Page 64 - Retaining Top Employees

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52 Retaining Top Employees

For example, let’s return to our fictitious biotech company.
Imagine a series of “Why are you staying?” interviews with the
R&D scientists. George, the Senior Scientist, receives a consoli-
dated summary of the results and sees that the number-one
answer to the question “Why are you still working for us?” is
“Because in our field Project XYZ is one of the top five research
projects in the world.”
George has just received an exceptionally valuable, predic-
tive glimpse into where he must focus his retention activities—
developing exciting, career-enhancing projects to keep his sci-
entists after Project XYZ is completed. How much better is it to
know that information now, rather than later, from the exit inter-
view after George loses one or more of his scientists?
The “Why are you staying?” interview must be conducted
outside of the performance review process and ideally not by
you as the employee’s manager or supervisor. As noted for the
other interviews, the value of the responses you receive will be
much greater if the “stay”
These Aren’t interviews are done by an
Performance Reviews outside interviewer and
Don’t confuse “Why are you confidentiality is guaran-
staying?” interviews with your regular teed.
performance reviews.
Your employees won’t truthfully Starting Right: The “Why
tell you why they’re staying if they Didn’t You Join Us?”
think the question has a punishment/ Interview
reward implication.They’ll tell you
There’s one specific type
what they think you want to hear.
of retention problem that
calls for yet another type
of interview. That’s the situation where our retention of top
employees never even starts: a prospect chooses not to join the
organization.
A chronic inability to hire high-caliber employees is really a
very pronounced retention problem—so pronounced that even
potential employees can spot it. There can be many reasons: