Stay Interview

How a stay interview works

The employee's direct manager usually runs it, because the manager controls most of what drives day-to-day retention: schedules, workload, recognition, development and how people are treated. HR provides the questions, trains managers and tracks themes across teams.

A good stay interview is a conversation, not a form. The manager asks a handful of open questions, listens far more than they talk, takes notes and commits to one or two follow-up actions. It is separate from a performance review; mixing the two makes employees guarded.

Core questions most organizations use:

1. What do you look forward to when you come to work?
2. What are you learning here, and what do you want to learn?
3. Why do you stay here?
4. When was the last time you thought about leaving, and what prompted it?
5. What would make you leave?
6. What can I do differently as your manager?
7. What is one thing that would make your job easier?

Our stay interview questions page has a longer set with guidance on what each answer tells you.

Stay interview vs exit interview

An exit interview asks people who have already resigned why they are going. The information is useful for spotting patterns, but it arrives too late for that person, and departing employees often soften the real reason to protect a reference.

A stay interview asks the same underlying questions while the employee is still deciding. It costs about 30 minutes of manager time. Replacing an hourly employee typically costs several thousand dollars once recruiting, training and lost productivity are counted, and far more for skilled or salaried roles. Run both: exits for trend data, stays for prevention.

When and with whom

Common timing:

• New hires at 60 to 90 days, when early turnover risk peaks in many hourly roles.
• Once a year for everyone else, offset from performance reviews by a few months.
• Top performers and hard-to-replace roles first if manager time is limited.
• After a known trigger: a reorganization, a new manager, a missed promotion or a competitor opening nearby.

In a 300-agent contact center, a realistic plan is for each team leader (with 12 to 15 agents) to hold one stay interview a week. That covers the whole team about once a quarter, without pulling agents off the phones for long.

Acting on what you hear

The conversation only helps if something happens next. After each interview, the manager should write down the employee's main reasons for staying, any risk signals and one action they own, such as adjusting a schedule, nominating the person for cross-training or fixing a broken tool. Follow up within two weeks, even if the answer is "I asked and we can't change that, here is why."

HR should collect themes across teams. If 40% of night-shift employees mention unpredictable schedules, that is not a manager-level fix. A structured stay interview template makes those notes consistent enough to compare across managers and sites, and the patterns feed your wider employee retention plan.

Common mistakes

• Running it as a survey read aloud. Employees can tell when a manager is ticking boxes.
• Promising things you cannot deliver. "I'll get you a raise" from a manager without budget authority does more damage than saying nothing.
• Getting defensive. If the honest answer is "you," the manager needs to hear it calmly or the next employee will not say it.
• Only interviewing people who seem at risk. Steady performers leave too, often with little warning.
• No follow-up. One unanswered stay interview makes the next one pointless.

Legal and fairness notes

Stay interviews are voluntary conversations, not investigations. Managers should avoid questions about health, family plans, age, religion or other protected characteristics, and should not ask about union activity or opinions, which can raise concerns under the NLRA. If an employee raises a harassment, discrimination or safety concern during the conversation, the manager should treat it as a complaint and route it to HR under your normal procedure. Offer the same opportunity across comparable employees so it does not look like a perk for favorites.