3 Reasons Why You Should Implement Retention Interviews at Your Company

Retention is a major concern for many companies as they struggle to keep existing talent from leaving. Yet few companies take the time to talk to their current employees to learn what it would take to retain them. Employees go through background checks when they join the company and exit interviews when they leave, but the time in between is ignored. Abe Breuer, CEO and owner of VIP To Go, said: “The stay interview allows you to avoid repeating problems, while the exit interview allows you to learn from your mistakes.”

There are many advantages when it comes to conducting tenure interviews. Not only does it give the employer time to remedy the situation before losing a quality employee, but it makes employees feel important. Therefore, communication and active listening are key. By conducting a stay interview, employers hear exactly what their employees need. Breuer added, “retention interviews also benefit your employer branding strategy because they give you the information you need to build an employer brand that will attract new talent.”

Here are three reasons why you should implement stay interviews.

Learn about employee motivation

Depending on the size of the company, retention interviews should take place every 12 to 24 months. To get the most out of a stay interview, employers should aim to create a comfortable and safe space where employees feel at ease. This will encourage them to open up and allow meaningful conversation to take place.

Some questions employers may ask during a stay interview are:

• What would you change about your company, culture and/or position if you could?
• What do you like most about the company?
• What are some of your current challenges?
• What keeps you here?
• Do you feel that your talents and strengths are being used?
• What are your career aspirations?
• Do you believe this is possible in this company?
• Do you think you have a good work-life balance?
• What do you look forward to when you come to work?
• In what ways do you want to be recognized/how can we recognize your work and efforts?

The purpose of the tenure interview is to learn an employee’s likes, dislikes, and what is holding them back from accepting a job elsewhere. It also helps build trust and enables employees to share their experiences, ideas and needs. From there, employers can design strategies, initiatives and activities to foster these motivations. Employers often assume that salary is the employee’s only motivation. While it’s true that everyone wants to be paid fairly, not everyone is motivated by a salary alone.

Identify patterns and areas for change

The only way a retention interview can be effective is if the feedback given by an employee is taken seriously and used to implement change. Otherwise, it becomes another pointless task. Likewise, employees will notice that nothing is being done about their feedback and will stop talking. Mega Gaedke, founder of KetoConnect, explained: “Conducting retention interviews is useful for many reasons, but the main reason employers should conduct retention interviews is that they provide feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of an organization .” Additionally, retention interviews allow management to understand what it is about their company that makes people want to stay and what gives the company a competitive advantage.

The information obtained from each stay interview should be documented and shared with everyone who makes decisions in the company, such as executives, management, leadership and human resources. These decision makers must prioritize the gathering to review feedback, identify patterns, prioritize opportunities for improvement, and determine what action needs to be taken.

Find out exactly what they need to stay

Instead of guessing what will make an employee stay, employers should go directly to the source and hear from the employee himself. This prevents waste of time, money and resources.

Some examples of constructive feedback that employers should be prepared to hear during a tenure interview are:

• That the company’s advantages are no longer competitive in the market
• They enjoy the work they do but are very underpaid
• They have reached a plateau in their current role and want to advance, learn new skills or be challenged with more responsibilities
• They lack the support or the necessary tools and resources to do their jobs well
• The company is not fulfilling its mission and values ​​by accepting clients that contradict what the company stands for

While feedback can be difficult to digest, knowing these things will help employers strategize ways to improve the employee experience and retain existing talent. Lori Rasas, attorney, executive coach, and author asserts, “a retention interview can provide an employer with valuable feedback, and in many cases you may find that you can make significant changes with very little effort that have the potential to really impact individual working conditions. Moreover, it is very possible that if one employee is unhappy with a particular term and conditions of employment, others are likely to be unhappy with him as well.