Stay Interviews:
Expert Insights for Talent Retention

A: Stay interviews are honest, one-on-one discussions that help you understand what keeps your people motivated and what might cause them to consider leaving. They’re not about persuading someone to stay but about listening—really listening—to their experience. This insight lets you tackle issues early, boost engagement, and create a workplace where people feel valued and heard. The result? Happier teams, stronger retention, and a culture built on trust and open communication.

A: There are two potential downsides of engagement surveys:-

Firstly they generally provide aggregated data. They tell you, if you like, how the average employee is feeling – be that company-wide or by department or location. That may mask how specific individuals are feeling. It could be 90% are happy – but if the 10% who aren’t also happen to be your top performers…

They tend to ask very broad questions that may not get to the detailed issues. Surveys have to be relatively short for people to engage with them. Hence surveys like Gallup 12. They do a great job but, unlike an interview, there’s no ability to ask a follow up, or pick up a nuance in an answer.

Our analogy: engagement surveys are like a wide angled lens. Stay interviews are more of a magnifying glass.

A:Is it every employee or just your most valuable people? Our normal recommendation is that you focus on perhaps 10-15% of your people every year With a bias towards top performers or high potentials. The people you would least want to use. That’s enough to be impactful while remaining manageable.

A: There’s an old saying about people joining organisations and leaving managers. So line managers are never the right choice.

Should it be HR? It could come down to whether you have the capacity and expertise. For most of our clients, capacity was the main driver.

Most clients choose Chiumento because they share our belief that an independent third party is most likely to get to the truth.  We have no “hidden agenda” and individuals can be assured we will honour commitments made about confidentiality.

A: There’s a balance to strike between enough structure to allow you to produce quantative data and the flexibility to “follow the white rabbit”. A skilled Chiumento interviewer actively listens and drills down into the issues raised. They don’t blindly follow a script. They know when to push and where to back off – effectively using the time available to get to the richest seams of information.

Here at Chiumento we use a structured model – based on the same eight themes we use in our exit interviews. Nearly thirty years of experience, talking to thousands of people, have helped us develop a clear picture of why people choose to leave organisations.

A: The golden rule here is that once you’ve given individuals a voice, you have to demonstrate that you’ve listened. If they raise concerns or give you clear messages about “the price to stay” you have to respond. Even if that’s recognition that what they want isn’t achievable – or is unrealsitic. That can often lead on to a constructive discussion about what is possible.