Stay Surveys

With the market looking up and attrition numbers gradually increasing, more and more companies are looking at what is causing their employees to leave.

While the best way to understand the root cause of attrition is to have a heart to heart conversation with the attriting employee, it would also extremely useful to talk to employees while they are in the company to identify if there is a potential threat and to recognise strengths that the company should focus on.

These surveys are popularly called ‘Stay Surveys ‘. Several proactive HR heads are having their employees participate in these Stay Surveys to understand employee experience and to get an idea of what makes the employees tick.

The typical questions that are asked are:

·         Why do employees stay (manager, culture, rewards, job content etc.)? 

·         What does the employee like best about the job, co-workers, and management? 

·         What challenges/excites the employee? 

·         One thing that the employee would like to change

·         If the employee ever considered leaving, what would be the trigger that would make the employee look out?

Stay surveys tend to focus on the strengths of the company while Exit interviews focus on what causes employees to leave. A combination of both will enable organisations build a comprehensive retention strategy.

The surveys can be conducted using an external agency or done internally by training managers, to conduct them. Irrespective of the approach, the need to conduct these surveys is very important and is a critical part of building superior retention strategies and to improve Overall Employee Engagement .