‘Stay interviews’ keep your best finance staffers with you

If you want to lock in your best finance staffers and keep them happy, productive and long-term, think about having regular “stay interviews.”

These ongoing conversations engage top-performing employees before they become dissatisfied by providing them plenty of growth opportunities.

And they can be especially critical now as what retains employees is changing.

4 ways to say, ‘Please stay’

Check out these basic “stay” discussion guidelines, courtesy of the Society for Human Resource Management:

1. Schedule in advance. Tell your staffer you want to discuss their future with the company.
2. Prep for your opener. Start off with positive feedback on things they’ve accomplished. For example, “You’re a key member of the finance team. You consistently meet deadlines …”
3. Ask questions. Use open-ended questions to get their feedback so that you can help them grow. You might ask, “What are some of your short-term goals?” or “What would make your job more satisfying?” Find out what’s important to them, with the goal of understanding how they can get more of what they need to stay with the company.
4. Take action. Chat about next steps to achieve the goal of greater job satisfaction – the most critical step in the process. Put a date on the calendar to follow up with them.

Stay interviews in action

Human Resources consultant Jacque Vilet shared his own experience with stay interviews in a blog post on TLNT.com.

Vilet described a process whereby a company he worked for got its top performers together, two or three at a time, and asked them a series of questions:

• Why do you stay at this company?
• If you have been contacted by a headhunter, why have you not been interested?
• What are the things that you enjoy most about your job?
• If the company could do anything better, what would it be?

Top management loved the feedback. Execs were glad to hear what they were doing right and what could be done to improve retention and morale.