How to Conduct Stay Interviews to Improve Employee Retention

Did you know that stay interviews can reduce turnover and improve employee satisfaction? These interviews, conducted among your current staff, provide powerful insights into the employee experience. Formalize stay interviews by creating a question bank you draw from during the interview process. Alternatively, you can go for a more casual flair by conducting interviews as informal chats. 

Conducting regular stay interviews benefits you in several ways. It shows your employees how much you value their perspective and builds employee trust. These interviews not only open communication between you and your staff but also gather invaluable feedback. You can then implement this feedback to drive positive changes within your hospital or clinic. Plus, the information collected during these conversations reveals patterns and confirms data related to employee turnover. An interview lets you identify unhappy employees so you can provide the necessary support to keep them on the job.

Once you’ve decided to conduct stay interviews, here are some tips to get you started. Overall, hold the interviews in a safe and comfortable environment. Supervisors running the interviews should spend more time listening than talking.

Schedule the interviews. Make room in the company’s calendar for regularly scheduled stay interviews. A rotation approach (scheduling interviews on specific days each quarter) should prioritize interviews in the minds of supervisors and employees alike. 

Tell employees why and what to expect. Keeping employees informed could be as simple as providing them with a list of questions and explaining how you’ll use the gathered information. Make your questions open-ended so employees can express themselves freely.

Use the data for positive improvements. Follow up with employees one-on-one as needed. But all staff should see how management uses the information gathered during stay interviews to improve working conditions for everyone. 

Tell your employees you appreciate their participation. Verbalize to your workers how much you appreciate their honesty. Consider thanking your staff via gift cards, time off, a catered breakfast or lunch, or a treat—like specialty coffee drinks for everyone.

Do you need some sample stay interview questions? See if these will fit the bill for your organization:

• What do you like about your job?
• What makes you want to come to work each day?
• What part of your job do you wish you could change?
• What helps you do your best work?
• How could we help improve your work-life balance?
• What professional development opportunities would benefit you the most?
• What other resources do you wish you could access on the job?
• What situations have made you consider quitting?
• Which skills do you like to use in your current position?
• How could the company better recognize its employees?

Retaining staff has never been more challenging. But conducting stay interviews could help you keep your staff happy and eager to come to work.