Retaining Your Best Employees During the Age of Resignation – February 28, 2023

Back in January, Monster.com reported that 96% of employees are planning to look for a new job in 2023, according to its December Job Search Survey from December 2022.

Yikes! When the cost of a salaried employee turnover is anywhere between 50-150% of their base pay, that’s a lot of money!

Why are so many people dissatisfied in their jobs and looking to leave? According to the Pew Research Center, the main reasons are:

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  • Low pay

  • No advancement opportunities

  • A feeling of being disrespected at work

  • Employers who are unsupportive of childcare issues

  • A lack of flexibility to choose working hours

  • Insufficient benefits

The funny thing is, there are many ways to hold on to your employees, and when it really comes down to it, it’s most often a matter of having your employees feel seen, heard, and valued. Sometimes it just takes a weekly five-minute conversation to build that sense of transparency and respect with your team members.

Today I’m sharing some old(ish) and some new thinking around a tool you can use to retain your best talent. The “stay interview” and the “onboarding interview”.

The Stay Interview: Talk with Your Employees on a Regular Basis

Organizations typically conduct exit interviews to understand why people leave, but at this point, it’s too late! The opportunity to nurture a great talent and usher them into positions of leadership is lost.

Looking into the rearview mirror can be helpful to inform you about what you can do to improve next time, but your current employee is still walking out the door to a new job where they feel the experience will be better.

For many years, the idea of “stay interviews” has been part of the ideal employee life cycle. In a stay interview, a manager or HR person will have an informal conversation with the employee (especially loyal, high-performing individuals) to gain insight into how to retain the employee and how to keep them engaged.

I really love this interview from the Harvard Business Review, which offers four key questions to ask your current employees on a regular basis, ideally in a regular, one-on-one meeting:

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  • What is your frame of mind today?

  • Who do you feel connected to at work?

  • What barriers can I remove for you?

  • What new thing do you want to learn that will excite you and help you grow at work?

    
    

In addition to these, I also suggest occasionally asking:

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  • What do you look forward to each day at work?

  • What keeps you working here?

  • How can I make your job better for you?

  • How can I be a better leader for you?

All of these are great questions that will acknowledge someone who is a contributing member of the team and your effective responses to them will validate that their opinions matter.

Before you go into the meeting, remember that how you have these conversations is even more important than the questions you ask. Lead with emotional intelligence: empathy, transparency, attention to non-verbal cues, and an attitude of collaboration when it comes to resolving concerns will take you the farthest.

In these conversations, you’re showing your employee that they matter to you and that you’re on their side; you’re confirming for them that they made the right choice in deciding to work for you. The little things you do for your team members make a big difference.

The Onboarding Interview: Start off Strong

Because job hopping is in the zeitgeist, it’s more important than ever that you find a way to connect with your employees. You can start on (and before!) their very first day, as many forward-thinking companies who want to retain their best people now do.

In the past, onboarding has looked something like this: Someone shows you to your desk, hands you a stack of paperwork to fill out (but not necessarily know where it’s supposed to go once it’s completed), and if you’re lucky, your boss or someone in HR sets up a series of one-on-one meetings for you to get to know your new colleagues so that you can understand who does what and how you might begin to add value.

Today, especially given the number of hybrid and remote employees, leaders need to do more from day one to set the stage for a successful, long-term employment situation. This is where the onboarding conversation comes into play.

On the first day of their employment, invite your new employee to a one-on-one meeting and ask them questions to start to understand where they’re coming from and what they’ll need to be successful. If you know what’s most important to your employees and you’re able to respond to their needs, you can create an amazing dynamic for your team that they won’t want to go anywhere else!

Here are some ideas for questions to ask in the onboarding interview:

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  • What made you accept our offer?

  • If you had other offers, what made this offer better? What about the other offer(s) was really important to you? (The answer to this question may indicate a gap in the new job accepted, and an opportunity to help.)

  • What motivates you?

  • How do you like to be held accountable?

  • What do you need most in these first few weeks of your new role?

  • What do you most want from me as your leader?

  • What might you want to share with me that I don’t already know about you?

  • Anything else?

Asking these questions on day one will set expectations for your working relationship, letting your new hire know that they are seen, heard, and valued.  Additionally, getting a solid understanding of where your new team member is coming from will support you in avoiding the common reasons employees leave organizations (see Pew Research list, above).

Do what you can to make your new employee feel like they made an excellent choice for the long term! Of course, the new hire needs to perform and bring value quickly; and, your role as a leader is to give them a reason to want to perform.

Be Part of the Solution

Ultimately, being a great leader of people comes down to being a good person. Tune in to who’s around you and what they’re experiencing rather than solely focusing on your own job performance.

Yes, leaders today feel a lot of pressure from above and below. Often, the tendency is to put goals like “meeting the sales quota” first and foremost, to the point where it can create a less-than-ideal work environment, and people leave. If you flip your thinking and spend 80% of your time with your employees, striving to help them feel valued, appreciated, and understood as a whole person, they will perform for you. They won’t leave an environment that values them as a human being.

I was able to create a culture like this when I worked in corporate leadership roles. Early in my career, one of my bosses and mentors demonstrated for me how to truly care for team members by checking in on them, helping them meet their goals, and genuinely supporting them as their careers grew and changed. I modeled his leadership style, and quickly discovered that members of my team would openly come to me when they desired a change in the team or in their roles, and sometimes even when they wanted to discuss leaving the organization.

It was so valuable, on so many levels — and I was rarely surprised when someone announced they were leaving.

Invest in People

This week, think about your role as a leader. What is your role when it comes to employee retention? What can you do better or different? What are your blind spots (great question to ask your team members)?

If you are a new or seasoned leader who could benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of what more you can do to support retaining your employees, let’s talk. Onboarding and stay interviews are just the beginning of the strategies you can employ to cultivate a healthy, happy, thriving team that wants to stay!