Improving Employee Engagement & Retention Through Stay Interviews

Stay interviews help you re-recruit the people you already have, because what attracted employees in the first place is often not what keeps them. Done well, they tend to lift engagement and productivity as well as retention.

This 60-minute stay interview training covers what stay interviews are and are not, how to launch a program, and how to schedule, prepare for and run each conversation. You'll learn the most effective questions, how to probe for honest answers and what to say when you don't have an immediate response.

The session finishes with follow-through: documenting action plans, sharing accountability, following up and forecasting future turnover.

• Explain the purpose of stay interviews and how they differ from appraisals
• Set up a stay interview program, including who conducts them and retention goals
• Schedule and prepare for stay interviews
• Ask effective questions and probe for candid answers
• Respond when you don't have an immediate answer
• Create, document and follow up on action plans, and forecast turnover

1. The objective of a stay interview

• Making employees feel valued and improving engagement, productivity and retention
• Reinforcing good relationships, building new ones and repairing strained ones
• Re-recruiting talent and strengthening the employee-manager relationship

2. What stay interviews are

• Employee-supervisor meetings to learn what matters to each employee
• A way to learn why employees stay or might leave and what the supervisor can improve

3. What stay interviews are not

• Performance appraisals
• Held only when problems arise
• Personal development discussions
• Casual, random conversations

4. Starting a stay interview program

• Who should conduct the interviews and why
• Training managers and leaders
• Setting retention goals

5. Scheduling and conducting stay interviews

• Frequency and length of each interview
• Preparing for an interview
• The most effective stay interview questions
• Probing for candid responses
• Handling responses you can't answer right away

6. Following through

• Creating and documenting action plans
• Sharing accountability for follow-through
• Following up on action plans
• Forecasting future turnover

Turnover is costly. Replacing a $10-an-hour employee can cost over $3,000, a $30,000 to $50,000 job over $8,000, and a $100,000 role often more than $200,000. Engaged employees show 65% less turnover in low-turnover organizations and 25% less in high-turnover ones.

This webinar suits any leader, manager or supervisor, in HR, production, accounting, sales, IT or elsewhere, who wants to raise engagement and keep good people.

Any Leader, Manager, or Supervisor [HR, Production, Accounting, Sales, IT, etc.] – who wants to increase employee engagement and/or retention.

Pete Tosh is the Founder of The Focus Group, a management consulting and training firm that assists organizations in sustaining profitable growth through four core disciplines:

• Implementing Strategic HR Initiatives
• Maximizing Leadership Effectiveness
• Strategic Planning
• Enhancing Customer Loyalty

The Focus Group has provided these consulting and training services to manufacturing and service organizations across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Middle East. Pete has worked closely with the leadership teams of organizations such as Exxon, Brinks, EMC, State Farm, Marriott, N.C.I. YKK and Freddie Mac

Pete holds a B.A. degree in Psychology from Emory and Henry University and Masters degrees in both Business Administration and Industrial Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. Pete also co-authors Leading Your Organization to the Next Level: the Core Disciplines of Sustained Profitable Growth.