Episode 066: Stay Interviews

Welcome to the Fleet Success Show, a podcast dedicated to talking about the fundamentals, standards, and best practices that empower today's fleets to achieve fleet success. Let's get into the show.

All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, joined today again by Jeff Jenkins.

Hey, hey, hey.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

Good.

I'm good. I can't complain. Just got back from Mexico, right?

So the beach was amazing.

The beach was amazing. It was a little hot and humid, but it was a bit warm.

Rocky Point's not exactly the best place to be in July, but it's better than Florida.

Uh, that is true. There's less humidity. Yes, a lot less humidity. And the water was just wonderful. Yeah, so that was good.

Um, and produced as always by Kira Nelson, who may or may not jump onto the podcast randomly. We will see. So you guys all encourage her from behind the scenes. Today we're doing a fun topic and this topic, it kind of came up a little bit from our Great Places to Work fallout. And really there wasn't any fallout from that, but just some of the learnings that we had. And it was all around this idea of, of doing these anonymous surveys and collecting feedback from your employees. But as we're kind of facing this great resignation and how do you deal with recruiting and retention, how do you make sure that you don't lose good people before you lose them? And I know a common practice that we go through that a lot of companies do is when somebody turns in the resignation, you go through and you do an exit interview.

Yep.

And you'll typically ask things like, well, why did you decide to look for a new job? And what was the deciding factor of why you chose a different job instead of staying here. And it kind of goes through this process of trying to discover, like, what you could have done to help make this person stay. And my thing with exit interviews has always been it's, it's kind of a mixed bag. Sometimes you'll get people in the exit interviews who they see it as an opportunity to settle some scores.

Yes.

Like, oh, well, now I can just really let loose and say what I'm trying to say or what I've been wanting to say for you know, a few years now and just didn't have the courage to say.

There were no repercussions at this point, right?

Right, now that I've got a blank check and I just say whatever I want, burn the bridges if I want to. Most people don't burn the bridges, but I've had a few that done it with me. I'll usually try to find out, you know, where people are going and, you know, what their new job entails. But for the most part, it's, you know, there's not really much that I can do in that moment to save that employee. I might be able to take some lessons and try to save the next employee, uh, but a lot of times I found is like I have to take a lot of those interviews with just a grain of salt. So I don't really know how worthy or worthwhile they are to do.

It depends on the person and the reason. Yeah, right. Especially if you've got, uh, it's the same department with the same reason as to why they're leaving, right?

Those are seeing some patterns.

Yes, those are very valuable. But a lot of people also like they became friends with coworkers or their boss or their manager, so they don't want to throw them under the bus either, right? So you wonder how much reality you're getting when people leave, because I've always said, you know, money— people say almost every time it's why they're leaving.

Oh, I got more money somewhere else, right?

But what's the root cause? I mean, we did an episode, what, probably 5 or 6 episodes ago, about it's not just the money why people are leaving. But that's the easiest default thing to say because you don't burn anybody. You just kind of leave.

It's not your fault, right? Like, you know, there's nothing you could have done. And yes, of course, we're big people. We don't like doing counter offers. We tell people you're going to get counter offered and just like always remember why it was that you left in the first place. Like, the counter is usually not going to be something like— if they could have afforded it back then, why did they afford it? Why did they pay you then? What they should pay you now.

Exactly.

So I've never been a fan of counteroffers, but it comes back to that point is it's not usually all about the money, but it's an easy scapegoat. Um, so one of the things that I started looking at though was because I was like, what can I do ahead of time to prevent somebody from leaving, right? We talk about preventive maintenance all the time. What do you do as a preventive maintenance from an HR perspective? And Instead of doing an exit interview, which is very reactive, how do we get proactive about it? And I kind of stumbled upon this concept called stay interviews. And it's kind of the same thing as an exit interview, but you flip it around. And instead of asking things like, well, why did you choose to leave? You say, well, why would you choose to leave? Hypothetical. And so it makes the whole exercise more about like, what would be the reason that you would go out and find another job? What would drive you to even test the waters or look at another market? What aren't you happy about in your current position, your current job, your current role? Is there something that you want to see done differently?

So I'm wondering, because these— it's kind of like you think about a stay interview, and most people do like annual reviews where they'll have something like this take place. We talk about doing weekly or every other week one-on-ones, so you would think some of this stuff would come out.

Ideally.

Or you would hope at least.

Yeah.

If you're having an honest conversation and someone is really telling you why they're frustrated or why they may look to go somewhere else. But I wonder on things like this is how truthful someone ends up being during that process, because we've had people quit before where it just kind of like took you aback, like, wait a second, what? Why are you leaving? Like, there's zero indication. You haven't said a word up to this point.

Right.

About, hey, I feel like I'm underpaid, or I feel like, you know, you should give me more freedom to do what I, you know, where I want to work from, or just whatever the reason may end up being. And so it's like, okay, I talk to you like every day. Not only that, I set aside an hour every week just to talk to you, right?

And then you ask questions like, you know, like, what are you frustrated by right now? What's, you know, what's in your way? What are your obstacles? What do you ask? All these questions. But if you're not getting real answers A stay interview probably wouldn't pull those out unless you have somebody else doing the stay interview or you do it in a different format that, oh, well, I haven't thought about it that way.

Well, I wonder if you call it a stay interview and that's the exact purpose that they know coming in, right? If they would, if they would actually divulge any information that would be beneficial to you, like specifically calling it out, hey, we're going to do this stay interview. I want to know What would make you stay or what would make you leave or whatever? And some people, it may just be a very quick 10 minutes, nothing, we're good.

Yeah.

I think that also kind of, it matters to like how your relationship with your employees, like if they feel comfortable and genuine and real and vulnerable around you, they're going to open up and they're going to tell you these things right away versus if you don't create that rapport with them, then they're just going to be like, oh yeah, everything's fine, everything's great until they quit. And you're like, what on earth just happened? And we value, like one of our values here is like, being genuine and real. And so if you— that's like a good way for you to know. It's like, oh, I must not be being genuine and real because one of my employees just left and I have no idea why. That's a good indication to you as a manager that there's something that you need to work on.

There's something like— there's something missing in it, like a connection or something, right? And as we look at past experiences, things like that, where we've had those kind of surprise resignations, you know, and I wonder if it you put it in this format, and I think I've had this before where you put it in the format and now they really have to commit. Like, it's not just, oh yeah, everything's fine, because like the status quo is easy to maintain. But now you're saying, well, no, no, no, like if you were going to quit, right? Like, this is a big moment for you. If you were going to quit, what would be the reason?

Yes.

Right? And like that moment of clarity for them is like, well, like what would drive me to quit? And I think maybe because it amplifies the magnitude of it. Where we're getting like, this is a really big question, not just a, hey, how are things going, or what's frustrating you right now. It's like, what would actually drive you to quit?

So this, Kiera, it's interesting that what you just said, because I actually think you can have too good of a relationship with someone to where they won't divulge it with you because they don't want to disappoint you, or they don't want— you know what I'm saying? They don't want to upset you.

Yeah.

So it can go both ways. Maybe you've crossed that bridge where now, hey, I think we're actually really good friends, so it's more personal, so they don't want to do it. So it's more of a function for HR, I guess, or maybe even CEO to do these interviews as opposed to that—

Like a skip level?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, and skip levels are interesting because it's good for a manager, and this is a different topic, but it's good as a manager doing a skip level because then you get a little bit more of like, hey, what's going on the ground? What do you see that I can't see because there's a hedge between us?

Josh, have you talked about what skip levels are on the podcast?

I don't know that I have.

We have not.

I think we need clarifying what you mean by skip level. Let's do that.

So a skip level is where, you know, instead of having the manager do a review with an employee, you have the manager's manager do an interview with the employee. And just, you know, usually it could be anything like a 30-minute check-in. Hey, how are things going? How are things going with you and Jeff? How are things going with you and your, you know, your boss or whatever? How are things going on the floor? What do you see that I need to know about? Are there things that I should change or the things that are going on in the company or the organization in the fleet that need to be brought to my attention that you don't think I know about? And so it gives you an opportunity as a manager of managers to connect with the frontline. And so that'd be a good opportunity during a skip level to do kind of a stay interview. If you were going to quit, what would drive you to do it? What would be your reason for leaving?

And I think a skip level podcast episode would probably be beneficial.

Yeah. Like what questions you should ask and how to handle it.

Yeah.

Because it's definitely not something you can just randomly do. Like, you have to create a cadence and a regularity with this.

Yeah.

Otherwise it looks weird.

Otherwise it looks weird.

Yeah. So we could talk all about that. Yeah. And stay interviews, you know, same kind of thing. You do want to let them know that you're going to do it. You don't want to just randomly pop out and be like, okay, hey, why don't you go ahead and come on in today? We're going to do a stay interview with you. What did I do? Right? Like, what did I do to get on your radar?

How do you know I'm interviewing right now?

And, uh, you know, but it is one of those things that if you make it part of your regular cadence, if you're doing it, you know, at least once a year, if not twice a year, just staying on top of people and just helping them know that you're there, that you're there to listen. Because if you don't do it often enough, what'll happen is something will change and then they'll be looking for another job. And this is a crazy job market right now. He can go out and get hired in 2 weeks. So, like, you just have to constantly be vigilant with that and just constantly ask that question. And then ask for that commitment too. I like to do this at the end of them is, if anything changes and you realize something, like, after we've had this conversation and you realize there's something that would drive you to quit, will you commit to just letting me know as soon as you figure that out? Just, you know, and it doesn't have to be anything super official. Just commit to at least popping in, just saying, hey, I thought more about your question. And this is something that would drive me to quit. Like, just give me the chance to fix it rather than surprise me later.

Or pinpointing it with a different question. Maybe not, "What would make you quit?" Maybe, "What are some pain points for you in your position right now?" Yeah. "What are some difficulties that you're struggling with?" What are some— phrase it a little bit differently versus, "What are the things that just drain you here at RTA?" What are your drainers?

What are the things that just frustrate you to no end?

So I've actually had those type of conversations with employees employees in the past, and I, I think I still do it at some point to where I say, hey, if you're ever thinking about leaving, I'd love to know. Like, it's not one of those things where you give me a notice, I'm going to walk you out the door, right? Right. I mean, we've talked about, you know, hey, we'd much rather someone tell us in advance. That way they have time to go find another job. They're not about employment, how we have time to backfill. But, you know, tell me. Don't, don't come and get so frustrated that all of a sudden you're just like, screw it, I want to quit, I'm out. Yeah, like, tell me if something's going wrong. Tell me if I'm doing something that's rubbing you the wrong way, or if somebody else is, or if you just don't like this about the company so that we can address it. I would much rather be proactive versus reactive, especially with personnel issues.

Well, that's something that you have to build. You have to build that rapport and show through modeled behavior because, you know, a lot of companies, like, it's difficult to have that level of trust that I can come to you and say, hey, I'm thinking about leaving and moving on to another position. It's something that they have to see you go through with other employees and like, "Oh, well, they went through this and they didn't get fired and they were graciously handled." And once you start building that up a little bit and they see that you actually mean what you say when you say that, then you'll have more people coming to you. But it has to be something that they've seen modeled. A few people have got to take the plunge and trust you enough to do it. 'Cause until they see it, it doesn't become a part of the culture. And if you have those moments where you react and somebody comes to you and says, "Hey, I'm thinking about leaving," and your reaction is, "Okay, well then let's just have this be your last day," that doesn't, for anybody else that's sticking around, it undermines all of that work that you're doing. And so that's something you really have to be intentional about if you're trying to model that and get people to feel trusting enough to come to you and say, "Well, this is what would drive me to," I'm thinking that I might need to go find another position somewhere else. I think I'm kind of done here, or, you know, and sometimes when they get to that point, you know, I have a saying is that when your soul's left the building, your body should follow. But at the same time, is there something like maybe only your toe is out, or maybe you're like halfway in, halfway out, and we just need to have a little, you know, I call it like a come to Jesus meeting. And we just have that talk and say, what's going on? What's your— where's your soul really at? And, you know, is there something that we just need to adjust in how we're communicating and how we're managing? Is there— maybe you're just in the wrong role. Steve had that where he had that gal that was, you know, working for him and she just wanted to be an accountant. She didn't want to be in his department.

Yeah.

And so, you know, he helped find her another role. And how many times do we have that where somebody is just frustrated because they're in the wrong role, the wrong position, and they're not excited by the work anymore? And just being able to have that kind of open conversation, you know, just, it would eliminate so much drama in the workplace if we could do that.

Well, and think about the cost of replacing that person when they still finally get fed up. Yeah, you're much better off giving them, or not giving them, but helping them find the right fit.

So then I guess as part of this is reinforcing this as an exercise you can go through. The other thing that you have to build is credibility with your people, right? And so like we talk about, you know, you've got to build credibility. They can see how you handle people who willingly come to you and let you know that they want to move on to another position. But the other credibility you have to build is if they tell you something in this interview, you've got to act on it or follow through with it. If they tell you that there's something that's bothering them, then you have to let them know how you're planning on handling it. If you're planning on handling it, if you need to do some more research on it, but you have to follow back up. If they tell you something and then nothing changes, I guarantee you that person is now gonna quit because now they feel like not only is it a problem for them, but you don't care.

Well, not only that, they're going to tell everybody else, right, that you don't care. Hey, they don't care because I said X and they didn't listen to me, and they didn't listen, didn't follow up, nothing changed, everything was same. And Listen, you're not going to change everything someone's upset about at work, right? That's just never going to happen. But at the bare minimum, you can follow back up with them. Yep. And you can talk about whatever that issue was. Hey, maybe we should do this differently, or whatever the case ends up being. But just ignoring it outright, it's never going to work well because you not only lost the credibility with that individual, everybody that they're connected to, because they're not going to stay silent. Hey, why are you quitting? Well, I told Jeff about X 3 weeks ago, and guess what? X is still happening.

Yep. And it's not changing, and he hasn't addressed it, and he doesn't want to address it. Like, I just, I can't anymore, right? Like, I don't have any hope. And that's really what happens is you snuff out their hope, and then they're left just wondering, why am I here? You know, my manager doesn't care about me. We talk about the 3 signs of job misery, and one of them is anonymity. Like, they just don't care. Yeah.

So, and it's very easy to fall into the don't care.

Yep. All right. Well, any last thoughts from either one of you?

That was good. I also wanted to touch just on the, when people do move on, that it's, I'm not going to say it's encouraged, but like we're happy for them.

We celebrate it a little bit.

It's a celebration. And you can tell us and you're still going to be here for a few days. We're going to transition. I see you start your new job on LinkedIn and I say, congratulations. So excited. I hope, I wish you the best. And there's there's no animosity, there's no anger. I'm like, I'm so grateful to you that you're, you're happy and you're in a position— like, whether or not that was here or not, it's— I don't take it personally, and neither should you. It's like, we're grateful to be a part of your journey and to know you, and maybe we'll work again together in the future. As in Fleet especially, I feel like you guys are always, oh yeah, that guy, that guy, oh yeah, I know him from that place. I don't know how you guys—

we do that occasionally.

It definitely runs in circles.

Yeah, and you guys and you'll run into each other. Or as I know Steve has talked about— Steve talks about everything— but Steve like has had the situation where he was somebody's boss and then vice versa happened a few years later. So like, don't— there's no need to burn bridges or anything. It's like moving on is a natural part of life. That's what happens.

Although I will tell you, it was like, we will have people move on and you do celebrate a little bit, you know, because you're like, yes, like you figured it out and we figured it out and like we did it right and everybody's happy. And because you can, you can realize that this wasn't a good fit for you, and it wasn't a good fit for us. And let's be happy that we recognize that, and now we're moving on to bigger and better things. I think people will send out notices here. I mean, we're small. You wouldn't do this at a larger company, but we're small enough that when somebody leaves, it's kind of a big deal. But every time I send out a notice that, hey, by the way, this is going to be so-and-so's last day, I think I kind of take people back. It's like my emails are usually very upbeat and enthusiastic, and I'm super excited that they're leaving. And I never want them to take it the wrong way, but it is something that I want to celebrate that somebody recognized they either weren't happy or didn't fit and they took action. And I think that's something that we should celebrate more often as a society rather than somebody who just sticks in the same job and is miserable. I can't think of a sadder thing as just wasting your life because you can't buy any more life. You can't get a second more time.

Not only that, when I left my first company and I quit to my VP, we were tight, like close. I was his number one division manager. Like we went to lunch together all the time and nothing. I quit, okay, not a word afterwards. And I tried reaching out to him several times, never responded to me, cold shoulder, I'm dead to him.

Oh wow.

Right? And it's like, dude, like, You and me were tight. We talked like multiple times a day. Like, I was slaying it for you.

Guess you weren't that tight, right?

But apparently not.

Or that— or, you know, this goes back to, can you, you know, can you let go of things? Are you secure enough? Do you hold grudges?

But it's that mentality then that's like, okay, well, they only cared about me because I was doing something for them.

Yeah, right, right.

Like, to me it was okay, like, I'm leaving because I found a better opportunity. So I think, yeah. Why won't you be happy for me?

Yeah. Well, I think it's fun too as the employer because you have that moment where you can be happy and you can offer that kind of friendship. But I've had employees that have gone the other way that are, like, you've had to let them go or inspire them to leave and they don't talk to you anymore because for them it's a painful process and they feel rejected. There's a lot of emotion to it. And the flip side can be true too when you quit is that some people can take that very personally. You're not just quitting the company, you're quitting them. You know, it puts them in a hard place. And, you know, it just depends on how well you handle those kinds of things with humility, which, you know, you do these kind of SEI interviews, you're gonna have to have a huge dose of humility as part of this because there might be some things out here that are very personal about how you were handling things as a manager that you might have to learn from. And you're like, oh shoot, I had no idea I was showing up that way, or I kind of thought I had a problem with that, but I didn't realize it would drive somebody to quit. Yeah, you know, and So you've got to kind of be ready for that.

No, I agree. The only other thing I want to add on this episode is if you are someone who is not happy somewhere, right, and you don't have stay interviews or anything like that, is you gotta get and vocalize that stuff. Don't hold it in. Don't be miserable because— and there's a professional way of doing it. Yep, right. You don't say— you don't walk in there and be like, hey, you're a piece of shit manager, I don't want to work for you right? It's the, hey, you know, the way you talk to me in front of everyone else, right? Or the way you manage this. I mean, there's— it's okay to give tips and to give feedback to somebody, right? And it's going to help you out, and it's gonna help them out, hopefully, down the road if they're humble enough to hear it. But as a person having that interview, be bold, right? Because it's not just you that's probably affected by that, it's other people as well, right?

I think I read somewhere on LinkedIn that somebody posted as they were doing, they were asking for feedback and this was an upward feedback, upward piece of feedback. And they said, okay, just so you know, though, it was like, you know, they asked the question, well, do you have any feedback for me that I could be doing better as a manager? And the person, oh no, no, you're doing great. And the other manager kind of put it back to him a little bit and said, well, if I'm doing so great, you know, by not giving me that piece of feedback, like you are withholding my growth from me. I can't get any better if you don't tell me how to improve. And they really turned it around and made it seem like a very selfish act to not give feedback. And you could almost do that same thing as, well, if there's nothing that would drive you to quit, like, there's nothing that we could do to improve. And you realize that by doing that, that we will never grow and we'll never improve. So like, is there anything, you know? And you really kind of tweak their conscience a little bit when you put it that way.

There's always an area of improvement for everybody.

Yeah.

And we all can recognize it. It's just, are we bold enough to have that conversation?

All right. Well, that's going to wrap it up for us today. I hope you guys enjoyed the episode. As always, if you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear them. podcast@rtafleet.com. If you want to pick up a copy of the Fleet Success Playbook, you can go to fleetsuccessplaybook.com. Fill out the form there and we'll get a copy sent your way. And then we've got Fleet Success Summit 2.0 coming up Vegas next year.

Vegas!

March 2023 at the Luxor. Hopefully there won't be any more dust devils over there like they had the other day. I don't know if you saw the video footage of that, but it was absolutely crazy. But we will see you guys next year there and see you next week. Yeah.

Thanks, guys.

Bye, guys.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you liked our show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us anywhere on social media at Fleet Success. See you next time.