Hiring Wisdom: Why You REALLY Need to Do Retention Interviews

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.