What Do Employees Ask About During Stay Interviews? Now We Know

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