Stay Interviews: Ask Your Best People Why They Stay Before They Interview Somewhere Else

A stay interview is a short, planned conversation with a current employee about what keeps them in the job, what could pull them away, and what you can change. Ask six open questions, listen without defending anything, write down one commitment you can keep, and follow up within 30 days. It costs an hour per person. An exit interview costs you the employee.

I am Mac Malbrough. I hold a J.D. and an MS-HRM, and I write about retention as an HR consultant and career coach. I am not quoting turnover statistics here, because the useful part is the method, and the method works the same in a team of five as in a team of fifty. This guide is general information, not legal advice.

Why do employers wait until the exit interview?

Because the exit interview is routine and the stay interview is not. Nobody puts “talk to Maria about why she stays” on a calendar when Maria is productive and quiet. That is the pattern: the people who are easiest to ignore are the ones who leave without warning. They do not complain. They update a resume, take one call, and give two weeks’ notice, and you learn the reason in a conversation where it can no longer be fixed.

The stay interview moves that conversation upstream. It is also the cheapest retention tool a small employer has, since it needs no budget and no software. It needs a manager who will ask and listen. My piece on why a great manager is a retention strategy makes the larger argument, and the structures that help reduce nonprofit turnover apply to any small team.

Who should you interview first?

Start with the people whose departure would hurt most: the ones with skills that are hard to replace, the ones others rely on, and the ones who have not had a real career conversation in a year. Then keep going until everyone on your team has had one. Do not limit stay interviews to stars. If you only talk to high performers, everyone else learns where the attention goes.

Pick a time when neither of you is rushed, and do not schedule it right after a performance review or a pay decision. Tell the employee in advance what it is: “I would like to ask what is working for you here and what is not. It is not a performance review and nothing you say will be held against you.” Then keep that promise.

What six questions work?

Use open questions that start with “what” and “how.” Keep the list short and let the employee talk.

1. What do you look forward to when you start your workday?
2. What are you learning here, and what do you wish you were learning?
3. What would make you think about leaving, if something changed or did not change?
4. When did you last think about leaving, and what was behind it?
5. What is one thing I do that helps you, and one thing I could do differently?
6. If you could change one thing about your role, what would it be?

Question four is the one managers avoid, and it is the best one. People who have thought about leaving often answer honestly when asked directly and calmly. If you ask it as an accusation, they will tell you what you want to hear.

How should you listen?

Mostly in silence. When the answer is uncomfortable, say “tell me more” and stop talking. Do not defend the company, explain why something is the way it is, or promise to fix it on the spot. Defending ends the honesty. The only job in the room is to understand.

Take notes by hand, and tell the employee you are doing it so they know you will remember. Keep what you hear confidential. Share themes across the team without naming the person, and share an individual’s concerns with HR or senior leadership only when you have said that you would. Do not ask about protected characteristics such as health, family plans, religion or age. If the employee raises one on their own, listen, thank them, and do not probe.

What if the employee reports a problem?

Treat it as a complaint. If an employee tells you in a stay interview that they have been harassed, treated differently because of a protected characteristic, or are unsafe, you have just received a report, and a conversation about retention has become a matter for your complaint process. Tell the employee what you will do next, bring in HR, and start the steps in my guide to running a workplace investigation. Never say “let’s keep this between us” about a complaint.

What does a bad stay interview look like?

Four things go wrong most often. The manager talks more than the employee. The questions sound like a performance review, so the answers are polite and empty. Nothing happens afterward, so the employee concludes that honesty was a waste. Or the manager uses the conversation to pitch the company, which tells the employee that the real goal was to keep them quiet. If any of those sound familiar, shorten your talking time, use fewer questions and make a smaller promise that you actually keep. One kept commitment does more for trust than a long list of intentions.

What do you do with the answers?

Write down one commitment you can keep, tell the employee what it is, and put a date on it. A commitment can be small: a project that stretches them, a schedule change, an introduction to someone in another team, a conversation about the path to the next role. Small and kept beats large and forgotten. Do not promise raises, promotions or title changes unless you have the authority and the budget to deliver them.

If what you hear points to a pay problem, take it to the people who decide pay and look at the facts, rather than making a quiet promise. A retention bonus can be one tool, and I explain the questions to ask before offering or signing one in five questions to ask before you sign a retention bonus. But a bonus does not fix a manager problem or a boredom problem, and the stay interview will tell you which one you have.

How do you follow up?

Within 30 days, go back to each person and report on the commitment: done, in progress or not possible, and why. The follow-up is the part that builds trust, and it is the part most managers skip. Put it in the calendar before you leave the room. Repeat the stay interview about once a year, or after a major change in the person’s role or the team.

Where do one-on-ones fit?

A stay interview is an annual conversation, and a one-on-one is the weekly or biweekly habit that keeps it from being a surprise. The best use of a one-on-one is to ask a little of the stay interview each time: what is going well, what is in the way and what do you need from me. Put the commitments from the stay interview on the agenda so you can see them move.

Keep a short running notes sheet for each person with the date, the topics, the actions and who owns each one. Without it, the same issues come up every month and nothing changes.

What tools help?

I built two small kits for exactly this. The Stay Interview Kit for Managers: 30 Questions, Scripts and a Notes Sheet is $9, and the One-on-One Meeting Templates for Managers: 12 Agendas and a Tracker is $9. If you are building the whole cycle from the job post to the first year, the Hire to Retain Bundle pairs the stay interview kit with job post prompts, interview scoring and the 30-60-90 onboarding kit for $139. They are templates and general information, not legal advice.

A weekly coaching routine makes stay interviews easier because people already talk to their manager about what matters.

What should you do this week?

1. List the five people on your team whose departure would hurt most.
2. Book a 45-minute stay interview with each one over the next three weeks.
3. Choose your six questions and write them on one page.
4. Decide in advance who you will bring in if an employee reports a problem.
5. Put the 30-day follow-up for each person in your calendar now.

If you would like help setting up retention conversations for your team, the free live sessions cover manager skills through the year, and the free audit will point you to the right next step.

Stay interviews are one way leaders shape culture directly; see why culture cannot be delegated to HR, and for the energy question, using your strengths at work.

For a related angle, see treating recruiting and retention as one system, turning an HR dashboard into decisions with a decision log, and why employees stop going above and beyond.

McKinley holds a J.D. but is not a licensed attorney. Articles here are general information, not legal advice. For your specific situation, talk with an employment attorney.

Data current as of November 2026. Sources are linked where each figure appears.