 33% of our employees at best are giving their all, and (3) the culprit here is surveys, engagement and exit, because we believe data identifies easy solutions…but data only provides data, not solutions.

Imagine cutting your turnover by 43%, 45%, or 67%…and the impact this would have on reducing open positions, improving engagement/productivity/profitability, and obviously reducing employee turnover. Our most recent clients achieved these turnover reductions by not only implementing Stay Interviews but also applying additional business principals to your retention solution. You can learn how to do it too!

Stay Interviews without executive team buy in for goals and forecasts become flavors of the month, whereas when you have buy-in your executives must build in accountability of direct supervisors for retention, engagement, and building the right, individualized stay plans so employees feel valued, recognized, appreciated…and accommodated when possible.

HR Can Be in The Driver’s Seat and Lead the Retention Change

Stay Interviews as part of a comprehensive business-driven solution puts HR in the driver’s seat by addressing each employee’s needs as individuals, as people, and as people who need to trust their direct supervisors. Building trust with employees and having managers, not HR, accountable for their people directly affects productivity and the bottom line, something your CEOs and leaders will respond to.

Each week I present here the absolute best information and solutions to implement Stay Interviews and cut employee turnover. But today, I want to invite you to spend a few days in Florida learning it all such that you could return home to MAKE IT HAPPEN…to not only reduce turnover but also slash open jobs, make real employee engagement happen, and improve productivity across your company.

And be the HR hero I know you are.

Genesis of our Employee Retention Intensive

I was sitting at SHRM24 frustrated by the inability to help so many SHRM members who would love to implement Stay Interviews, but just can’t get the buy-in or time to do so. Often, I’ve had HR leaders tell me they bought my book and then created their own Stay Interviews program, only to find out that they needed more support – more help getting buy-in from their executives, more training methods for their managers, more tools and processes for consistency, and more tracking to prove sustainability. It’s a lot for someone in HR who is wearing many hats.

That was my AHA moment! I said, let’s figure out a way to get all the training, resources, and tools into a cost-effective package for HR professionals, so they don’t have to figure it out themselves. So, my team pulled all our pieces together and realized we needed 2 ½ days to cover everything an HR professional would need to be able to go back and start implementing immediately.

Okay…great…we’ve got the program and training together; now how do we deliver it? 

We decided in-person was the best way for attendees to get the most out of training. It gives HR leaders an opportunity to step away from their office and really focus on the materials and delivery. Plus, it allows our team to be actively engaged with them in the process and able to answer any questions right then and there.

We also built in practice sessions so the cohort can build skills together as well as share best practices and ideas. Also, by creating this 2 ½ day intensive, we were able to secure 20 SHRM credits for this training. So instead of a lot of one-offs, SHRM members can take care of 20 credits in one fell swoop, plus add a critical skill to their HR resume. 

Learn How to use Stay Interviews to Improve Employee Retention & Engagement In-Person Training

No matter what size or type of company – public, private, non-profit and no matter your budget, we will give you 100% of the support and training you need to leverage our solution to do it yourself.

Here are the details: The in-person event is in Orlando, Sept. 25-27 and registration includes all the training, tools, and resources, plus one year enrollment to our Finnegan Institute Stay Interviews Certification course to add to your credentials, and three nights stay at the Omni Orlando ChampionsGate just outside the gates of the Walt Disney World Resort area, with transportation access and more for friends and families to enjoy.

Based on my ground-breaking work with Stay Interviews, our expert facilitators will train you on our entire process so you can return ready to implement an effective and proven retention and engagement strategy.

Some of the most asked questions for the event are answered in our brochure and on our registration page including:

1. What is the main benefit of this training? To return with everything you need to implement an effective and proven retention strategy – a critical advantage for any organization, and a game-changer for your HR credentials.
2. What significant results has this previously achieved? Once implemented, turnover, costs for recruitment, training, and workers’ comp claims go down; and engagement and client satisfaction scores go up.
3. What is the fiscal value to my organization? Specifically designed as the most cost-effective way for an internal team to improve employee retention and engagement themselves without incurring any external consulting costs. The baseline ROI for this training is 4x the registration fee. Retaining just ONE employee more than covers the cost of this training.

I know these decisions are often hard to make quickly, and that budgets, more than ever, are tight. So I also wanted to share our 5 Key Reasons PDF that may help you make a case with your executives for why you should attend. Plus, we have group rates for multiple participants from an organization. Or forward this to anyone you know who would benefit from this training and put your own group together! It can be anyone – your SHRM or HR group you’re a member of, or other professionals you’d enjoy traveling and learning with. We will work with you to make it work FOR you!

I hope to see you in Orlando. If you have any questions or need further information, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at dfinnegan@c-suiteanalytics.com or visit our information page with links to individual and group registration.

The post Want to Implement Stay Interviews Internally? Join Me at Disney appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

In an interview with Forbes Magazine detailing why the 5 Stay Interview questions…or what we refer to as the SI 5…yield more useful answers than spontaneous, random questions that come from the gut. The SI 5 are deeply researched, and we know when combined with solid probing can gather an abundance of important information about each employee. And this information leads to far greater employee engagement and retention.

I have a bias, and often express it by calling Stay Interviews Question 3 (Q 3) the “money question”…my slang for this sleepy-sounding short collection of words that ultimately unlocks very important answers. Q 3 is “Why do you stay here?”, and we train managers to ask it and then wait patiently for the employee’s answer. Here’s a common exchange:

Manager: So Veronica, please tell me why you stay with us. You’ve been here for more than a year and you are so talented that you could leave us, and I’m grateful that you don’t. So why do you stay?

Veronica: Well, I have to pay the bills.

Manager: Yea, I know. And I have to pay the bills, too. But I’ve thought about it, and I realize getting paid is not really why I stay. In fact, I could get paid anywhere and so could you. So what are the real reasons that you stay?

Veronica: I guess I’ve never really thought about it.

Manager: That’s OK. Take your time. I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Would you like one?

I’ve inserted the “cup of coffee” line here to make an important point: the manager in our scenario did not make the question easier by making it multiple choice. Some managers would be uncomfortable causing a little stress for the employee and therefore not allow silence…nor the potential for self-discovery. They instead would break the silence with questions like, “Do you stay for our team? Or for our customers?” But savvy Stay Interviewers know to pause, accept silence, and encourage the employee to find their own unique answer.

Stay Interviews Q3 Cause Employees to Self-Search

The reason for doing so is simple. Most employees can immediately tell you why they might leave, but few have actually catalogued in their minds why they stay. Asking why and patiently waiting for their answer causes these employees to self-search, to go to a place where maybe they’ve never been before. And once they announce to you why they stay they also announce it to themselves…and they tend to never forget it.

Let’s continue our role-play exchange, and imagine Veronica says she stays because she likes working with her team. Her manager would then probe for more details, to ask Veronica to dig deeper so Veronica learns and tells more about herself.

• Who do you specifically like working with, Veronica?
• What is there about William and Andrea that makes them such good coworkers?
• Can you identify that specific quality that makes a good colleague for you?
• Who else do you think could be a good coworker, but you haven’t worked with them enough to know?
• And who is not a good coworker and why?

Veronica then listens to her own answers…and leaves her Stay Interview meeting with a new appreciation for this most important aspect of her job which is the coworkers she values most. The result is she is likely to engage with those coworkers further, be on the lookout for others to connect with, and her overall engagement and retention will climb.

Veronica’s answer might have been about other topics…likes working with patients, likes working with numbers, likes getting to work early to prepare for the day. Regardless of each employee’s response, managers can then be on the lookout for additional duties that connect directly back to what makes each employee stay. In other words, the part of work that turns them on the most.

“Why do you stay here?” opens the door to important clues to engage your employees more and also retain them longer. And that’s all based on asking just one of the SI 5 questions.

Stay Interviews in the News

Want to see the real impact Stay Interviews can have on an organization? Our client Quest Diagnostics was featured in an NBC News report on Stay Interviews as an important business tool. The outcome was honest and shows the trajectory of an employee’s skepticism to relief in being heard. It also closes with great advice for how employees can prepare for Stay Interviews to get the most out of it for themselves.

Use Stay Interviews to Improve Employee Retention – In-Person Training

Specifically designed for those who need to cut turnover, improve employee engagement, and internally implement Stay Interviews cost-effectively. Learn innovative strategies to cultivate a positive workplace culture, enhance employee engagement, and refine retention tactics for your organization’s unique needs, while positively impacting your personal HR credentials.

Secure your spot today!

The post Why Stay Interviews Q3 is  “Why Do You Stay Here?” appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.