If you run a labor-intensive business with field workers, then you know that finding good help is hard to come by. With an aging workforce and not enough young people entering industries reliant on physical labor, the need for qualified workers only continues to grow.
This labor shortage is projected to get worse in the coming years, so it's important to start finding solutions now. One of the most effective strategies is to make sure you're holding onto your existing employees. This is where stay interviews come in.
Read on to discover what stay interviews are, why they work, and how Team Engine’s text message surveys can help you implement them more effectively. Plus, we'll even include several stay interview questions you can use to get started!
What Are Stay Interviews?
A stay interview is a way to ask your current employees questions about why they choose to stay with your company. It helps you identify:
- What motivates them
- What encourages them to stick around
- And what could be improved in the workplace
The questions in a stay interview might feel like those in an exit interview – but the difference is that stay interviews focus on uncovering what's working, and hopefully prevent people from leaving. The goal is to learn from your employees and create a workplace that inspires them to stay for the long haul.
The Benefits of Stay Interviews in the Skilled Trades
There's a big cost to employee turnover. When experienced workers leave, it takes time and money to replace them. Plus, the knowledge and skills they took with them can't be replaced overnight. That’s why it’s so important to increase retention with stay interviews.
Stay interviews can help reduce this cost by uncovering what drives and motivates employees in your industry. By finding out why skilled employees stay with your company, you can create an environment where their needs (and future employee needs) are met – leading to a more engaged workforce and higher retention rates.
The top benefits of stay interviews include:
- Reduced recruitment and training costs
- Improved employee engagement and morale
- More job satisfaction among employees
- An enhanced reputation and employer brand
- Greater productivity, efficiency, and customer service
- Better hiring practices and recruitment strategies
And unlike conducting an exit interview, stay interviews can also help you identify and address problems before they cause employees to leave. That means it's much easier to keep your best workers – and even attract more of them!
5 Insightful Stay Interview Questions
Stay interviews are a powerful tool that can help you retain top workers and combat the skilled labor shortage — but only if you ask the right questions.
The best stay interview questions are:
Open-Ended
Encourage employees to share their thoughts and experiences in detail, rather than giving yes/no answers.
Focused
Address a specific problem or drill down into a particular issue.
Goal-oriented
Provide insight into how you can make improvements or changes.
5 Stay Interview Questions
Here are some stay interview questions that meet the above criteria:
- What excites you about working for our company?
- If there was one thing that could be improved in the workplace, what would it be?
- What types of rewards or recognition motivate you?
- What resources or training help you perform best in your role?
- What made you choose our company over others when you were seeking a job?
These questions can help you uncover what candidates might be looking for and what employees need to stay happy, engaged and productive.
The Easiest Way to Implement Stay Interviews
With a distributed workforce, it's not always easy to gather feedback from employees, especially when they're out in the field or working on different job sites. Managing deskless employees is no easy task. Yet asking your crew about their experience and opinions of your company should happen consistently (not just once in a while).
That's why it's important to have a reliable system for conducting stay interviews – and Team Engine’s text message surveys make that easier than ever.
Instead of scheduling a meeting and sitting down with every employee (which is costly and time-consuming), you can send stay interview questions directly to your team via text and email.
With Team Engine, you can get responses fast and make improvements quickly!
And in today's shrinking labor market, staying ahead of the curve means proactively understanding and addressing the needs of your team in real-time.
Enjoy a risk-free trial to see how Team Engine can help you end the labor shortage!
