Staying and leaving
Stay survey
Five questions for people who haven't resigned. The best time to run it is a few weeks before pay and promotion decisions, while there is still money to move.
Opens this survey in Gists as a draft you can edit. Sign in with Slack, Google or your work email. 30 days free. No card needed.
Please don't use this to hunt for the people who answered “Planning to leave”. Gists doesn't show who answered what, and trying to guess will cost you the next survey.
What you would be sending
How do you see yourself here over the next 12 months?
Pick one
- Planning to stay
- Probably staying
- Undecided
- Probably leaving
- Planning to leave
- Prefer not to say
Which of these are the biggest reasons you stay?
Pick any
- The people I work with
- The work itself
- My manager
- Learning and growth
- Pay and benefits
- Flexibility
- The company's mission
- What I would give up by leaving
Which of these, if anything, might lead you to look elsewhere?
Pick any, optional
- Limited growth
- Pay or benefits
- Workload or pace
- Relationship with my manager
- Unclear direction
- Lack of recognition
- Personal circumstances
- Nothing right now
Have you seriously considered leaving in the past three months?
Yes or no, optional
What is one change that would make you more likely to stay for the long term?
Written answer, optional
We wrote these questions for this survey and they are not a validated scale. You can edit them once the survey opens in Gists. If you copy them into another tool, check what it records about who answered.
The idea behind it
In 2001 Mitchell and colleagues proposed that people stay because of three things: their links to others, how well they fit the job and the community around it, and what they would give up by going. Their measure predicted both intent to leave and actual voluntary turnover, and it added something beyond job satisfaction and commitment (Mitchell et al., 2001).
Question 2 picks up links and fit, and “What I would give up by leaving” stands in for the third. Later work by Crossley and colleagues also found embeddedness predicted voluntary turnover beyond job attitudes (Crossley et al., 2007).
Who says what
Across 24,829 leisure and hospitality employees, job satisfaction, rewards and attachments to other people were among the reasons mentioned most. High performers and non-hourly staff were more likely to name advancement, and hourly staff and lower performers more likely to name rewards (Hausknecht et al., 2009). One industry, but the split is a good argument for cutting your results by job type where the numbers allow it.
Compared with an exit survey
The exit survey covers much the same ground with people who have already decided to go.
Before you run this
Don't send this only to people you are worried about, and don't use the answers to decide anything about an individual. If someone reads the results as a list of flight risks, the next survey will tell you very little.
The decision it helps with
What should retention money and attention go to this year?
Running it
Run it four to six weeks before pay decisions, so there is still budget to move. Send it to everyone in a department or company, because picking out people you worry about changes the answers and the meaning.
What the results might look like
These are made-up examples to show the patterns, not real data.
Most stay for the people, few for the work
70% pick “The people I work with”, 20% pick “The work itself”.
- What it means
- Attachment to colleagues is holding things together.
- What it doesn't mean
- It doesn't mean the work is bad. Colleagues may also be the easiest answer to give.
- What to do
- Look at question 3 for what would pull those same people away, and treat that as your priority list.
Undecided grows in one group
“Undecided” goes from 12% to 28% in a department over two quarters.
- What it means
- That group has become less sure, and something changed for them.
- What it doesn't mean
- It doesn't mean they are job-hunting. Question 4 is the closer read on that.
- What to do
- Find out what changed in that period (leadership, workload, pay) and ask that department's manager to talk it through with the team.
“Nothing right now” wins
60% choose it on question 3.
- What it means
- No common threat stands out.
- What it doesn't mean
- It doesn't mean you're safe. Some people will skip a list and put the real reason in question 5.
- What to do
- Read question 5 before reporting anything to leadership.
What to tell people afterwards
Share the top reason people stay and the top reason they might not, and say what you will do about the second one.
What to measure next, and when
Ask again next quarter, and judge it on direction. Compare with exit reasons once you have a few.
Who can see what
Results show only when 5 or more people answer. A team below 5 rolls up into the team above it. A group is also held back when comparing it with another group could reveal a small team. HR and named leaders see every team with 5 or more answers. Each manager sees only their own team. Employees see no team scores. Themes only by default. Word-for-word answers are a company setting, off unless turned on, and employees see a notice before they write.
Related
Sources
- Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., Lee, T. W., Sablynski, C. J., Erez, M. (2001). Why people stay: Using job embeddedness to predict voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 1102-1121. doi:10.2307/3069391
- Crossley, C. D., Bennett, R. J., Jex, S. M., Burnfield, J. L. (2007). Development of a global measure of job embeddedness and integration into a traditional model of voluntary turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1031-1042. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.92.4.1031
- Hausknecht, J. P., Rodda, J., Howard, M. J. (2009). Targeted employee retention: Performance‐based and job‐related differences in reported reasons for staying. Human Resource Management, 48, 269-288. doi:10.1002/hrm.20279