A regional operations manager in Singapore resigns on a Friday afternoon after eight years with the company. At her exit interview on Monday, she gives the answer everyone expects: “a better opportunity.” Weeks later, her supervisor learns that she had been covering two vacant roles for six months, had stopped getting her own one-to-ones, and had turned down a recruiter twice before saying yes.
Nobody had asked her why she stayed. So nobody noticed when the reasons ran out.
Read more: The Great Hunkering Down: What the Data Actually Shows and Why Leaders Should Care Now
Key takeaways
- 42 per cent of leavers believed their departure was preventable.
- Stay interviews are short, structured, forward-looking conversations about why people stay and what might make them leave.
- Prepare carefully by explaining the purpose, keeping the conversation separate from performance reviews, sharing questions in advance, listening 80 per cent of the time and committing to follow-up.
- Run stay interviews in both directions. Managers interview their teams, and leaders interview their managers, especially first-time and middle managers.
Stay interviews: What is it and why it matters?
A stay interview is a short, structured one-to-one conversation conducted in a semi-formal or informal format. The main participants are the employee and their direct supervisor, whose responsibility is to uncover:
- Why the employee stays, i.e., what they like about their role, function, and company culture.
- What would make them leave, i.e., what they currently dislike about their work, team, and/or the company.
- And what would improve their work.
The purpose of the program is to identify and address retention risks while the person is still employed, while also building trust through two-way communication between managers and their people. Stay interviews are, in fact, not performance reviews and should not be treated as such.
Read more: Why Your Employees Are Leaving You (Besides Salary)
Benefits of conducting stay interviews include:
- Spot early warning signs through attentive listening and finding problems with work, leadership, career growth and culture before dissatisfaction escalates.
- Build stronger manager relationships by showing a sincere interest in employees’ development.
- Develop individual retention plans leveraging insights gained from these direct, personal conversations.
- Lower replacement costs, since replacing one employee can cost anywhere from half to twice their annual salary.
Stay interviews are neither new nor revolutionary, but they still require careful planning to maintain them properly.
Do you know what’s surprising? In a 2024 Gallup survey, 42 per cent of voluntary leavers said they could have stayed if their manager or organisation had done something [1].
In a previous article, The Impact of Disengaged Managers: Why the Quiet Ones Cost the Most, we mentioned that disengaged managers have reached a record high. The person expected to lead a team is now only as engaged as the people they lead. Yet, rarely does anyone even bat an eye and ask how they are doing.
Stay interviews are among the cheapest retention tools available to prevent issues from going south. They are also particularly useful for managers who hold teams together.
Stay interviews vs exit interviews: Which one is more important?
An exit interview explains a loss after it has happened. A stay interview gives you a chance to prevent it. Exit interviews still help spot patterns, so the best approach uses both, with stay interviews taking priority.
| Stay interview | Exit interview | |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | While the employee is engaged and present | After the decision to leave |
| Purpose | Prevent avoidable departures | Understand why people left |
| Who benefits | The employee, their supervisor, and the team | Future employees |
| Candour | Depends on trust and psychological safety | Often guarded, with references at stake |
| Output | Individual stay plan and team themes | Organisation-level trend data |
| Typical owner | Direct supervisor | HR department |
In short, both methods answer two halves of the same question: what makes people stay, and what finally makes them leave. Used together, they help at three levels.
- Stay interviews give employees a voice before frustration becomes a decision.
- Exit interviews give departing employees a respectful way to explain their decision.
- Stay interviews make listening a normal part of working life, rather than a reaction to turnover.
- Exit interviews provide organisation-level trend data across functions, campuses and countries, which individual stay conversations cannot produce on their own.
However, both strategies should not be treated as a routine task or a tick-box exercise. They need proper follow-up and investment, with transparency and authenticity front and centre.
Read more: Gen Z’s Expectations for Leadership Are Reshaping Modern Workplaces
How do businesses prepare for a stay interview?
Preparation is about setting expectations, separating the conversation from performance management, and committing in advance to follow up:
- Explain the purpose first. Clarify how stay interviews will be used, and that the aim is a workplace where people feel safe sharing their experiences, not a threat to their performance or existence.
- Keep it separate from performance reviews, and hold stay interviews annually and at least six months before or after performance reviews.
- Book a 30- to 45-minute session in person or by video, somewhere comfortable.
- Choose four or five questions and share them a week ahead. People give better answers when they have had time to think.
- Plan to listen 80 per cent of the time and take notes of key points, emotional words, or important quotes. Remember, it is not a performance review; there is nothing to challenge.
- Prepare to hear criticism when things get emotional.
- Decide on follow-up before you start. A stay interview with no action afterwards does more harm than no interview at all.
As the sessions can be short and sweet, what questions should you ask during a stay interview? The short answer it depends on your priority at the moment. Generally speaking, it should cover the following aspects:
- Keep the focus on the interviewee’s daily work and their relationships with other team members rather than salary, benefits, perks, etc.
- Learning and development needs to enrich their career path
- Factors that keep them at the company
- Under what circumstances they would leave the company, and how often has that thought emerged in their head
- How they can be supported by the direct supervisor or the company
Stay interviews with your managers: Questions organisations should ask
This is the conversation most organisations skip. Managers run stay interviews for their teams, but who runs one for the manager? The manager’s own leader should, or a skip-level leader if trust is weak, with HR helping to design the process and track themes.
Here are some suggested questions for middle managers and newly appointed managers:
- Which part of leading your team energises you, and which part drains you?
- Which decisions do you feel you own, and which still sit above you?
- What part of managing people do you feel least prepared for?
- Roughly how much of your week goes on your own deliverables, and how much on your people?
- When did you last think about stepping back from management, or leaving, and what prompted it?
- What do you need from me that you are not getting?
For first-time managers, schedule the first stay interview within the first 90 days of promotion, and a second around six months to catch early problems while habits are still forming.
Post-interview follow-up
The process is not finished when the meeting ends. Here is what managers can do to follow up with their interviewees:
- Summarise key points at the end of the conversation so the employee knows they have been heard
- Build action plans at the individual, team, and unit level, with clear, achievable goals.
- Look across managers as well as teams. If three managers in one function all mention unsupported workload, that is a structural problem, not a personal one.
All in all, stay interviews tell you what people say. They do not always explain why a manager is struggling or whether the right person is in the role. Our Great People Inside (GPI) assessments support stay interviews in practical ways:
- Before a manager runs stay interviews, GR8 360° gives them structured feedback on more than 50 managerial skills, including Active Listening, Straightforward Communication, Talent Development and Conflict Management. They go into the room knowing their blind spots.
- When organisations interview their managers, GR8 Wellbeing (Stress and Resilience, Energy and Vitality, Connection to Others) and GR8 Engagement (eight behavioural dimensions, from Conscientiousness to Excellence) add a structured view alongside what the manager says.
- When stay interviews reveal capability gaps, GR8 Managers helps assess management potential and development needs, and supports succession planning if a role needs to change hands.
Start with the conversation, use assessment data to understand what you hear, and put development money where both point.
Want to go into your next round of stay interviews with better evidence? Explore how Great People Inside assessments help organisations understand “job fit”, “culture fit” and more with our brochure today!
FAQs
What is a stay interview? A stay interview is a structured one-to-one conversation with a current employee about why they stay, what might make them leave, and what would improve their work. It is separate from performance reviews and is meant to prevent avoidable turnover.
How often should stay interviews be held? Annually, at least six months away from performance reviews, for about 30 minutes and no longer than 45.
What is the difference between a stay interview and an exit interview? A stay interview happens while the employee is still committed and focuses on keeping them. An exit interview happens after the employee decides to leave and focuses on learning from their departure.
Should organisations run stay interviews with managers? Yes. Their own leader, or a skip-level leader, should hold stay interviews, especially in the first year after promotion.
Reference:
1. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/646538/employee-turnover-preventable-often-ignored.aspx
