An HR Field Kit tool
The Stay Interview Program Kit
Most companies treat the stay conversation as a thing a good manager does sometimes. You are going to run it as a program. This is how.
Why a program
A lucky conversation saves one person.
The difference between a stay interview and an exit interview is timing and intent. The exit interview happens when the decision is already made, and is about understanding a loss. The stay conversation happens while you can still do something, and is about building a future the person wants to be part of. Almost every organization is excellent at the exit and absent at the stay, which is exactly backward. Run as a program, the stay conversation stops depending on which managers happen to have good instincts.
The rollout
Four moves, in order.
Pilot
Begin with a few willing, capable managers and the people whose loss would hurt most. Prove the practice where it is most likely to work and most worth doing, rather than boiling the ocean on day one.
Train
Train against a simple, written standard so every manager prepares the same way. The free Field Kit course and the Stay Conversation Planner are built for exactly this, and cost nothing to put in front of them.
Standardize
Standardize the preparation so no one ever walks in cold. An unprepared stay conversation is often worse than none. Every manager should arrive with a plan, a goal, and the one rule in mind.
Measure
Measure that it is actually happening. A program you do not measure is a wish, and the most common failure is that the rollout is announced, celebrated, and then quietly not done. Track the behavior, not just the turnover.
The one rule, teach it relentlessly
Never ask if they are leaving.
Do not ask whether someone is thinking about leaving. It corners them, makes the moment feel like an exit interview, and can plant the very idea you are trying to prevent. Always reframe forward. The whole skill is asking about the future you are trying to build together, not the doubt you are afraid of.
The manager briefing
The shape of a good conversation.
Open with care, not the agenda. The first sentence should land warm, so the person does not brace for bad news.
Ask forward, never backward. What would make the work better, what is getting in their way, what they want more of, what would make them want to stay and grow here.
Listen far more than you talk. Aim for the employee to do most of the speaking. Your job is to understand, not to fix on the spot.
Close on one real commitment. End with a single specific next step, theirs and yours, with a date. Warm feelings and no commitment change nothing.
Set the follow-up before you leave. The conversation is not done when it ends. The follow-through is the work.
Capture themes across many conversations to fix the systemic causes, while protecting the confidence of any single one. What is said in the room stays in the room. What you carry out is the pattern, never one person's words.
When the program outgrows the binder.
Preparing one conversation well is a skill any manager can learn. Keeping the right preparation ready for hundreds of them, every cycle, matched to who each person actually is, is the weight Anchor was built to carry. No pressure, and no pitch.
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