Most organizations script a few questions about development as part of their annual performance reviews, and a few even ask managers to establish development plans with employees as a separate step. It is easy, then, to assume Stay Interviews are synonymous with development plans and therefore companies can by-step Stay Interviews if these other ways are in place.

This is like saying, “The only thing that matters to our employees is learning and getting promoted. Nothing else is important to them”.

Over many years of coaching managers to conduct Stay Interviews, I’ve been struck by the many, many topics that employees surface as important that most of us would not have expected. Here are a few:

• One high-performing employee I know addressed issues related to retirement and then stayed on to give another five years of exceptional performance
• In several instances employees suggested process or equipment changes to do their jobs better…and these improvements spiked productivity and revenue
• Many employees ask for changes of schedules, and in some cases companies have changed their entire approach to scheduling as a result
• Some have asked if they can mentor others which became a win/win/win for the employee, new hires, and the company
• Others have asked for specific avenues for input and have then been assigned to projects that make them become stronger performers

These examples remind me of the common refrain from managers after exit interviews which is, “Why didn’t she tell me? I could have fixed that”.

This is what Stay Interviews do. They help you to “fix that” before it’s too late, and to increase productivity, engagement, and retention as a result.

The post The BIG DIFFERENCE Between Stay Interviews and Development Plans appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

The question brings intrigue because we assume that head nods and positive evaluations from the program equal improved supervision. But the reality is that once managers leave the room, there is no monitoring, no reporting, and no guarantee that they change anything. In fact, given the difficulty we all have breaking habits the probably change only a little if at all.

This ties to the forever quandary of management trainers. How do we know our work actually does good? That it leads to increased productivity and hopefully even more profits?

The missing pieces can be summed up in one word: process. Years ago I co-facilitated a program for a global consulting firm and the first agenda item asked which matters most when helping a company improve its productivity: Evaluating its products, its people, or its processes?

The answer was processes because all products and people issues are determined by the processes we build around them. It’s really pretty simple.

So traditional management training brings with it no processes for measuring change. We might say that if productivity measures go up, say for sales or service, that’s because of the training. But there are usually many other possible factors for those changes based on typical day-to-day major and minor improvement initiatives.

Stay Interviews bring measurable change in part because they must be implemented as a process.  In this case process means providing a hard schedule for managers to conduct Stay Interviews such as once per year and twice for new hires, that they develop and submit stay plans for each employee, and that they forecast how long each employee will stay. This reporting connects to monthly reports that identify each manager by name with their progress against an employee retention goal…and the same type of report can be developed for engagement.

Teaching managers to conduct Stay Interviews and trusting them to do them is a wish. There’s just too much to do. But once they conduct Stay Interviews and see the all-powerful benefits for having done so, most will continue to conduct them without reminders. But it is the process described above that jump-starts implementing Stay Interviews in our organization.

The post Don’t You Wish You Knew the Answer to This Question appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

I recently polled several managers from client companies regarding their successes and possible struggles with Stay Interviews. Among the questions I asked were what do employees talk about…and what might you expect them to talk about but they don’t. The outcomes might surprise you.

The Stay Interview method is easy to grasp. Our clients ask five core questions and are then trained to probe to learn deeper information in order to develop an effective stay plan, one that improves both engagement and retention. So employees introduce topics that are important to them and all topics are potentially on the table.

The hands-down most-discussed topic is ways I can do my job better. Examples range from improving work processes to having better equipment to focusing more on job duties that most closely match my skills. These types of discussions were mentioned so often by the managers I surveyed that there was no other dominant topic.

After reading through all they said, I told myself maybe we should change the name to “Productivity Interview” because that’s what these meetings are. Why, then, wouldn’t a manager want to ask each employee how that manager can help the employee become more productive?

The flip side I wondered about was how often do employees mention pay. The majority of managers responded “never”. A few said pay is raised sometimes but never as a primary issue, only as one that is mentioned among others. One hospital manager said whereas pay comes up, her employees also said they could leave for more money for the competitor hospital but wouldn’t leave the intangibles that she and her peer managers bring to their employees every day.

So now we know the most-talked-about topic and it’s “Here’s what I need to do my job better”. This new finding adds to the lore of Stay Interview success stories…and deepens the drive for all companies to shift their thinking from surveys to solutions. And Stay Interviews are the top-tier solution.

You may contact Dick Finnegan at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com

The post What Do Employees Ask About During Stay Interviews? Now We Know appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Vendors who sell recognition services say over and over that employee recognition drives engagement and retention. But a voice in my head always says this in response: “Not if they don’t trust you”.

Building trust is the one skill leaders must have to improve employee engagement and retention. Compare your best boss to your worst boss and I’ll bet you trust your best boss and distrusted your worst boss. And that your best boss had shortcomings you easily accepted and your worst boss had strengths you couldn’t possibly see.

The best way I know for leaders to build trust is to conduct Stay Interviews. By asking how I can make working here better for you, employees react with words but with emotions, too, as they realize the person sitting across from them brings both authority and care.

Think about leaders on all levels in your organization. How many fail to build trust with their teams? Now imagine if they expressed genuine care for those who report to them. Would that improve their team’s engagement and retention?

The post Which one skill must leaders have for engagement and retention? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Thirty days ago a top executive of a major employee survey company told me this about his survey division: “They don’t generally get involved in the actions taken by an org in response to the engagement results – really just delivery of the survey and then reporting.”

Here’s the context. I met this executive at an event and we then exchanged phone calls and emails which ultimately lead to my asking if his company had an interest in helping their client companies actually improve engagement or retention…or just sell them engagement and exit surveys with their accompanying benchmark data. And this is a very large, global survey company and it’s a certain bet some of you who are reading this post are paying money to this company today for survey results.

The implications of this are astounding to me. I’ve read most major survey companies’ reports to clients and they typically include company data, benchmark data, and recommendations for improvements. I always thought the recommendations were way too general, recalling one to be “Have your managers have open door policies”. But this remark makes those improvement recommendations even more shallow as the executive admitted his company does not “get involved in the actions taken by an org in response to the engagement results”.

Let’s find some good news first. Most survey companies provide good data, both for client companies and with the benchmark data that also include. There are two very major risks, though, which put the total value of these surveys in peril:

The first is it is so very easy to high-five each other if your company equals or slightly exceeds the benchmark. This is like saying, “Great news. We are mediocre”, because benchmarks represent average data. I wonder if your CEO would be thrilled to be average in sales and service.

The second peril-inducing outcome is we’re conditioned to think survey data leads to easily-intuitive solutions as in, “If all of our employees want more recognition, we’ll have employee appreciation week and also employee of the month.” Or worse, “We need to improve employee appreciation week. Let’s bring in a bouncy castle”.

Here’s the very missing piece. Employees never want nor ask for employee of the month. They ask for their managers to tell them they do something well. And there is no substitute for it. How many of your employees stay or engage more because of employee appreciation week?

Stay Interviews are the answer…and fast becoming the dominant solution to employee retention and engagement. My book, The Power of Stay Interviews, is the top-selling book in SHRM history.  I urge you to continue reading these blog posts and I’ll tell you more.

You may contact Dick Finnegan at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com

The post Why Employee Surveys Succeed…And Fail appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.