“Stay Interviews” Improve Workplace Culture Before Employees Leave

A recent survey by management consulting agency McKinsey and Company revealed that more than half of employees don’t think their managers conduct performance reviews properly. Even further, a Gallup study found that only one in five employees felt motivated by their organization’s review processes. 

Looking at the numbers, it is clear that the performance review process in most organizations is falling short. 

Problems with Performance Reviews

One of the biggest pitfalls I see with annual reviews is the fact that they are annual. It’s wildly difficult to think back to even just a month or two in the past when it comes to achievements, challenges, and opportunities for growth at work–let alone an entire year. 

On top of the lack of recall, there’s a tendency to save performance issues or expectation gaps for the review–but it is incredibly unfair to employees, teams, and managers to hold onto these issues, possibly for months, waiting for the review. 

Speaking of expectation gaps, one conversation per year is hardly enough to maintain current and relevant expectations that you and the organization have of your employees. Priorities, projects, and plans change on a dime all the time–so the objectives you set together in one annual review may not be relevant this time next year. 

To move forward, you need to know where you’ve been. And to know where you’ve been, you need to connect with your team more often than once a year.

The Stay Interview

Something I’ve started to implement with my nonprofit clients is the “stay interview.” We know about exit interviews, but they take place only at the end of an employee’s tenure and often don’t result in any cultural impact. They’re a formality on both sides. 

The stay interview is a way to support your team and stay connected with them at multiple touchpoints throughout the year. The following exercise includes an opportunity to review the scope of work or job description for each person, especially useful if folks are feeling overwhelmed. 

Conducting your stay interview begins with collecting the job descriptions for everyone going through this exercise. This exercise works really well in a group setting, with lots of time for individual reflection.

All employees will read their job description from start to finish, once through. Note any thoughts that come to mind as you read it, paying no particular attention to the order of your thoughts, or what comes up.

Then, instruct the team to review their job description a second time, with specific and intentional effort to note the following: 

• What in the job description drew you to the job in the first place?

• Which parts of the job description were a bit out of your comfort zone, but you had confidence regardless?

• What did you solidly align with on your skills and capabilities in the job description?

• What on the job description do you now realize is not practical or possible to accomplish?

• What tasks or outcomes are listed in the job description are you proud to say have been accomplished?

• What tasks or outcomes are listed in the job description that you are in the process of completing?

Once everyone has reviewed their job with these questions in mind, choose one question to dig into at a deeper level in a group discussion. The beauty of this group exercise is that there may be elements of someone’s job description that another team member has capacity and interest in supporting. 

There may be related efforts that other colleagues are working on that could complement the tasks or outcomes of another team member who may be struggling, or they may have ideas on how to restructure or delegate tasks that are challenging. But you won’t know these opportunities–for better work and a better team–until you have this meeting!

Team Resume Reviews

Here’s a controversial suggestion: spend time with your team members reviewing their resumes together, to add accomplishments from the job to their resume and/or portfolio. 

You may be thinking the same thing that I often hear from clients when I bring this up: Why on earth would I have my employees update their resumes if they don’t have any plans to leave, or if it would sink the organization if they left?

Hot tip: conducting stay interviews and reviewing your team’s resumes does not encourage folks to leave. 

On the contrary, it can demonstrate your care for the human side of work. Another added benefit is that you have a front row seat to what is working, what projects are stalling (and why), as well as understanding more about each person to perhaps better align their time with a project or bring in extra support to finish tasks.

From an employer’s standpoint, reviewing resumes can offer a critical and powerful glimpse into the skill set and past projects that your team has worked on. This is especially powerful if you inherited your team and didn’t have a hand in interviewing and hiring them. Even if you did directly interview and hire, you likely do not remember the nuances of their resume.

As you review the resumes of your team, look for information that is new to you, ask questions about their listed experience, draw correlations to their previous work and the current projects and contributions.

This resume review process can go a long way toward building long-term trust between you and your employees. 

Love Them Like You’re Going to Lose Them

There’s a song by Meghan Trainor and John Legend, “Like I’m Gonna Lose You,” that speaks to a couple who choose to love each other as deeply and in-the-moment as possible, knowing that they will one day lose that partner. Rather than worry about the future, they spend time truly together, here and now.

You can do this with your team, too. 

Assume you will lose them all. Make the time you have together intentional, supportive, and built in mutual trust. If you do this, paradoxically, you’ll keep them longer. Operating now as if your team members and employees are actively leaving is both reality-based and a sign of positive organizational health. 

Will you take the challenge to implement either a job description review, stay interviews, or both? I’d love to hear from you if you’re considering implementing stay interviews (or if you already have!). Email me at Naomi@8thandHome.com

Set Them Up to Leave Well

Discover your organization’s natural relationship to change and transition with the Workplace Transition Archetype Assessment. 

Book a consultation to strategize a stay interview or resume review session!

Prefer an audio experience? Listen to Episode 41 of the Leaving Well Podcast: Leaving Well, Stay Interviews, and Problems with Exit Interviews