Stay Interviews Beat Exit Interviews

Do you talk to your employer clients about stay and exit interview strategies? If not, you should. Let me explain why.

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Most organizations conducting exit interviews, but they can only tell us so much. As we know, these actions are usually based around a standardized set of questions given to employees after they voluntarily leave an organization. They are done through a digital survey or a one-on-one interview with HR. Their goal is to uncover why an employee decided to leave, often focusing on culture, leadership, or role-related factors.

When aggregated, this data can highlight strengths and gaps, such as limited career mobility or below-market pay, and provide insight into competitor practices. There are two critical limitations, however: time and participation.

Exit interviews take place after a decision has already been made — when it is too late to influence the outcome. Many departing employees refuse to participate or provide superficial feedback, limiting the depth and usefulness of the data.

So how do we move from a reactive to a proactive strategy? We prioritize”be” interviews.

A retention interview is the most significant counterpart to an exit interview – designed to understand what works, what doesn’t, and what might cause an employee to leave. before they make that decision.

These conversations can take many forms, including structured surveys, HR-led 1:1 discussions (often the most effective) or integrated engagement tools. When embedded in your client’s broader employee engagement strategy and continually reinforced, engagement interviews help normalize open dialogue between employees and HR, often led by HR business partners.

They also create a powerful opportunity to evaluate something that is often overlooked in these conversations: total rewards.

While engagement-based questions are essential, including benefits-related questions ensures that an organization’s offerings are relevant, competitive, and tailored to employee needs.

Consider asking your HR partners to include questions such as:

• Are you currently satisfied with the total rewards offer?
• What benefits would you like your organization to add?
• Which current benefits do not work for you?
• What challenges, if any, have you faced in using your benefits?

Focusing organizations on an intentional residency interview practice and expanding those conversations to include all award positions benefits advisors as stronger strategic partners. Because that’s not the only goal for employer clients understand why people leave; it is to understand what will remain.