Stay Interview

What a stay interview is

A stay interview (مقابلة الاستبقاء), also called a retention interview, is a structured meeting held with an employee who has no intention of resigning. In it, the employee is asked what keeps them in the organisation and what might lead them to leave it, and the meeting takes place before that question comes too late to be of use.

The employee at the centre of a stay interview is still in post and has announced no decision to go. The meeting is organised in advance rather than held on the spur of the moment, and its subject is twofold: the reasons the employee stays, and the reasons that might lead the employee to leave. Both are asked about while the employee is still in the organisation, which is the point at which the answers can still be put to use.

Why a stay interview is held before an employee leaves, not after

An exit interview collects accurate information about a decision that has already been taken. The information can be correct, but there is no way to use it with the person who gave it, because the decision it concerns is over and that person is on the way out of the organisation.

A stay interview collects the same information at a time when acting on it is still possible, and from an employee who has not yet closed the door. What the employee says about what keeps them, and about what might lead them to leave, reaches the organisation while the employee is still there to be affected by any change it makes.

The subject of the two meetings is the same, and what separates them is the moment at which each is held. The exit interview comes after the decision to leave has been made; the stay interview comes while no such decision exists. An offer made to keep an employee after a resignation has been announced is a separate subject, covered under counteroffer.

What is asked in a stay interview

The questions in a stay interview concern the employee’s working life as it is now. They include questions such as the following:

• Which part of your work do you look forward to, and which part do you put off?
• What would make you think about listening to a job offer from outside the organisation?
• What, if it changed, would make a real difference to your day?
• Do you see a path for yourself here in two years’ time, and what does that path look like?

The rule behind these questions is to ask about the employee’s present situation, not directly about any intention to leave. A direct question about resignation can make the employee guarded, and so the stay interview approaches the subject through the employee’s present work rather than through the resignation itself.

The four questions above follow that rule. They ask about the work the employee looks forward to and the work the employee puts off, about what would draw the employee towards an offer from outside, about the change that would make a difference to the employee’s day, and about the path the employee sees for themselves in the organisation. None of them asks the employee whether they mean to resign.

The condition that can spoil a stay interview

A stay interview depends on a single condition: the conversation has to be followed by a visible effect. If that condition is not met, the stay interview can turn into a signal in the opposite direction from the one intended.

The sequence is short. The employee said what bothers them in the meeting, and afterwards nothing changed. The employee then has one more reason for discontent, not one fewer. The stay interview was held to learn what might lead the employee to leave, and without a visible effect afterwards the interview ends up working against that purpose.

For that reason it is better not to hold a stay interview at all if the manager holding it has no authority to change any part of what is likely to be said, and no means of passing it on to someone who does hold that authority. Either the authority to make a change, or the ability to take the matter to the person who has that authority, is what allows the conversation to be followed by the visible effect on which the stay interview depends.

Who holds a stay interview, and when

A stay interview is better held by the employee’s direct manager than by human resources, because what is raised in it falls within the direct manager’s own remit. The matters the employee brings up in a stay interview concern the employee’s work, the employee’s day and the employee’s path, and those are matters within the direct manager’s scope.

A stay interview is scheduled at regular intervals, not only when a sign of risk appears. Holding it only when there is a sign of risk can make its very presence in the employee’s calendar a worrying message in itself. Scheduling it at regular intervals keeps the stay interview a routine meeting, held with employees whether or not any sign of risk has been seen.

How a stay interview differs from a performance appraisal

A performance appraisal measures the employee. In a stay interview, what is assessed is the workplace, and the employee is the one who gives the assessment.

The direction of the question is reversed between the two. In a performance appraisal the employee is the one being measured. In a stay interview the employee is the one asked, and the subject of the questions is the workplace in which the employee works.

Because the direction is reversed, it is preferable to hold a stay interview and a performance appraisal at separate times. Holding them apart in the calendar means the stay interview is not taken as part of the performance appraisal, and the two meetings keep the separate directions that distinguish them.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.