#12 | Stay Interviews to Retain Top Talent: 6 Essential Questions for Project Teams

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In a world where talented employees are the backbone of any successful project, retaining the best people is more critical than ever. Stay interviews provide a proactive approach to understand the concerns and aspirations of project teams before they start contemplating other opportunities. In this article, we'll dive into what stay interviews are and explore six pivotal questions that can help you keep your best people on board.

Think of your project team as the heart of your organization, pumping life and energy into your projects. Just as our hearts need the right conditions to function optimally, project teams require the right environment, acknowledgment, and opportunities to thrive. Stay Interviews serve as a wellness check, ensuring that your project teams feel valued and are less likely to seek opportunities elsewhere. They act as a preventive measure, identifying potential issues before they escalate, fostering open communication, and building stronger bonds within the team.

So if it’s not obvious, yes - you should be talking to individual project team members. It doesn’t have to be a formal bi-weekly 1:1 like they have with their manager, but more of an informal session so you can:

• Build genuine relationships.

• Be helpful and tease out topics not easily raised in group settings.

• Ensure the vibes stay immaculate. ⚡️

Now don’t be a weirdo about this. Don’t schedule a chat and out of the blue start peppering your project team members with the questions below. The idea is you reach out to be helpful to them first. And over time throw an appropriate question or two into a discussion.

Here are the questions:

1. Balanced Work-Life?

A balanced work-life is crucial for employee well-being. Discussing this can help project leads understand if employees feel overwhelmed and help adjust workloads if necessary. This is also a good reality check on scope and schedule commitments.

2. Ideas for Improvement?

Encouraging employees to share their ideas for improvement can foster a sense of ownership and involvement, leading to a more cohesive and innovative team. Also, the people closest to the work typically have the best ideas to move the needle. #sorrynotsorry

3. Any Unmet Needs?

Inquiring about unmet needs can unearth any latent desires or requirements that employees have, allowing project leads to address them proactively and ensure that team members feel supported and understood. Maybe the engineers actually need acceptance criteria and not one-line tickets.

4. Thoughts on Management?

This question can provide insights into how the team perceives the project management style and whether any changes are needed to enhance team synergy and productivity. Maybe you’re great with coordination but not so great with dependency management. Proactively ask about what you can be doing better to improve the quality of life on your projects.

5. Are You Happy Here?

A simple, yet powerful question that opens the door to deeper conversations about job satisfaction, work environment, and project experience. It can reveal underlying issues or confirm that the employee feels content and valued. It might also open the door to some truths like maybe there are really too many meetings 🙃.

6. Feeling Valued on This Project?

Feeling valued is a fundamental human need. This question can reveal whether employees feel acknowledged and appreciated, allowing project leads to reinforce their value if needed. Also, are you thanking people? How are you rewarding the team? Make sure there are mechanisms built in to demonstrate gratitude & recognition for everyone’s hard work.

There are probably more questions you can add to this, but this is simply meant to be a guide. Add questions as you see fit.

Keep the information confidential and don’t start gossiping.

Lastly, if the feedback is team-specific, encourage the project team member to bring the topic to the next retrospective so we can start to actively solve it. This exercises a muscle of encouraging the team to solve their own problems. I’ve seen beautiful results happen when folks realize the retrospective actually builds camaraderie and is useful for process improvements vs. a stale meeting of what went well & what didn’t.

How to Support

I want to give you all a special thanks for supporting a project that’s near and dear to my heart. To answer the many questions I’ve received on how to support this project:

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