your nps score...

Here’s how to interpret the scores

Mariam Mushtaq
October 14, 2024

Hello HR Brain Pickings readers! 👋

In today’s edition

1. 🤔 Are stay interviews here to… stay?
2. Best Practices for Stay Interviews
3. 📊 Find Out Your Organization’s eNPS | EngageWith
4. 🔓 Unlock Resource: Tools List: AI tools for HR leaders at a Startup
5. Recommended Reading 📚️

Have you conducted stay or retention interviews? 🌍💻

🤔 Are stay interviews here to… stay?

We’ve all been there—losing a top performer, especially when you don’t see it coming. One day, everything seems fine, and the next, you're hit with their resignation letter. It’s in those moments you start to wonder what went wrong. Did you miss the signs? Was there something brewing beneath the surface that you didn’t catch?

It’s the kind of situation that makes you realize how crucial it is to stay connected and ahead of any underlying issues before it’s too late.

Cue the stay interview (also called stay conversations): a tool designed not to stop people from walking out the door, but to understand why they haven’t yet.

The Growing Popularity of Stay Interviews:

Did you know that stay interviews are rapidly gaining traction, with a 40% increase in companies adopting them? And if used effectively, stay interviews can reduce employee turnover by 20%.

According to a 2022 survey, 27% of HR leaders say they use stay interviews as part of their retention strategy!

It’s no longer about waiting for employees to signal their departure; the focus is on staying ahead by understanding their motivations and concerns in real-time. It’s like an early warning system that uncovers dissatisfaction before it becomes a resignation letter.

What Makes a Stay Interview Different?

You may be wondering: How is this different from an exit interview?

Well - unlike exit interviews, stay interviews are proactive. They focus on current job satisfaction and any future improvements that could encourage long-term retention. These one-on-one conversations get to the heart of issues like:

Exit interviews give you insight after the fact, but stay interviews help you fix the problem before it escalates.

“[Stay interviews] can be a really important retention tool. For most companies that doesn’t mean sitting down with every employee who works for you, but having a plan to triage how you sequence that maybe by looking at top performers or long service folks.”

Sherri Manning, CPO

Best Practices for Stay Interviews

So how do you get started? Here’s a tried-and-true approach to conducting effective stay interviews:

1. Timing is Everything: Conduct stay interviews at least once a year, ideally staggered between performance reviews. This ensures you catch potential dissatisfaction without overloading employees.

2. Ask the Right Questions: Focus on questions that uncover key insights. Culture Amp suggests questions like:

a) When you come to work each day, what things do you look forward to?
b)What do you dread about work every day?
c) When was the last time you thought about leaving our team and what prompted it?

These open-ended questions get employees thinking critically about their experience.

3. Act on the Feedback: Perhaps the most important part is to take action. This doesn't mean agreeing to all their requests or giving them everything they ask for, but rather being transparent about what’s within the company’s capacity. Even small, incremental changes can go a long way in showing that their voice is heard and valued.

Stay interviews are a great way to invest in your employees’ experience. In a world where 46% of the global workforce is considering leaving their jobs this year, stay interviews offer a proactive solution to one of HR’s biggest challenges: employee retention.

If you haven’t started conducting stay interviews yet, what’s stopping you? Your best talent might already be thinking about their next move—wouldn’t you like to know before they make it?

What’s Holding You Back from Conducting Stay Interviews?

Additional Resources:

• Here’s a more detailed article about how you can go about conducting stay interviews - including points such as what data to collect, what information to gather and how to support leaders.

• 29 Best Stay Interview Questions To Ask [+ Template] by AIHR

📊 Find Out Your Organization’s eNPS | EngageWith

Running a quick eNPS survey can give you valuable insights to turn detractors into promoters. Here’s how to interpret the scores:

♦ +10 to +30: A solid score, indicating good employee satisfaction.

♦ +50: Excellent—your employees are highly engaged.

♦ +80: Best-in-class—a sign of exceptional employee loyalty and advocacy.

🔓 Unlock Resource: Tools List: AI tools for HR leaders at a Startup

Being the solo HR person at a startup can be daunting - but also exciting! You get to build the People function from the ground up. This document details a few AI tools you can use to start establishing processes and operations to get things running smoothly