By the time a good person hands in their resignation, the decision is usually already made. The exit interview will tell you something, but it is too late to act on. The conversation that actually keeps people is the one you have months earlier, while they are still happily in the building.
It is called a stay interview, and most managers have never run one. This is a practical guide to doing it this week, and to understanding why the answers so rarely come back to money.
Why it is the manager, not the money
When a good person leaves, the easy story is that someone waved more money at them. Sometimes that is true. Far more often, the money was the permission, not the reason.
The research is consistent. SEEK has found that poor leadership is the top reason people choose to leave a job, and that 83 percent of people would leave, or have left, a role because of poor culture. Culture is not an abstract thing floating above the office. It is built or broken by the person doing the day-to-day leading, which means your best people are far more likely to leave a manager than a company.
And here is the uncomfortable part: that manager is usually not a villain. They are a capable person who was promoted and never given the tools to lead well. The good news in that is simple. If the cause is leadership, the fix is leadership, and that is something you can actually change.
What a stay interview is
A stay interview is a short, deliberate conversation with someone you would hate to lose, where you ask them directly what keeps them here and what might tempt them away. That is it.
The whole point is to learn the truth while you can still do something with it. An exit interview is an autopsy. A stay interview is a check-up. One tells you why they died, the other keeps them alive.
The magic is not in any clever technique. It is in the act of asking at all, and then listening properly to the answer instead of getting defensive.
The questions to ask
Keep it to 30 minutes, and make clear up front that this is not a performance review and there is no catch. You genuinely want to understand what would make this the best job they have had.
Then work through questions like these.
- What do you look forward to most when you come to work? And what do you dread?
- If you could change 1 thing about your role, what would it be?
- When did you last feel really stretched or like you were growing here?
- Do you feel you get clear, honest feedback and know where you stand?
- Is there anything that has made you, even briefly, think about looking elsewhere?
- What can I do differently as your manager to support you better?
Notice what is missing. There is no leading question about salary, because if you let people talk honestly, pay rarely tops the list. What comes up instead is growth, feeling valued, trust in their manager, and knowing where they stand.
The hard part: actually listening
The questions are easy. The discipline is in how you receive the answers.
Your instinct, when someone says something critical, will be to explain, justify, or fix it on the spot. Resist that. The moment you get defensive, the honesty stops, and you have taught them never to be straight with you again.
Your only job in the conversation is to understand. Ask follow-ups. Get curious rather than defensive. Write down what they say. You do not have to solve anything in the room, and you should not promise things you cannot deliver. "Thank you for being honest, let me think properly about that" is a perfectly good response.
Then do something with it
A stay interview that leads to nothing is worse than none at all, because you have now signalled that you ask but do not act.
You will not be able to fix everything, and you should be honest about that. But pick 1 thing you can change and change it, visibly. If 3 people independently tell you they have no idea whether they are doing well, that is a feedback problem you own, and it is fixable. The point is that they see their honesty led somewhere.
Randstad RiseSmart has found that 85 percent of employees say an employer-funded investment in their growth shows that their employer cares about them. The stay interview is the cheapest version of that signal there is. It costs you 30 minutes and the willingness to hear the truth.
Start this week
Pick the 1 person on your team you would be most gutted to lose. Put 30 minutes in the diary. Ask them what keeps them here and what might pull them away, and then just listen.
If those conversations surface patterns you are not sure how to handle, the feedback that never quite lands, the people who are not growing, your own instinct to get defensive, that is squarely what coaching helps with. The free 30 minute strategy call is a no-obligation way to talk through what you are hearing from your team and what to do about it before the resignations start.
