A few questions asked during a routine one-on-one can tell a manager whether an employee plans to stay another year. HR teams call this a stay interview, a structured conversation about what keeps someone in the job and what might lead them to leave. The answers give managers a chance to address concerns about pay or development before they turn into a resignation. Turnover data and exit interview findings show HR which departments to prioritize and what to ask, which keeps each stay interview short and targeted.
Carlyne Ervin is Vice President of Human Resources at Chrysalis, an LA nonprofit that helps people facing barriers to employment find and keep jobs. She leads HR for more than 1,000 employees across Los Angeles, Orange County, and the Inland Empire, and has spent more than 20 years in HR, including leadership roles at the Center for Policing Equity and The Kavli Foundation. Ervin, who has discussed stay interviews on SHRM's Honest HR podcast, wants managers holding these conversations well before an employee gives notice.
"You want to capture that data, because if you're waiting until the exit interview, it's too late," Ervin says. At a large organization, having HR sit down with every employee would be a heavy lift. Stay interviews hold up better when managers run them, with guidance and a few simple tools from HR.
Start with the numbers
Ervin keeps a close eye on turnover at Chrysalis, and when an employee leaves, she digs into why the position opened up. She breaks the numbers down by department and by demographics to spot issues a company-wide rate would hide. "I drill down deep on departments. Those data points help me and my team advise my colleagues who are running these departments," she notes.
Department heads see those findings too. HR meets with them monthly to review turnover trends, high-level exit interview results and grievances, so problems surface while leaders can still act on them. Ervin encourages all managers to ask HR for this data, since the numbers show what's happening on their own teams.
The first stay interview should happen around an employee's one-year anniversary, with smaller touch points after that. "You're asking questions like, 'What development do you want to see for yourself? How am I doing as a manager?' From those few questions, you can gauge who's engaged and who's thinking, 'I don't know if I want to be here, but here are the things that'll keep me,'" she adds.
Managers who hold regular, structured check-ins usually know when someone needs a stay interview. The signs show up in the quality of an employee's work and in whether they come to meetings ready to contribute. Ervin makes a habit of reviewing check-in notes together with managers, since a well-structured check-in reveals a lot about how engaged someone is and gives HR and managers a shared picture of the team.
You want to capture that data, because if you're waiting until the exit interview, it's too late
Carlyne Ervin, MBA, SHRM-CP, PHRVice President, Human Resources, ChrysalisFive questions per department
Stay interview questions work best when they reflect the day-to-day work of each team, so the set used for client-facing staff should look different from the one used for back-office roles. Ervin's program department, where staff manage client caseloads, uses a set built around that work. "We condensed it to five critical questions: How's your caseload? How did your first six months or your first year on the job go? Did you get the training and resources you needed? Where do you see yourself a year from now?" Ervin says.
Whatever the department, the list should stay short enough for a manager to cover in a single meeting. "A stay interview should be no more than five questions. If it's done correctly and strategically, the manager can embed these questions in their check-ins, and it doesn't have to be overwhelming for anyone involved," she notes.
Once the answers come in, HR can look across them for common concerns and decide how to respond. Pay concerns may call for a more sensitive approach, especially when the budget leaves little room for raises. In those cases, HR and leadership can look at other ways to show employees they're valued. "If you can't afford budgetarily to increase the pay, what can you do? What are some extra benefits that you can add?" she adds.
A toolkit for busy managers
HR professionals spend their days thinking about risk and policy, while most managers are focused on getting through their own workload. For a busy manager, a stay interview can feel like one more task on the list. To make the process easier to follow through on, Ervin recommends pairing regular manager training, such as a monthly hour-long workshop, with toolkits managers can return to later.
Between trainings, the toolkit gives managers a short guide to the process. It can include the core questions, a bank of alternates managers can swap in, and a section explaining why stay interviews matter. Sample wording for each question helps managers ask in a way that makes employees feel psychologically safe answering honestly. Keeping the toolkit somewhere managers already look, such as the company intranet, makes it easy to pull up before a conversation. "A manager toolkit can be as simple as a one-pager or a three-pager. I wouldn't have it longer than five pages, because it should be something easy that managers can go to," she says.
HR teams without a stay interview program can start with a pilot and a simple version of the toolkit. A handful of managers can ask two or three questions during their next round of check-ins, and HR can review the answers alongside the turnover numbers it already tracks. Over time, the results can feed into the organization's broader retention strategy. "You can start small. You can just pilot it. It doesn't need to be this big, overwhelming, scary thing," Ervin adds.
