Most fire service leaders are familiar with the concept of exit interviews. An exit interview is a conversation between an organization’s leader and one of its members who has decided to leave.
This conversation usually takes place right before the person leaves the organization. The intention, at least in theory, is for organizational leaders to ask the departing person about factors that led to their attrition, in hopes of improving the organization in the future.
That is how it works in theory. In practice — and many fire departments don’t even do exit interviews — the experience is quite different.
By the time a person is walking out the door, it is usually much too late to gather useful information about what led to their decision to quit. Exit interviews, if they are done at all, are often just a formality with no real value toward reducing worker attrition.
Some organizations are taking a different approach and turning the process inside out. Instead of waiting for workers to be completely disengaged, disgruntled and anxious to leave, these organizations look to those workers who choose to stay for information about improving employee retention.
The “stay interview” is a way for organizations to understand what they are doing right as well as a way to get out in front of problems before they become crises.
How to do them
According to Erin Pappo of the Camden Consulting Group, stay interviews are most useful when conducted on a regular basis — at least once a year — and when they include all department members from leaders to the newest recruits. The purpose is to gather information not only about what works in the organization, but also the frustrations that people are experiencing.
This kind of feedback is only useful when it is completely candid. For this reason, stay interviews are best conducted by a neutral third party who has no vested interest in the outcome, and the information gathered should be presented without names or other identifiers attached.
The questions used in these interviews must go deeper than simply asking why someone likes their job or how they feel their work environment could be improved.
Be specific.
How do people feel about their roles and the department now compared to when they were first hired? What has changed for them, in both positive and negative ways?
Are there any aspects of their current job they dislike so much that they might be tempted to leave? What do they think they might find elsewhere that would be a better fit or more engaging for them?
Meaningful information
For the best results, put together a diverse work group to collaboratively develop questions that will be asked of department members. Be creative during this development process. This group might come up with questions like these.
- The last time you went home and said, “I had a great day, I love my job,” what had happened that day?
- The last time you went home and said, “That’s it, I can’t take it anymore,” what had happened that day?
- If you switched careers, what would you miss the most?
- What do you like most about your team?
- What demotivates you most about working on your team?
- Think of the best officer you have ever worked with. Describe one thing that person did to routinely motivate the crew.
- What makes you proud about being a member of this organization?
Stay interviews, like exit interviews, are usually done face to face, but technology provides other options. While it may be ideal to hire an outside interviewer to manage the process, many departments do not have the resources to do this.
But even departments with limited resources have the ability to gather the kind of information that comes from the stay interview process. One way of doing this is to use technology such as online survey sites that can be customized and set up for limited access by department members only.
An even simpler approach would be an emailed survey form that can be filled in, printed and returned anonymously.
Be transparent
Once information is gathered, be sure to collate it honestly and in a clear way, and then make the results public within the department. Transparency is a source of strength and can lead to open discussions about festering issues that may not be apparent on a day-to-day basis.
It is also good to recognize and celebrate what the organization is doing well.
Retention is a significant issue for most fire departments. In some cases, they spend years training and developing a member, only to have that person leave suddenly and for no obvious reason.
Just as damaging, departments may find themselves retaining the wrong people — creating an environment where the best people move on and the others who remain become entrenched and stagnant within the department.
If you want to improve retention, don’t wait until someone is walking out the door to ask the critical questions. Stay interviews are one way to be proactive in retaining and motivating the best workforce possible.
