While attending the national SHRM Human Resources conference in June, I had the pleasure of participating in a workshop on the importance of managers regularly conducting “stay interviews” – to discover what their employees value about their jobs and what could be improved.
Workshop presenter Dick Finnegan shared some powerful statistics about employee engagement that was uncovered by Gallup research:
- 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager.
- The #1 reason by employees stay or leave a job is based on how much they trust their immediate supervisors.
One thing that can build trust and increase employee engagement is requiring that managers conduct stay interviews with all employees every 6-12 months (not just your high performers).
You will see a huge improvement in your engagement metrics if you teach your managers how to conduct stay interviews by asking the following five questions:
- When you travel (or log on) to work each day, what things do you look forward to?
- What are you learning here?
- Why do you stay here?
- When was the last time you thought about leaving? What prompted it?
- What can I do to make your experience at work better for you?
For more details about how to roll this initiative out and how to hold managers accountable for taking action on what they learn through the stay interview process, check out Dick Finnegan’s website below.
Learn More: The 5 Stay Interview Questions