40 stay interview questions to ask your employees

Too many resignations come as a surprise, and by then it is too late to ask what would have kept that person. Stay interview questions fix that by asking current employees why they stay, what frustrates them and what could make them leave.

Below are 40 stay interview questions grouped by theme, plus a simple plan to turn the answers into actions people trust. New to the idea? Read our definition of a stay interview first before delving into the top 40 stay interview questions to ask your employees.

TL;DR:

• The best stay interview questions to start with are five: what you look forward to, what you are learning, why you stay, when you last thought about leaving, and what I can do to make your job better.
• Gallup found 42% of people who quit say their manager or company could have kept them, and 45% had no conversation about their job in the three months before they left.
• Cover six themes: job satisfaction, manager support, growth, recognition and pay, workload and flexibility, and flight risk.
• Pick 8 to 10 questions for a 30-minute talk. The manager runs it, listens most of the time and takes notes.
• Never promise a raise or promotion in the room, and keep the talk separate from performance reviews.
• End every stay interview with 2 or 3 agreed actions, an owner for each, and a check-in within 30 days.

What are the best stay interview questions to start with?

The best stay interview questions to start with are the five core questions SHRM recommends, because they cover what people enjoy, how they grow, why they stay, what nearly made them leave, and what the manager can fix. Ask all five in every stay interview so you can compare answers across your team over time.

1. What do you look forward to each day when you come to work?

Uncovers the parts of the job worth protecting.

2. What are you learning here, and what do you want to learn?

Uncovers growth gaps before they turn into a job search.

3. Why do you stay here?

Uncovers your real retention reasons in the employee's own words.

4. When was the last time you thought about leaving, and what prompted it?

Uncovers trigger events such as a reorg, a missed promotion or a hard quarter.

5. What can I do to make your job better for you?

Uncovers one concrete action for the stay plan.

The five come from Richard Finnegan's method, published in SHRM's guide to the five key stay interview questions, which also advises managers to listen about 80% of the time and take notes on key phrases.

What stay interview questions uncover job satisfaction?

What part of your job do you enjoy most?

Reveals which responsibilities, projects, and tasks employees find most fulfilling. Helps managers identify opportunities to align their work with their interests and strengths.

What part of your job would you happily give away?

Identifies repetitive, low-value, or frustrating tasks that could be automated, delegated, or eliminated to improve productivity and job satisfaction.

How has your role changed since you started, and how do you feel about those changes?

Highlights changes in responsibilities, expectations, and workload. Helps identify role drift, unmet expectations, and potential causes of quiet quitting.

If you could change one thing about your day-to-day work, what would it be?

Uncovers specific workplace frustrations and gives managers actionable insights into improvements that could make employees' daily experiences better.

When do you feel most productive at work?

Reveals the working conditions, tools, team dynamics, and routines that help employees perform at their best. Helps managers create an environment that supports productivity and engagement.

What gets in the way of doing your best work?

Surfaces operational challenges, unclear expectations, resource gaps, and approval bottlenecks that prevent employees from performing effectively.

How would you describe your job to a friend who asked about it?

Provides a more conversational way to understand how employees perceive their roles. Their choice of words can reveal their overall satisfaction, enthusiasm, and feelings about the workplace.

Which questions reveal how employees see their manager?

Questions about the manager reveal whether the person gets the support, feedback and trust they need. In Gallup's research, better interactions with the manager was the second most common thing leavers said would have kept them.

Manager questions are the hardest to ask yourself, so frame them as "help me help you" and thank people for honest answers.

1. What do I do that helps you most?

Identifies leadership behaviours that employees find valuable. Helps managers understand what is working well and what they should continue doing.

2. What could I do differently to support you better?

Encourages honest feedback about management and support. Helps identify changes that could improve the employee's experience and working relationship.

3. How often would you like to receive feedback from me, and in what form?

Reveals individual feedback preferences and helps establish a communication cadence that suits each employee's working style.

4. Do you feel you have enough say in how you do your work?

Assesses whether employees have sufficient autonomy and control over their responsibilities. Helps identify micromanagement or unnecessary restrictions that could affect motivation.

5. Is there anything you have wanted to tell me but held back?

Creates an opportunity for employees to raise concerns they may otherwise hesitate to share. Helps uncover unresolved issues, communication gaps, and concerns about psychological safety.

6. How well do you understand how your work connects to the team's goals?

Evaluates whether employees understand how their individual contributions support broader team objectives. Helps identify gaps in communication, alignment, and clarity around priorities.

Pro tip: If the person goes quiet on manager questions, do not fill the silence. Wait five seconds, then try "What would a great manager do in my seat?", because people often find it easier to describe an ideal than to criticize you directly.

What should you ask about growth and career development?

Growth and career questions ask where the person wants to be in one to three years and whether they can see a path to get there with you. Career progress is one of the main reasons people stay or go, yet the LinkedIn 2025 Workplace Learning Report found only 15% of employees say their manager helped them build a career plan in the past six months.

1. Where would you like to be in your career in two years?

Reveals employees' long-term career aspirations and whether they see opportunities to achieve those goals within the organization. Helps managers align individual ambitions with business needs and future roles.

2. Which skills would you like to build next?

Identifies employees' learning priorities and areas for professional development. Helps managers create targeted training plans and identify opportunities to strengthen existing capabilities.

3. Do you see a next step for yourself here?

Assesses whether employees can envision career progression within the organization. A negative response may signal limited growth opportunities or uncertainty about their future, making it important to explore what their ideal next step would look like.

4. Which projects or teams would you like to get closer to?

Uncovers interests beyond an employee's current responsibilities. Helps managers identify opportunities for stretch assignments, cross-functional collaboration, and internal mobility.

5. What training or support would help you most right now?

Highlights immediate development needs and potential skill gaps. Helps managers identify practical learning opportunities, mentorship, or resources that can support career growth.

6. Have you ever felt passed over for a role or project here?

Reveals whether employees feel overlooked when growth opportunities arise. Helps uncover concerns about recognition, promotion decisions, and fairness in career development.

If answers here keep pointing to a missing path, look at career pathing for the role family rather than fixing it one person at a time.

Which questions cover recognition, pay and workload?

Recognition, pay and workload questions check whether people feel valued for what they do and whether the pace is sustainable. Gallup found pay and benefits were the most common thing leavers said could have kept them (30%), with staffing and workload issues at 9%, so ask about both directly.

1. Do you feel recognized for the work you do?

Assesses whether employees feel their contributions and achievements are noticed and appreciated. Helps managers identify gaps in recognition that could affect motivation and engagement.

2. How do you like to be recognized: in public, in private, or through new responsibilities?

Reveals individual recognition preferences and helps managers tailor appreciation to what employees value most, whether it is public acknowledgment, personal feedback, or opportunities to take on greater responsibility.

3. Do you feel fairly paid for your role and results?

Explores employees' perceptions of compensation fairness and whether their pay reflects their responsibilities and contributions. Helps identify potential dissatisfaction with compensation before it affects retention.

4. Which benefits matter most to you, and which do you rarely use?

Identifies which employee benefits provide the most value and which are underutilized. Helps HR teams allocate benefits budgets more effectively and align offerings with employee needs.

5. How manageable is your workload right now, on a scale of 1 to 10?

Measures employees' perceptions of their current workload and stress levels. Creates a trackable benchmark that managers can revisit during future stay interviews to identify workload concerns.

6. Does your schedule or work setup still fit your life?

Assesses whether current working arrangements meet employees' needs and personal commitments. Helps identify opportunities to improve flexibility through hybrid work, flexible hours, or adjusted shift patterns.

7. What would make you feel more valued here?

Encourages employees to share what would improve their sense of belonging and appreciation. Reveals opportunities to strengthen recognition, workplace support, career development, and overall job satisfaction.

What questions surface flight risk early?

Flight risk questions ask, directly but kindly, what might pull the person away and what would keep them. Gallup's Q4 2025 data shows why: 51% of US employees are job-seeking, with 11% actively looking and 40% watching for openings.

1. If you were offered a job elsewhere tomorrow, what would make you consider it?

Identifies factors that could encourage employees to explore opportunities outside the organization, such as better compensation, career growth, flexible working arrangements, or improved management. Helps managers understand potential retention risks and address dissatisfaction before employees start looking elsewhere.

2. What would make you stay even if a recruiter approached you?

Reveals the factors that keep employees committed to the organization, such as supportive leadership, career opportunities, workplace culture, or job stability. Helps managers identify and protect the aspects of the employee experience that encourage long-term retention.

3. Has anything happened in the last six months that made you less happy working here?

Uncovers recent workplace experiences, management decisions, or organizational changes that may have affected employee satisfaction. Helps managers address emerging concerns before they develop into reasons for leaving.

4. What would you miss most if you left?

Highlights the most valuable aspects of an employee's experience, including team relationships, company culture, meaningful work, and growth opportunities. Helps managers understand what makes the organization worth staying with and where they should focus their retention efforts.

Pair the answers with your regretted attrition list. A flight risk answer from someone you would hate to lose needs action this month, not next quarter.

Which questions should you add for new hires, remote staff and top performers?

Questions for specific groups: add one or two targeted prompts to the core set, because a 90-day hire, a remote engineer and a 10-year veteran stay for different reasons. Keep the five core questions for everyone, then add the line from the table that fits the person.

For new hires, compare answers with your hiring notes. If several people say the job is not what they expected, the problem may be in the job description or the interview, not the team.

What questions should you avoid in a stay interview?

Questions to avoid in a stay interview are leading, closed, or tied to pay and performance decisions, because they make people guarded and kill honest answers. A stay interview works only when the person believes nothing they say will be used against them.

• Leading questions: "You are happy here, right?" invites a yes. Ask "How do you feel about your role right now?" instead.
• Yes or no questions: "Do you like your team?" ends the talk. Ask "What is it like working with the team?"
• "Are you looking for another job?": puts people on the defensive. Ask question 32 instead.
• Promises in the room: "I will get you a raise" sets you up to break trust. Say "I will look into it and come back to you by Friday."
• Questions about other people's performance: turn a stay interview into gossip. Keep the focus on the person's own experience.
• Personal questions: family plans, health or age can create legal risk and have nothing to do with the job.

How do you run a stay interview that people trust?

A stay interview people trust is short, private, run by the direct manager, and kept apart from performance reviews and pay talks. Tell the person why you are meeting a few days ahead, share the themes you will cover, and book 30 minutes in a quiet room or a video call with cameras on.

1. Prepare: Pick the five core questions plus three to five from the themes above. Check last time's notes if this is not the first stay interview.
2. Ask: Open with "I want to make sure this stays a great place for you to work." Ask the same core questions you ask everyone.
3. Probe: Listen far more than you talk. Use "tell me more", "can you give me an example?" and "what would good look like?"
4. Plan: Before you end, agree two or three actions. Write down who owns each one.
5. Follow up: Check progress within 30 days, then hold the next stay interview in six to twelve months.

Gallup's research suggests regular conversations do not need to be long: 15 to 30 minutes, held often, made employees far more likely to be highly engaged. Stay interviews are a deeper version of the same habit, not a once-a-year event.

How do you turn stay interview answers into a stay plan?

A stay plan turns stay interview answers into two or three specific actions, each with an owner and a date, that the manager and employee both agree on. Without a plan the conversation becomes one more survey people answered and never heard back from, which does more harm than not asking.

1. Sort what you heard: Group answers into "I can fix this", "HR or leadership needs to decide", and "cannot change, but I can explain why".
2. Choose two or three actions: Small and quick beats big and slow. A new project, a training budget, or one fewer weekly meeting is a real start.
3. Name an owner and a date: "I will ask about the promotion timeline by 15 December" is a plan; "we will look at growth" is not.
4. Report back: Close the loop even when the answer is no, and say why.
5. Look for patterns: HR should combine notes across teams every quarter. Five people naming the same tool or the same policy is a business problem, not a personal one.

Key takeaway: The questions open the door, but the stay plan is what keeps people. A stay interview with follow-through closes the gap that lets people leave unheard.

Gallup found 45% of people who quit say no manager or leader spoke with them about their satisfaction, performance or future in the three months before they left, according to Gallup's analysis of preventable turnover.

To size the business case for leadership, put your numbers into the cost of employee turnover calculator. Gallup estimates replacing a manager can cost about 200% of salary, a technical professional about 80% and a frontline employee about 40%.

How do stay interview answers improve your hiring?

Stay interview answers improve your hiring by showing what your best people value and which skills matter most in each role, so you can write sharper job ads and screen for the right things. What top performers say they love about the job belongs in the job description.

What new hires say surprised them shows where your interviews oversell.

• Better job descriptions: Use the words your employees use when they describe why they stay.
• Better interview scorecards: If people say the role needs more stakeholder work than expected, test for it in the interview.
• Better skills checks: When stay interviews show a skill gap across a team, check for that skill in the next hire and in internal moves.
• Better exit data: Compare stay interview themes with your exit interview questions answers. If the same issue shows up in both, it is a pattern worth fixing.

Questions you ask candidates and questions you ask employees work best as one system. Our role guides, such as these PR coordinator interview questions, show the hiring side of the same idea: ask the same structured questions of everyone so answers are easy to compare.

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