As an employer, you no doubt have experience interviewing job seekers and candidates for your organization’s open positions.

However, do you interview your current employees, especially your top employees, the ones who you want to hold onto the most?

There’s a good chance that you’re not. In fact, you might be thinking to yourself right now, “Why in the world would I do that? They’re already employees!”

Right . . . and you want them to stay employees. So taking some time to conduct what are called “stay interviews” might be a good idea. What is a stay interview, exactly? Essentially, it’s a company’s attempt to keep a key employee on board before that employee finds another employment opportunity.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the only time company officials ask a star employee what it would take to keep them is after they’ve given their two weeks’ notice. By that time, though, it’s a little late.

In that situation, an employer would be forced to make a counter-offer to the employee. That’s certainly not an optimal situation for an employer to be in, since they have less leverage. That’s where the stay interview comes in.

Below are four reasons why conducting stay interviews with current top employees is a good idea:

#1—You can find out what the employees really want.

You can find out what they really want from their employment with your organization. That’s because when you ask what you can do to keep them, they’ll tell you, and they’ll probably tell you about more than one thing. (And more than likely, they’ll tell you things that you did not know.)

#2—You can re-connect with the employees.

With as busy as your top performers usually are, chances are good that you haven’t had the chance to talk about anything more than current projects. Now is the time to talk about the future and not just the present.

#3—You can discover your company’s true employer brand.

You’ll gain valuable insight and perspective from the employees about the company in general and their role within it. More than likely, the way that you view these things differs from the way they view them, and they might differ greatly. This is a good time to compare notes and learn exactly what employees think about the organization.

#4—You help prevent the employees from leaving.

As we mentioned at the top of this blog post, this is the biggest reason to conduct this type of interview! You want to keep your top talent. Once again, what’s the point of hiring the best candidates in the marketplace if you can’t hang onto those candidates as employees for very long?

You know the answer to that question . . . so conduct “stay interviews” with your current top performers and increase your chances of retaining them!

If you’re looking to hire exceptional candidates, then we invite you to connect with our team today and see what The Doepker Group can do for your organization.

We also invite you to click HERE to find out even more about the many services that we offer to employers.