stay_interview v1.0.0

name: stay_interview description: Run stay interviews that surface flight risk while there is still time to act: choose who to interview and in what order without singling people out, ask a fixed core question set with probes, agree a one page stay plan with dated actions, follow through visibly, and track themes across a team with a tracker that suppresses small groups so nobody can be identified. Use when planning or running stay interviews, retention conversations, or a stay interview program, when a valued person seems at risk of leaving, or when coding past interview notes into themes.

Stay Interview

Purpose

A stay interview is a planned one-to-one where a manager asks a current employee what keeps them in the role, what they are learning, and what might push them out, then agrees actions while change is still possible. It is not a performance review, not a regular one-to-one, and not an exit interview done early. The point is timing: Gallup research on 717 recent voluntary leavers found 42 percent said their manager or organization could have done something to prevent the exit, and close to half had no constructive conversation about satisfaction or their future in the final three months.

This skill ships the full system: who to interview, the question bank, the stay plan, the follow-through rules, and a tracker script. A question list alone fails in practice. What breaks retention programs is actions that vanish quietly after the conversation.

Workflow

1. Decide who, and in what order

• Interview everyone on the team over a round, not only the people you fear losing. Singling out flagged talent teaches everyone else they were not worth asking, and it tells the flagged person exactly why they were called in. CIPD guidance makes the same point: motivation, frustration, support, development, and values are topics for all employees.

• Order the round by risk and timing, quietly: people in hard to replace roles first, then anyone inside a known trigger window. Trigger windows include the first 90 days, the months after a reorg or a manager change, after a promotion decision went against them, after a peer at the same level leaves, and on work anniversaries when people naturally reassess.

• New hires get two shorter rounds in their first year, one near 90 days and one near six months. Everyone else gets at least one round a year. A round is a wave across the team inside about a month, so themes can be compared while conditions are still the same.

• The direct manager runs the interview. HR can train, supply the questions, and hold the theme data, but a stay interview run by a stranger produces polite answers. If the manager is the problem, offer a skip-level version and say why.

2. Set it up so candor is possible

• Book 30 to 45 minutes, private, separate from any performance review or rating conversation. Say the purpose in the invite, in plain words: this is about what keeps you here and what would make the job better, nothing in it affects your rating.

• Give the five core questions in advance if the person thinks better in writing, and let them answer partly in writing. Spontaneity is not the goal. Considered answers are.

• Open with a script you have rehearsed: thank them, restate the purpose, name the limits honestly. You cannot promise pay changes, promotions, or headcount. You can promise to act on what is in your reach, to escalate the rest with a date, and to report back either way.

• Listen more than you talk. Take notes the person can see or read afterwards. Never keep a secret second note from the same conversation.

3. Ask the core five, then probe

• Use the core five in references/question-bank.md every round, in your own natural phrasing but covering the same five topics: what they look forward to, what they are learning, why they stay, when leaving last crossed their mind and what prompted it, and what you as manager can do better.

• Probe instead of accepting the first answer. First answers are often shallow ("the pay is fine", "I need the job"). Follow with the importance scale (how much does that matter today, 1 to 10), the single change that would move the number, and an invitation to name the second reason underneath the first.

• Ask the leaving question directly. Everyone considers leaving sometimes. Asking when it last crossed their mind, and what was happening then, turns a taboo into usable timing data: recent and specific is urgent, distant and vague is background noise.

• Add one or two questions from the bank sections that fit: workload, growth, manager support, recognition and fairness, schedule and life fit. Stop at seven questions total. A stay interview is a conversation, not an interrogation.

• Expect the hard asks and rehearse honest answers before the round: a big raise, fewer weekends, more staff, a promotion, escaping a boring patch of work. For each, know what you can do, what you can escalate, and what you must decline, so you answer in the room instead of dodging.

4. Close with a stay plan, not good feelings

• Fill in references/stay-plan-template.md together before you leave the room. One page. The person gets a copy.

• Cap agreed actions at three. Every action has an owner, a due date, and a way the person will know it happened. An action with no date is a wish.

• Agree the stated flight risk in the room, with the person: low, medium, or high. Never score someone in secret afterwards. A risk label they helped set is a planning tool. A secret one is surveillance, and it will leak eventually.

• For anything you cannot fix, write down what you said about it and any escalation you offered, with its date. Honest limits preserve trust. Vague warmth does not.

• Book the check-in before you stand up. Two to four weeks out for high stated risk, at the next one-to-one otherwise.

5. Follow through visibly

• Report back on every action by its due date, including when the answer is no or blocked, with the reason. Gallup and SHRM guidance agree on the mechanism: asking and then going silent does more damage than never asking, because it proves the conversation was theatre.

• When an action lands, tell the person who raised it first, before announcing it to the wider team. Credit in private, change in public.

• At the check-in, re-state the risk together and update the plan. If risk rose, shorten the cycle and escalate what you can while there is still time.

• Track your own completion rate across the round. If you closed fewer than about 8 in 10 actions by their dates, fix your follow-through before running another round. Running more interviews on top of broken promises makes things worse, faster.

6. Track themes without breaking trust

• Code each interview into the tracker CSV the same day: pseudonym, date, one theme code per issue raised, the risk agreed in the room, and each action with owner, due date, status, and whether the person has been told the current status. Theme codes live in scripts/stay_tracker.py: workload, pay_benefits, growth, learning, manager_support, recognition, schedule_flexibility, tools_process, team, mission_values, role_fit, other.

• Run the tracker for the aggregate picture:

bash
python3 scripts/stay_tracker.py notes.csv
python3 scripts/stay_tracker.py notes.csv --actions
python3 scripts/stay_tracker.py --demo

• Respect the suppression rule built into the script: theme and risk rollups are hidden for groups under 5 people, because in a small team an aggregate is a name tag. Report themes upward only at or above that threshold, never with verbatim quotes, and never with the risk label attached to an identifiable person.

• Read the output for system fixes, not individual blame. Three people raising workload in one round is a staffing or process problem with an owner above the team. One person raising it is a stay plan item. The tracker output separates the two: counts by theme and people, current stated risk across the group, and the follow-through ledger with overdue and silent actions flagged.

• Share the theme summary back with the team: what you heard in aggregate, what will change, what will not and why. Closing the loop in public is how the next round earns honest answers.

Output Contract

A completed round produces:

• One stay plan per person, on the template, with at most three dated actions and a risk level agreed in the room
• A coded tracker CSV using pseudonyms only
• A tracker report showing theme counts, group risk distribution, and overdue or silent actions
• A short team summary of themes and resulting changes, shared only when the group meets the suppression threshold
• A booked check-in for every plan

Operating Rules

• Never merge a stay interview with a performance review, rating, or pay conversation. The evaluative frame kills the candor the meeting exists for.
• Never promise what is outside your authority. Commit to actions, escalations with dates, and honest report-backs instead.
• Never record a risk score the person did not help set, and never share an individual's answers or risk level upward. Aggregates at or above 5 people, themes only, no quotes.
• Never use stay interview notes in a performance, promotion, or redundancy decision. One misuse ends candor across the whole team, permanently.
• Never run a round you cannot follow through on. If action capacity is zero this quarter, say so and run check-ins instead.
• Do not treat a calm, agreeable person as a safe person. People who have decided to leave often go quiet and easy to manage. The leaving question exists for exactly this case.
• Pay and fairness answers deserve a straight response, not a deflection to gratitude or mission. If the number is wrong, say what the review path and date are.