The best time to discover what your company can do to keep employees is before they plan to leave. Knowing in advance what causes staff to stay or go is one way to reduce attrition. One of the best ways to retain team members is by conducting stay interviews. Stay interviews let you measure individual job satisfaction and engagement on an ongoing basis. This helps increase employee happiness and reduce turnover.
Here are several reasons why stay interviews are an effective way to increase employee retention.
Determine Job Satisfaction
Implementing stay interviews uncovers how satisfied an employee is with their job. You can find out what is going well and what needs improvement. This lets you address issues before they grow and become out of hand. If you see a similar problem among multiple staff members, you can decide whether organizational changes need to be made.
Guide Actionable Steps
Because stay interviews are personalized, they provide an outline of what individual employees need to stay with the company. The information is specific and forward-thinking. Having concrete ideas for how to improve the employee experience makes it easier to eliminate major frustrations and promote retention.
Allow Time for Improvement
Taking the time for stay interviews provides the opportunity to implement desired changes. Because employees have not yet considered leaving, there is less pressure to immediately solve the problem. If pay, a promotion, employee training, or something out of your scope comes up, be truthful in your response. For instance, mention that salaries are frozen, or a position is not open. Or discuss adding training opportunities during the next budget cycle so your team member can upskill to secure a promotion.
Provide Metrics
Conducting stay interviews lets you create top-level metrics. These supplement secondary and tertiary metrics like employee satisfaction surveys and exit interviews. Reviewing an employee relationship with the company, the project team, and you as their manager shows what you can do to make the relationship better. All of these metrics make up an essential part of your retention strategy.
Strengthen Company Culture
Engaging in stay interviews makes the company culture stronger. Staff members appreciate having the opportunity to share their input and have it acted on when possible. This is especially important when major changes are taking place, such as a reduction in force. Individual discussions about job satisfaction help air grievances, potentially keeping your remaining team.
Hire Accounting and Finance Professionals
Conducting stay interviews is a productive way to retain employees. Understanding what keeps them working for you or causes them to want to leave provides time to correct the issues before they lead to attrition. It is easier and more profitable to retain staff members than to hire new ones.
When you are in the market for accounting & finance talent, turn to Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. We are dedicated to excellence through education and investing in our staff so we can provide the highest quality of performance for our clients. Learn more today.
