Ep. 30 - How to Keep Your Top Talent

In today’s episode of the Successful Barrister, Marc and Diana discuss the Stay Interview, a concept introduced by Richard P. Finnegan. The idea of a stay interview is simple – companies conduct exit interviews to understand why employees are leaving, but if they had that information before they left, they could have prevented that turnover. Marc and Diana explain the questions Finnegan coined, and how Marc Whitehead & Associates handles its version of stay interviews.

For detailed show notes, navigate using the time stamps below:

[1:07] Keeping your best people doesn’t have to be difficult, and Marc has a tool to keep them – stay interviews. This concept was popularized by Richard P. Finnegan, who has written multiple books on the subject. 

[4:03] Stay interviews are about proactively talking to your best people about their experiences to help them stay engaged and prevent them from being picked up by another firm. Replacing an employee costs roughly 6-9 months of that employee’s salary. 

[9:22] According to Finnegan, poor leadership causes 60% of all employee turnover. The best conversations have two engaged people, and it is not fair to ask your employees to be vulnerable without admitting any room for improvement yourself.

[14:10] Finnegan suggests five interview questions. The first is “what do you look forward to each day when you commute to work?” The second is “what are you learning here, and what do you want to learn?”

[17:22] The third question is very straightforward: “why do you stay here?” The fourth is very loaded, “what is the last time you thought about leaving us, and what prompted it?”

[18:34] Finally, the fifth question is “what can I do to make your job better?”

[20:49] Before adopting EOS, Marc Whitehead & Associates did not have a formalized system for stay interviews. He assumed that periodically taking staff to lunch and checking in on rumors he heard was enough to keep most employees. 

[25:11] People problems require different interventions than resource or circumstantial problems. You can’t process your way around people, and often you have to deal with them more directly. 

[30:21] The firm does the People Analyzer quarterly, which starts with an evaluation on six core values and three questions. The 5-5-5 tool discusses how staff feels about their role and their rocks, or long-term goals. 

[35:58] Ultimately, the stay interview is about being proactive, which is the best way to prevent burnout.

Buy The Stay Interview: A Manager's Guide to Keeping the Best and Brightest by Richard P. Finnegan: https://www.amazon.com/Stay-Interview-Managers-Keeping-Brightest/dp/0814436498 

Listen to The Stay Interview: A Manager's Guide to Keeping the Best and Brightest: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Stay-Interview-Audiobook/B00U0NMYYM 

Visit the Successful Barrister website: https://www.successfulbarrister.com/ 

Visit the Marc Whitehead & Associates website: https://disabilitydenials.com/ 

Email Marc Whitehead: marc@marcwhitehead.com