As I have written before, in my mind, exit interviews are analogous to closing the barn doors after the horses are out.
If you want to keep your best people on-board and happy, how about getting together with them every four to six months for a Retention or “Stay” Interview? (Maybe it would more aptly be named a “Relationship Review?”)
My apologies for not giving you a better idea of what these “interviews” might look like at that time.
What you might ask in a “stay” interview
Here are some suggested talking points:
- What is it about your job that makes you eager to get out of bed and come to work every morning?
- What is it about your job that makes you want to roll over and go back to sleep?
- If you won a $1 million lottery prize, would you want to keep working here?
- What frustrates you most about your job?
- If another employer asked you to come to work for them, what would they have to offer you to get you to leave?
- Of all the jobs or positions you have ever held, which one have you enjoyed the most and why?
This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.