Stay Interviews: Your Secret Weapon for Retention in 2026
Employee retention is no longer a “nice to have” for Alberta small businesses, it’s a business necessity. With a tight labour market, rising costs, and increased competition for skilled workers, employers can’t afford to wait until someone hands in their 2 weeks notice to understand why they are leaving.
Most business owners are familiar with exit interviews. While they can provide useful information, they are inherently reactive. By the time you’re asking the questions, the employee has already made the decision to go. That’s where stay interviews come in.
Stay interviews are a proactive, low-cost, and highly effective tool Alberta employers can start using right now to better understand their workforce, reduce turnover, and strengthen engagement before issues escalate into resignations.
Why Retention Matters More Than Ever in Alberta
Alberta continues to experience a challenging labour market. As of late 2025, the province’s unemployment rate sits at approximately 7% with persistent labour shortages across industries such as construction, trades, transportation, and manufacturing (source: Alberta Economic Dashboard).
For small businesses, losing a good employee is constantly. Beyond salary and benefits, turnover often includes:
Recruitment and advertising expenses
Time spent interviewing and onboarding
Lost productivity during training
Increased pressure on remaining staff
Research consistently shows that many of the factors driving turnover are fixable when addressed early. According to workplace research from Gallup, disengagement and preventable turnover cost businesses billions each year, often due to issues that never surfaced in time.
Stay interviews help employers catch those issues early by answering 2 critical questions:
Why are people staying?
What might quietly be pushing them away?
What is a Stay Interview?
A stay interview is a structured but conversational check-in with an employee who is not planning to leave (as far as you know). Its purpose is to understand what the employee values about their role, what’s working well, and what could be improved to make their work experience better.
Unlike performance reviews or disciplinary meetings, stay interviews are not about evaluation. They are about listening. Bamboo HR describes stay interviews as one of the most effective retention tools because they focus on real-time feedback rather than hindsight.
Creating Space for Honest Conversations
One of the biggest benefits of stay interviews is trust. When done well, these conversations show employees that their opinions matter, leadership is willing to listen, and their feedback is welcomed not punished. Stay interviews should feel relaxed and genuine, not formal or intimidating. They are not performance reviews, and they should never be used to document performance issues.
Many employees are far more open during stay interviews than in engagement surveys or formal meetings. This is where you may uncover workload concerns, communication gaps, frustrations with processes or scheduling, safety to equipment concerns, and morale or team dynamic issues. These are often the “little things” not major complaints yet, but issues that could become bigger problems if no one notices.
We see it all the time: “Stay interviews catch the little things early. Things that aren’t big issues yet, but could become big issues if no one notices.”
Low Cost, Low Effort. With One Important Caveat
Stay interviews do not need to be complicated to be effective. A 15-20 minute conversation with a few thoughtful, consistent questions can go a long way. Some example questions include:
What keeps you here?
What do you enjoy most about your role?
What would make your workday easier or more productive?
Is there anything getting in the way of you doing your best work?
The most important part of a stay interview is what happens after.
Follow-through is critical. While you may not be able to address every concern immediately (or at all), acknowledging feedback and making small visible changes shows employees that their input is taken seriously.
Even small adjustments such as clearer communication, minor scheduling tweaks, or addressing a safety concern can significantly improve morale and retention.
Stay Interviews in Action: What They Really Improve
When done consistently, stay interviews can help employers identify and address:
Engagement and morale issues
Burnout or workload imbalance
Safety and compliance concerns
Communication breakdowns
Leadership blind spots
Organizations like SHRM emphasize that stay interviews work best when they are intentional, structured, and repeated, not one-off conversations during times of crisis. The feedback gained is often practical, actionable and low-cost to implement. And most importantly, it gives employers insight into their culture, leadership, style, and employee experience in real time.
What Stay Interviews Are (and Aren’t)
Stay interviews are proactive, conversational, employee-focused and designed to build trust. They are not performance reviews, complaint sessions, a promise to fix everything overnight. The biggest mindset shift for employers in understanding that stay interviews aren’t about having all the answers immediately. They’re about showing employees you care enough to ask, and to listen. When employees feel heard, even if changes take time, trust grows. And trust is a powerful retention tool.
Make Stay Interviews Work for Your Business in 2026
As Alberta businesses head into 2026, retention will continue to be a defining challenge, especially for employers in hands-on, high-demand industries.
Stay interviews are one of the simplest, most cost-effective ways to reduce turnover, strengthen morale, build a stronger employer brand, and create a workplace people want to stay in. They don’t require new software, large budgets, or complex programs. Just intention, consistency, and a willingness to listen.
At HR Advantage, we see stay interviews work best when they are tailored to the realities of small businesses, practical, compliant, and people-first.
Sometimes a 15-minute coffee chat really can save months of frustration, disengagement, and turnover.
Need help building a stay interview process that fits your business and your industry? HR Advantage supports Alberta employers with practical retention strategies that work int he real world, especially for growing teams and hands-on industries.
