The Stay Interview

Yesterday was Labor Day and it gave me the opportunity to publicly appreciate and thank the team that I work with every day. We should all do that a little more often. Does your team know how much you appreciate them?

But that got me thinking back to a time recently when I had the opportunity to interview a panel of leadership experts with a group of established and emerging leaders in my community.

As the questions came in, someone in the audience asked about retaining and investing in good employees. One of our panelists had such a simple yet impactful suggestion. This panelist explained that she has made a practice of conducting "stay interviews" with her team on a regular basis.

Once a year she takes the opportunity to sit down with each of her employees and talk through their job, what they love about it, what's challenging about it and ultimately, what is keeping them there at her company.

This was brilliant! She wasn't suggesting a performance review (although those aren't bad things) or any other type of evaluation that could heap stress, anxiety or discouragement on the employee. It's not about whether they met their quota for the quarter or responded to emails quickly enough. It's simply about them and giving them the opportunity to talk and you the chance to listen.

If you polled all of your friends or coworkers, you would likely find that almost everyone has things they love about their job and things that bring major stress into their day. Some of this is unavoidable, but what if through conversation, you could remove some barriers to a happy and thriving teammate and employees?

Do you lead a team of people? Do you think a stay interview could add value to this group?