Stay interview is an English term that refers to an informal interview of a manager and his subordinate in order to measure the employee's engagement and keep him in the future. Unlike exit interviews when HR people discover why their employees leave retrospectively, or performance evaluations which usually describe employees' performance during the whole year, stay interviews allow managers to ask their best talents a fundamental question: What can we do for you to stay with us?
The stay interview should always be a face-to-face meeting of a manager and his direct subordinate. The manager's task is to determine how the subordinate looks at the ways the company tries to keep his engagement and what should be improved. The ideal interview is repeated once or twice a year and taken in a less formal environment than the office such as coffee or lunch. As for new employees, it may be repeated more frequently - after the first 30, 60 and 90 days.
HR people should train managers in how to ask properly. The point is to ask less whether the sbordinate is about to leave and more how he feels in the company. The questions should be as specific as possible. Instead of "Do you think that communication in our company is working well?" it is better to ask: "Do you think that there is enough two-way communication in our company?".
Stay interviews should not deal with performance. The issue is not the manager's perspective, but the suobrdinate's. The result of these interviews may be more effective engagement measures than those gained through traditional engagement questionnaires. Questionnaires are good for benchmarks, but bad for solutions. They will tell you just how people respond to your questions but not what they really want.
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