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Stay Interviews vs.Engagement

Understanding Your Workforce Using a New Tool CalledStay Interviews

By Danny NelmsSVP & Managing DirectorThe Work Institute

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1620 Westgate Circle Suite 100 Brentwood, TN 37027 615-777-6400 888-750-9008 workinstitute.com

In the world of workforce research (i.e. employee surveys) the key objective is to measure ordiagnose specific employee issues that are occurring in an organization. Many organizationsoffer surveys to measure or improve employee engagement. The reality is that eachorganization typically defines engagement differently. This lack of a true definition is whatmakes surveying employees to measure engagement so difficult if not impossible. Sure, alot of companies claim to have the magic questions for determining engagement, but thescience behind these efforts is still suspect.

Employee Engagement

At The Work Institute, we dont claim to have the magic questions that determine levelsof employee engagement. What we do know is that engaged employees most often have apositive feeling about their company, their supervisor, would refer friends to work with them,and also intend to stay at their company for a long time. A new term that is finding its wayinto human capital vernacular is stay interview. Think of a stay interview as the antonymof exit interview. Exit interviews have been a best practice in companies for many years andthey are a very important tool for understanding the issues creating an at-risk population in

your workforce. However, it is just as important, if not more important, to also know whatfactors are causing employees to want to stay at your company. Intent to stay is one of themost important questions in determining employee engagement,but there is a catch.

Current Opportunity

Practically every employee survey has a questions regarding intent to stay, but the mostimportant question is the one that follows WHY? If we only have a statistical measure ofintent to stay of our employees, it leaves out the most important answer. We have to knowwhy employees plan to stay for a long time or why they plan to leave in the next 90 days. Theonly way to really get the answers to these why questions is to conduct a stay interviews.

At The Work Institutewe conduct forms of stay interviews at varying stages of theemployee life cycle. We interview new hires, those in the on-boarding process, and exitingemployees as well as interviews in our pulse model that replaces the traditional annualemployee survey. Our clients continually tell us that our interviews gather intelligence they

have never been able to obtain through traditional survey methods.

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The Facts

Consider some of the following:

Engagement 32% of employees indicated they are seriously considering leaving theirorganization. (Mercer HR Consulting, 2011)

Disengagement 21% of employees are not looking to leave their company but arecompletely disengaged from their work. (Mercer HR Consulting, 2011)

Manager Ripple Impact On average, a managers actions impact 12.4 people in acompany. (Watkins,2009)

Deployment Only about 20% of employees do what they do best at work. (Buckingham,2007)

Performance Expectations Less that 50% of employees know what is expected of themat work. (Stolovich,2005)

Manager Focus Managers spend 20% of their time focusing on poor or problemperformers. (Sullivan,2005)

If companies are not diligent in fully understanding the factors influencing their workforce,they could face a wave of turnover in the near future that could cripple them. With studiestelling us that 50% of our workforce is looking for another job or totally disengaged fromtheir jobs, what does this mean to our customers? Do we really think our disengagedemployees are building the kind of customer loyalty that will drive revenue and profit?

So as you are thinking about your plans for the coming year for surveying your employees,give some hard thought to what kind of information is really important. Do you just want anengagement rate or a benchmark comparison to your competitors? Or, do you want to knowtheREALissues that are affecting your employees? There is a way to find out it is calledStay Interviews.

About The Work Institute:

At The Work Institute, we support our clients by providing in-depth customized

research programs utilizing our unique proven methodology. Our researchgathers the critical information that leaders must understand to better managetheir organizations to compete at the highest level.