Retaining your top producers and high achievers is becoming more challenging.  So how do you make sure your team members are happy?  One great way is to have someone conduct stay interviews.  This is extremely important for Millennials and Gen Z who want to be heard.

Stay interviews and performance reviews are both effective, but they serve different purposes and are conducted at different times.  Let’s discuss the purpose, timing, focus, and outcome of both processes so you can determine if this is a process you want to implement.

Stay Interviews:

· Purpose: Stay interviews are proactively conducted to understand why your employees like working for your Staffing and Recruiting Firm.

· Timing: Stay interviews are often conducted on a regular basis, such as quarterly or semi-annually, regardless of whether an employee is experiencing performance issues and are more effective when conducted by someone other than the employees direct report. 

· Focus: The focus of stay interviews is on the employee’s overall experience with your company, including job satisfaction, work-life balance, career development opportunities, and any concerns or issues they may have that could improve their experience and tenure with your company.  It is also wise to conduct a stay interview off premise (i.e. over coffee or lunch).

· Outcome: The goals of stay interviews are to identify potential areas for improvement and address any issues that may be impacting employee retention before they escalate.  Whether you can implement areas that are addressed or not, providing feedback and an update is critical to the success of the stay interview process.  If they are extremely satisfied in their job, this is a great time to have them make a video on their phone that you can use for recruiting purposes for your business.

Performance Reviews:

· Purpose: Performance reviews are conducted to evaluate an employee’s job performance and provide feedback on their strengths, areas for improvement, and progress toward goals.

· Timing: Performance reviews are typically conducted annually or semi-annually.  Most companies implement an annual review.

· Focus: Performance reviews focus on specific job-related criteria, such as job responsibilities, key performance indicators, skills, and competencies. They assess how well your employee has met expectations and goals.  It can be very effective to have your employee rate themselves in specific areas on a scale of 1 to 10 and you do the same.  The day of the review you share your evaluations.  This will show you if you and your employees are on the same page when it comes to their performance and your expectations.

· Outcome: The outcome of performance reviews often includes setting new goals, discussing career development opportunities, providing constructive feedback, and determining any necessary actions or next steps to improve performance.  If you decide to put someone on probation, this is the time you should also share a plan of action and monitor progress daily to ensure their success.

In summary, stay interviews are aimed at understanding and addressing factors influencing employee retention, while performance reviews are focused on evaluating job performance and providing feedback for improvement. Both are important and contribute to the overall success and satisfaction of your employees.

If you enjoyed this article and realize the value this type of training would bring to you and your team, please use the QR code to schedule a call to talk to one of our experts about your training needs.  We would love to help you fill jobs faster with top talent as you increase sales and profits.