stay interview success for managers - hrsoft€¦ · overcoming manager objections managers are...

STAY INTERVIEW SUCCESS

FOR MANAGERS

02Copyright 2015 HRsoft, Inc. | All Rights Reserved www.HRsoft.com

Relationships & Retention

Turnover is a very real, bottom line expense that virtually every organization has. HR leaders know it, c-suite executives know it, and the numbers prove it. Unlike other talent management challenges, turnover does not discriminate – it can impact organizations big or small, new or old, local or global. Over the years, there have been a number of attempts to mitigate the issue but nothing has been able to generate consistent, measurable results. Engagement surveys were too broad and impersonal while exit interviews were too little too late.

Simple as it may seem organizations are starting to realize that relationships, not surveys, are the answer to turnover costs. A 2012 WorldatWork Study found that compensation, recognition and company bureaucracy do affect retention, but the foundation of employee engagement (or disengagement) is laid by the line managers and the trust-based relationship that they have with each member of their team. Simply put relationships drive retention.

With the employee-manager relationship being the key to retention, it makes sense that the relationship between them has become the critical element. While this all may seem somewhat intuitive, the real shift that is happening is how organizations are helping develop these relationships and driving down turnover costs: stay interviews.

The reality is that engagement programs, and even HR for that matter, cannot solve retention issues, but managers can. What managers have been missing is a way to build these relationships in a structured, consistent, measurable and meaningful way. Stay interviews give managers the structured system they need while providing HR an insightful tool to target turnover before it happens.

With so much invested in how managers “manage,” it is critical to help them understand the importance of their role in improving retention. We need to change the mindset of managers so they begin “owning” retention initiatives for their teams. The purpose of this guide is to offer tangible, implementable ideas to help your managers to become the primary drivers of retention through the effective use of stay interviews.


What is a Stay Interview?

In case you haven’t heard of them before, stay interviews are focused, one-on-one discussions between employees and their direct supervisors. They are structured to uncover information about actions that the manager can take to improve engagement, inspire trust and boost retention.

Stay interviews do the following: • Provide accurate insights that are unique to individual employees. Stay Interviews are much more personal and get to the core drivers of what engages and/or retains a particular employee. They give an employee a voice to share suggestions, ways to make their work better and more engaging.

• Give managers the opportunity to provide solutions. While stay interviews give employees the chance to voice any suggestions or ideas that they may have, the real impact lies in the actionable data their managers (and HR) now have to address those important issues. And just as important, employees now see their managers working to provide solutions which builds trust and a better employee-manager relationship.

• Structured to drive accountability. Line managers can set retention goals that can be monitored and measured from the stay interview data. The results they achieve are then compared to their ‘forecast’ re�ecting on the ability to build trust with their team .

Retention Happens When Goals, Trust & Accountability Come Together

Stay interviews engage everyone - from decision makers who now have data about retention and its obstacles, down to the line managers and employees that work side by side. They also encourage two main things:

1. Managers will understand that they have a signi�cant role to play in retention. They step into their role as a nurturer of the company talent, recognize their connection to the organization’s retention success, and remain accountable for it.

2. Builds a trusted relationship between the manager and employee. The stay interview process ultimately improves retention, as employees stay committed to their trustworthy and loyal bosses who are making an effort to improve their work experience.

TALENT TAKEAWAY

Remind your managers that they have a signi�cant role in impacting who stays and who quits.


How To Make The Most Out Of A Stay Interview

Stay interviews are not just rambling water cooler conversations that add spice to the day. They need to be short, extremely focused conversations that build trust and learn how to help improve the employee work experience.

To make the most out of a stay interview it is important to: • Prepare well and in advance for them • Bake them into the retention strategy. Stay interviews are not fads or the “program of the month”. They need to be part of your ongoing retention philosophy and strategy. • Ensure managers respect the fact that stay interviews are not optional and address the concerns/suggestions they have regarding the process• Ensure that managers have the essential skills needed to conduct a stay interview • Help managers create stay plans and forecast individual employee retention

Preparing For A Stay Interview

Line managers do not need to create stay interview strategies, but they must be well aware of the retention goals that are assigned to them. Supervisors should understand these three objectives before getting started:

1. Build trust with their employees 2. Get them to freely and frankly discuss their motivations, suggestions and concerns3. Create a plan to address the employee feedback

Managers must also have a very clear idea of where the company presently stands in terms of employee retention. What are the metrics: engagement scores, performance scores, employee satisfaction, etc. This not only gives the managers more context to identify at-risk employees, but also shows them that their goals are realistic and can be accomplished.

TALENT TAKEAWAY

Discuss and set retention goals with your managers.


4 Core Stay Interview Skills For Managers

Great stay interviews happen when there is open communication and trust between managers and employees. Developing this communication and trust requires different skills for different managers depending on their background, experience, tenure, etc. The following are four key skills for conducting effective stay interviews.

1. Listen. The ability to listen is of utmost importance. It not only puts the employees at ease, it makes them feel valued. Hopeful of positive developments, they engage with the manager and express what may help them stay more engaged and employed with the organization.

2. Take notes. Managers who believe that they can hold the information shared by multiple employees ‘in their head’ may �nd it dif�cult to accurately recall conversations later down the line and it reduces the effectiveness of stay interviews. Taking notes during the stay interview shows an attention to detail and to the employee.

3. Ask probing questions. Stay interview questions are deliberately structured to be open-ended because short yes/no questions like ‘Do you enjoy working with us?’ may put employees on the spot causing them to hide their true feelings. It is up to the manager to elicit open and honest responses that help reveal what is needed to make them stay.

4. Express solidarity. Managers must never shift the blame to the company in a bid to build trust. Employees are always wary of supervisors who can compromise the reputation of the organization. Ideally managers must balance their loyalty to the company and their duty to the employees by offering to work on existing problems instead of discussing who is responsible for them.

TALENT TAKEAWAY

Coach your managers as needed to develop effective stay interview skills.


Overcoming Manager Objections

Managers are busy and often push back to the idea of “something new”. Even if they intrinsically understand the bene�ts of a stay interview, it can be viewed as another task they don’t have time for.

It’s important for HR to help set the tone, expectations and overcome the obvious objections before implementing a stay interview program. While many managers will embrace the concept, it is important to address the concerns for those that may not be familiar or comfortable with the process.

Here are some of the common objections managers have and the answers to them:

• There is simply no time. Time is a matter of prioritizing, so it’s important to relay the importance and impact that every manager has with turnover in the organization. Retention is part of their responsibilities and stay interviews are the fastest, easiest and most effective way to ful�ll that responsibility. Additionally the time saved from unexpected turnover, re-hiring and re-training will far outweigh the menial 20 minute stay interview.

• Everyone will want a raise. Then what? While many managers are concerned that stay interviews will simply turn into a conversation about pay and promotions, you might be surprised what your employees really want to talk about. A survey conducted by C-Suite Analytics found that the #1 topic for employees during a stay interview is better work processes (ie., change this policy, eliminate this report, �x this equipment, get that department to get its work to me on time, etc.)

• Handling employees is HR’s job! (Remember Exit interviews) The question becomes would they prefer to have this conversation in a proactive positive setting or at the time of resignation? Exit interviews do not have a profound impact on retention, but stay interviews have the potential to reduce turnover dramatically. Ultimately it is the mangers, not HR, that have the greatest impact on whether or not an employee stays.

• Employees may not really tell the truth. They most certainly won’t if there is no trust between the supervisor and the employee. Large inconsistencies between forecasts and actual results are a great indicator of a lack of trust. Once the problem is exposed, managers can take steps to �x the situation, leading to more effective interviews in future.

TALENT TAKEAWAY

Find enthusiastic managers to start your stay interview program with to prove the concept and share the results.


5 Key Questions To Ask During A Stay Interview

Research from C-Suite Analytics has shown that there are �ve very speci�cally structured, open-ended questions that set the right tone for building trust and receiving honest answers from employees.

1. When you travel to work each day, what things do you look forward to? This question is a great opener because it immediately shifts the focus to the employee and lets he or she know that the sole purpose of the stay interview is to �nd ways to improve their work experience and make it more rewarding. Managers may then choose to �ne tune the response through probing questions like ‘What do you like the most about working with us?’ or ‘What is it about your work that demotivates you?’

2. What are you learning here? This question immediately reveals future leaders because employees who are genuinely interested in learning more are likely to be (or become) your top performers. Retaining them should be a priority and shape the direction of the stay interview. Add-ons like ‘How do you learn best?’ or ‘What more do you want to learn?’ all provide insights to craft an effective stay plan.

3. Why do you stay here? This question is both the curve ball and the Holy Grail. If a company can really feel the pulse of their employees and understand what drives them, they can use this knowledge to boost retention by targeting what is working and what is not. Managers almost always need to guide the employee here with probing add-ons like ‘How much does the work culture entice you?’ or ‘What role does your pay play in your coming back to your job?’ and ‘Do your actual responsibilities appeal to you?’

4. When was the last time you thought about leaving your team? What prompted it? This is the �ight risk eliminator and must be asked. The passion that an employee uses to describe the situation is a great indicator of the magnitude of the problem and its impact on their intention to stay. It also provides managers with some probable scenarios that might drive turnover. The manager can then escalate it to HR or the c-level executives for preventive actions. A great follow up that contributes to the �nal stay plan is the question ‘What is the single most meaningful action I can take right away to address this issue for you?’

5. What can I do to make your work experience better? This wraps up the interview by reinforcing the fact that it is ‘all about the employee.’ By this point, the stay interview has started building a trusted connection between the manager and employee. Probing questions like ‘What should I do more of?’ or ‘What should I do less of?’ dig deeper and reveal more.

TALENT TAKEAWAY

Utilize these 5 stay interview questions and probing techniques to garner valuable employee feedback.


4 Steps To A Successful Stay Plan

Stay interviews are incomplete without subsequent stay plans that drive the actual retention and accountability. The following are four best practices for creating effective stay plans:

1. Identify up to three objectives that must be worked on to eliminate the stress and frustration from the employee’s job and bring in a measure of satisfaction. It is important to focus on the ‘triggers’ that push them over the edge. For example, someone may identify ‘working with the CRM’ as a burden but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the individual has poor technical skills. He might not be assigned the right permission level and thus can’t access the features that he requires. CRM training in this case will be a waste of time and money. Find the source of the issue and address that in your action plan.

2. Identify the actions that the employee and manager must take to ensure that the objectives are met. For each manager action item, there should be a corresponding employee commitment to ensure both parties are accountable.

3. Set deadlines for the activities leading up to the achievement of the determined objectives. Without a time limit, stay plans can easily become another to-do list for a manager that the employee feels will never be addressed. Ideally stay plans should have a completion goal of no more than 30 days from the date of the stay interview. 4. Last but not least, the stay plan has to be formalized and shared with the employee. In addition to providing accountability, the stay plan serves as a powerful reinforcement of the manager and organization’s commitment to the employee.


Getting Started With Stay Interviews

It is important to realize that retention success starts with the managers, but it’s more than just making them accountable for stay interviews and retention – it’s providing them with the training and necessary tools they will need to take action. Here are a few quick tips to get started with stay interviews.

Training – Providing your managers with the skills, mindset, list of questions to ask and basis for setting effective stay plans allow line managers to “own” the talent that they manage.

Tools – In order to make the Stay Interview process fast, easy and effective, using technology and templates that duplicate best practices are recommended.

Take Action – Learn how to use the actionable data from the Stay Interview to target turnover before it happens.

Start Small then Scale - Don’t wait to get all your managers on board before you start your stay interview program. Select a small handful of enthusiastic managers that you can implement the program with to show others how easy and effective stay interviews really are!

With a simple but strategic stay interview program in place, your organization will be well on the way to turning those employee-manager relationships into long term retention.


RESOURCES

Not sure where to start? We would love to help. Contact us learn how our award-winning stay interview software, STAYview, can help teams of any size dramatically cut turnover costs.Click here to learn more about STAYview Online.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Brian Sharp – Chief Marketing Of�cer, HRsoft

Brian is responsible for all product marketing at HRsoft, a leading talent management software company. Brian brings to HRsoft 20 years of entrepreneurial experience that includes helping companies in all stages of growth develop and execute successful go-to-market strategies.

He is an award-winning keynote speaker and frequent presenter on topics including HR SaaS technology, business strategy and marketing. Brian resides in Northern California with his wife and three children.

Connect on LinkedIn

Dick Finnegan – CEO, C-Suite Analytics

Dick Finnegan is the author of The Power of Stay Interviews for Engagement and Retention which is the top-selling SHRM-published book in history. He is also the author of Rethinking Retention in Good Times and Bad which was excerpted by BusinessWeek which said “Finnegan offers fresh thinking for solving the turnover problem in any economy”.

His new books include The Stay Interview: A Manager’s Guide to Keeping the Best and Brightest, to be published in over 20 languages, and HR’s Greatest Challenge: Driving the C-Suite to Improve Employee Engagement and Retention.

Click here to learn more about C-Suite Analytics.

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stay interview success for managers - hrsoft€¦ · overcoming manager objections managers are...

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