The Value of Conducting Stay Interviews with Hannah Wiscaver, HR Director at TrueScripts

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Our people got us this number one nomination. We have to continue to strive to do better, or our culture is gonna go the opposite direction. ​

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I am Kate Vollman, and on this episode we're talking about the value of conducting stay interviews. Most organizations do some type of exit interview when a team member decides to leave, but by then it may be too late to keep your A Players stay. Interviews help leaders understand what's working and why their people are happy in their roles.

I chatted with Hannah Weiser, the True Life Human Resources Director with True Scripps Management Services.

Her focus is cultivating an amazing culture and total rewards strategy for the True Scripps team.

We really wanted to dig into this interesting topic because if an employee leaves a company, they have an exit interview and we get to find out why did you leave?

Like what was the problem? we don't talk a lot about stay interview. And how to conduct a stay interview. Why would you do it, the information that you gather and learn from putting this into practice at your organization? And I was so, uh, curious because I got to chat with Travis, who is the dream manager at Trues Scripts, and he had mentioned to me that you, decided to conduct stay interviews.

And I thought, oh my gosh, this is so great. We get to talk to someone who actually conducted this kinda interview. You found out a. Things and, uh, wanted to talk a little bit about that. So,

what was the motivation behind this

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And so when I did this, the exit interview, like normal companies would do, I learned a lot of things and I had felt as the HR director that we did tons of, you know, employee engagement surveys and feedback surveys and. We do the e nps. so we do all those things and I thought, how did I not know some of these things, that these people are telling me?

Or how did I not know that some of these things were issues in our organization? and I do realize that when people are on their way out, they're willing to probably be a little more open, with you because they're believing. But I thought to myself, the surveys are great that we're.

excellent interviews suck because now I have all this information that maybe could have, saved these people if I would've known this prior. So I was like, what can we do to combat this? So I thought, well, let's do stay interviews. And, I've had some great employers in the past, but I've mentioned stay interviews before.

And they're like, oh, it takes too much time. People aren't gonna be honest. and it was never a thing that was like, yes, we need to do this.

state interviews have always kind of been a passion of mine because I, I'm a people person. I like to talk to the people that work for the organization in which I'm in the HR department of. And so I've always wanted to do them. Like I, I went to a seminar like probably 10 years ago about stay interviews and I was like, oh my gosh, this is great.

I come from a construction background, so you know, we've typically had tons of people in our organization, they don't wanna pull people off job sites. so it was never like a popular idea at any of my other employers and. , at Trues Scripts. the first three years I've been here, I wasn't really thinking of stay interviews because, we had an amazing culture.

We were trying to change a lot of things we're in growth mode. But after I had a couple people leave, and they left on very good terms and they loved the organization, but they gave me some really great feedback. I thought, if I would've only known this before they left, what could we have done to change or, get better?

I approached the executive team at True Scripps about this concept of stay interviews and they're like, absolutely love it. Love it. we only have 113 team members right now, so it was very doable. I decided to do them all on my own just so it would be a consistent format. And then I gathered the information at the end, and presented it to the exec team, the ownership team, and then the organization.

but it was. Probably one of the best, projects I've ever done in my career. I learned so much.

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what would be the important key metrics to have to bring?

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So that was kind of my goal in the, in the beginning. And, the questions just, . We as an executive team talked about 'em and we kept it really simple. it was a 30 minute session. the questions were, why do you stay? Uh, what would make you leave? Or have you ever thought about leaving?

what skills are you not utilizing in your current position? . when you talk about our culture to other people, what do you tell them or what is most important to you, and what suggestions do you have for overall organization or for our culture to help us get to the next level?

I sent the questions out prior to the interview so they can think about it. Some people came very prepared. They had written a bunch of things down. Some people just were more organic and just spoke from the heart. Um, but then at the end, I. This is your time to unload on hr. Tell me anything you wanna tell me.

I'm not judging you, I'm not gonna think poorly of you. you can unload anything you feel like unloading today or give me any comments, feedback on any subject, anything. and so at the end, you know, we would just talk about different things, that they were going through in their jobs. And, most sessions ended up being around 45 minutes to an hour.

which was really surprising to me cuz I thought people are gonna just wanna get in and then, you know, try to get out as fast as they can. but people really enjoyed, being able to talk about just themselves and their job and what they liked and disliked and what ideas they had. And most people, I think 80% of the people that I interviewed mentioned the.

That they couldn't believe the organization was even doing state interviews and wanted to take the time to actually speak to them instead of just sending out a survey So I felt like at the end of the project, what the most important thing we got from it was, is that people just appreciated the fact that they were being asked their opinion in being talked to, even over a survey.

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it really just showcases how you are making culture a priority at Trues scripts and you care about your people, right? You're giving them an opportunity to really. I really like the skillset question. I mean, those are all great questions. Those are all great questions. I'm so curious, were there answers that surprised you with any of those questions?

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I'm not gonna hold this against you. And a lot of people told me this, and this is what I shared with the exec team. They said, Hannah, we absolutely love Trues scripts. Best culture we've ever experienced in our careers. They said, but one of the things that would make me leave is if. was offered another opportunity that was better.

And I said, well, like what do you mean? And they said like, if I got offered 30,000 more a year, or if I got offered this position where, You know, where I got to do the specific job role all day long that I.

If I got an opportunity, to do, you know, something different or make a whole lot more money, that Trues scripts just couldn't offer, then that would maybe be a reason I would leave. It would be hard because I love the company, I love the people. It's amazing. But they said, I think opportunity would be the only reason I would leave.

Or a lot of people said, if the culture would. There was people that had had, different job roles in the organization, they didn't care for that would, that would cause them to leave. but they've hopefully gotten into a new, role cuz we are pretty good with people. We do a lot of surveys, engagement surveys, and skill-based surveys to make sure that we have people in the right role.

So, they would say, but in the past when I was in this specific role, and had to talk on the phone, all the. . I just, I felt drained when I came into work. So I had considered leaving, but then I moved into a different role, where I'm, I'm more behind the scenes and that's what I like to do, or whatever, their situation was.

So, I did find it surprising that most people, and so this is what I, this is what I like found interesting, and I guess it is true. I, I did a lot of research on it after the stay. opportunity almost trumps anything. So it almost trumps like an amazing culture. The best teammates, people are always seeking, that great opportunity for themselves.

So I think, if you wanna continue to maintain the people in your organization, you have to continue to offer opportunities for growth, advancement, leadership. and if you don't, then people will leave and they'll, they'll go some.

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Would it be 30,000? Would it be 50,000 or would it be a hundred thousand to get somebody to leave a really great culture and to go to a company where the culture might not be that great, 30,000 might not seem like that much money if you're going into a toxic culture. So I feel like that's the biggest challenge for when people are going through an opportunity when you have to assess, okay, what do I have here?

What would I, what am I going to, what I'm going to is the unknown. but this is why leaders have op an opportunity to have these kind of interviews. and the skillset question is so great because then you get to see, oh, are there skills that this person thinks you're really good at, that they're not utilizing?

And that's an opportunity that you can then showcase and give to them to be able to use those skills to be able to do more of the things that they're really good at and that they love. Sohow did the executive team take that data? Were there any decisions that were made moving forward?

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We did have a small group, of our IT and business development team that were fully remote always, even prior to the pandemic. And so once the pandemic hit, we all went home for three months, then we trickled back into the office, but we thought, Hey, people love this at-home work, our organization can operate 100% remote.

Although we feel like we're better together just for collaboration and just for our. but we have really focused on a remote based culture, over the last two years. but now we are on hybrid schedules, so even, you know, our exec team is hybrid. our whole entire organization is now hybrid.

And so people said if I had to go back into office every day, I might leave because even though I love my company, my organization and the culture like work from home has changed my life

it made people feel better to not have to go into an office every day. And so people said, that is one thing that they've truly, embraced and enjoyed.

So we, we vowed, to never change that. on the opportunity part, one of the things that we've done, in that area is we have created a. leadership development cycle. and so we've implemented several leadership development programs, in our organization. one of them is through H R d.

We do, um, a lead from your SEEK program and then a manager essential program. So for people who are newly promoted, and then for people who we see leadership potential in. our executive team works with Chorus and we do some outside leadership, there, leadership, development. and that's helped to bring us together as a team.

and then we're, implementing Franklin Covey and some other things into our organization. We have the Dream Manager program. So all of those things that we're trying to do to help people feel like even if there's not an opportunity right now, we're gonna grow and develop you. And then hopefully as we continue to grow and develop, we will have opportunities for you in the future.

You don't need to look outside the organization to sign those. So, we're very excited about that, but that's all things that we've really, honed in on the last few months as an exec team to, to help our organization to continue to grow.

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To be able to showcase or see or, or kind of even help them envision what that might look like in a couple years. I mean, I think so often in organizations, even just seeing someone else's career path within an organization, when somebody starts, they're like, oh, this is a company that really cares about their people enough to really cultivate them, in their growth journey and continue to offer them those opportu. since your previous teams said that, people actually being honest and open could be a challenge. Did you find that there were some people that were a little more closed off and not as open to share, or was everyone pretty open?

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and so I do feel like there was some people that didn't have a lot to say, but for the most part, like I said, once people got to talking, then they, this day interview ended up lasting almost an hour. and so, I feel like most people did use it as an opportunity to give some feedback.

So I absolutely love that. we had a lot of people tell us that, they felt like maybe a reason they left their last job was. There wasn't a mission, there wasn't, nobody knew the mission or the goal of the organization and, and they felt like that's one of the things that helped them to stay at Trues scripts.

They love working for a company that has a mission. So I feel like that's really important to note too, is because we, start every PowerPoint presentation at our organization with our mission statement, and we relate it to whatever we're talking about at the time. And then in all of our company meetings, we talk about our mission, and our mission is to provide amazing care to our clients and members, to offer prescription benefits at the lowest possible cost.

So I, I think everybody's pulling in the same direction and they know what direction that, that they're pulling. So, I feel like that that's really important to.

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And so to understand and know the mission and to see leadership that actually lives the. Oh my gosh, that's huge. It makes all the difference in the world. so I, I, I really appreciate that your team members notice that and recognize that. So stay interviews for you moving forward,

what does that look like?

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So, um, for instance, we might pick two people from account management, two people from member care, one person from hr, you know, the smaller department's, just a single person. But we're gonna get a good, population of people from each department. And we are going to do state interviews every year with that population.

and we told our organization that the first year, since we're still small enough, we can talk to every single person. We're going to do that. And then as we move forward, of course we'll focus on the people that were newer, you know, this past year. but we're only gonna pick a small population from each department.

And we're going to interview those people to kind of get an idea how, how, and we might change some of our questions of how do you feel like the department's going? How do you feel like the teamwork's going? why do you stay? Why would you leave? what skills are you not? So keep some of them the same, but maybe ask some department questions as well, so that way we just kind of get a feel for how everything is going and actually get to talk to people about that.

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Or their le their direct report or something like that. It seems like that is again, Adding that layer of, Hey, we wanna build trust, we wanna have open communication. We want you to feel that you're supported. We want to create that coaching culture that it seems like you're creating over there at truths.

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And they've, I've already seen it start to change where people have been more open and wanna stop by and tell the HR department things, or tell the executive team or their leader, things that might come to their mind. And so I feel. , that's another great thing to, to glean from this project is that, you know, I think once you open those doors of communication, you make people feel comfortable and that they're not gonna be judged or you're not gonna, run and tell what they've said to, to their supervisor or their coworkers or what have you, but you're just gonna take that information and try to make the organization better.

I think that does open the door to communi.

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it's the way you use the data, right? It's like you could do all the surveys in the world and say, you do all these surveys and you get all this data, but if you're not actually looking at the data, collecting it, having those conversations, then why are you even doing it? Like, how are you planning on using it?

So I love that you were very intentional from the start on how you're using it, bring it to your leadership team, and then making sure you're implementing some of the changes, after you get those results, which again shows. back to your culture because how many of us have worked for organizations where they do all the surveys, they ask all the questions, and then nothing happens.

Nothing changes.

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And I'm not saying that you can accommodate every single person's request or I always say give away the farm or anything like that. but if we choose to do a survey, we're very intentional about the questions we ask, and then we know as an executive team, as an ownership team of True Scripps leadership.

That we are going to take some sort of action from the survey and we're gonna let our people know what that was. So, you know, anytime we do a survey, we take the results, we summarize 'em, we put them in a PowerPoint, we even say, here's the constructive criticism we got.

here is the ideas that we're generated from the survey, and here's two actions we're gonna take. we always let our people know what the results of our surveys are. Same thing with stay interviews. We have a PowerPoint that we created from it, to show people what the overall feedback was and then, some of the initiatives that we're putting into place because of this.

Um, so two of the things that we just let the organization know we were going to change based on stay interview feedback, where people were. Hey, we would love to have a floating holiday. We would love to use it for like Martin Luther King Day or President's Day, or my birthday. I always have to use PTO on my birthday.

I've got a lot of comments. So we added a floating holiday. you know, you can use it on any federal holiday or your birthday. and so that was one of the things that, that we implemented. and then also people were saying, and this is a really funny thing, but I found that so many people, this bothered them the way we did our vacation accruals.

You know, at the beginning of the year, a lot of people would go into the negative, like, you know, they would have a vacation in January or February, and then they're, they wouldn't have accrued the 40 hours. And they were negative p t o. And they said that gave them anxiety. They hated seeing that negative number on their paycheck.

And I was like, who ca? I was like, has anyone ever said anything to you about, cause I said, I don't even look at that and neither do supervisors and like, and they said, no, no one said anything. But it just gave them personal anxiety that, that they were in the negative. And so I was like, that's simple.

We can change that. So we decided to front load our pto so that way at the beginning of the year, you get your PT O and you don't have to see that negative number anymore. And I, I'm telling you, people started cheering and I'm like, of all things that were bothering people, I would've never had any idea.

and so people are so happy that we front loaded the pto. So I think it's just those small things that you can fix that that might be bothering people in your organization that you wouldn't even know about if you didn't talk to them.

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That is so fascinating. There are probably so many organizations where the leader can make the smallest thing that is bothering their team members and they just don't know it because they're not asking. I love that. Okay. Speaking of Dream Manager, of course, we were so excited when Travis emailed us to tell us that they, that Dream Manager was mentioned in your stay interviews and there's a really fun statistic of people who mentioned Dream Manager. as a big reason that they were staying, wasn't it like 50, 56% of people.

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there's been three books, that we've asked the organization as a whole to read. And of course we give them work time to do it so nobody can

We pay for the book or the, the audio book. and we take time outta work, meet as a group and talk about it. And, and Dream Manager was one of those books. so that really got people on fire for the program. but yeah, we had, we had over half the people that we interviewed mentioned Dream Manager and program.

and here's, here's something fun for you to take away from this. It wasn't even about them achieving their dreams necessarily. It was the fact that they got to talk to somebody about their dreams. Take time outta. To just go take one hour a month outta work to go and talk about themselves and their dreams and their family's dreams and what they wanted to accomplish over the year.

And a lot of them said, just because I did that, I felt like I accomplished more last year than I ever had. And so, you know, it wasn't even necessarily like they had achieved some big dream or did something miraculous. It was the fact. Their company cared enough about them personally to allow them to go and have that time during work to talk to a dream manager to try to get them on fire for their dreams again.

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who's taking time outta their day to think about the dreams they have for their life? Not enough people. and what, what I love too is the fact that people are bringing it. Back to their families, to their friends, right? I mean, because they are so excited about the program and their life, it just naturally happens that if they're starting to talk about their dreams, it's gonna come out in conversations with their other colleagues that might not be part of the program yet, or their friends or other family members, and it just kind of keeps feeding out into the world.

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one of the things that's really like, and this was mentioned by like 99, a percent of the people in our interview, , the number one thing when I talk to people about culture, like, well, what do you think you know, is so different about Trues scripts culture? And to me, we have a monthly meeting and this is everybody's favorite thing about our culture, it's a monthly allt meeting.

It's mandatory for everybody. We shut down our whole organization to have this meeting. It's 30 minutes long. We talk about charitable contributions, Travis gets on there and shares dreams that were accomplished or, or dreams that people are seeking. we have prayer request, we have shoutouts, you rock shoutouts.

it's a meeting all about caring about each other as people, instead of just like, what's the organization doing? And so that is what is. I feel like the key to keeping our culture, empathetic if you wanna say that. So instead of like, you know, wanting to one up your neighbor at work, you're wanting to care about your neighbor at work because you know a little bit of something personal about them.

And so it's just, it's a really awesome meeting. but in that we really have embraced the dreams, um, and we try to cheer people's dreams on. We have a dream board that people post pictures if they accomplish something. So it just really permeates throughout our.

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and I feel like it's for two reasons. One, because of our culture and because of that, that feeling of caring about each other, not just what we're doing at work, but in our personal lives and also just, just the fact that, you know, we are working towards that goal to help our clients and members.

and we're very passionate about that. we will do that even if it. , foregoing profits and things of that nature, which is very rare in an organization. So I feel like people know that. They know that they can do what's best to help their clients and members, and they all wanna try to pull in that direction for that.

So I feel like it's just a collaborative effort, like you said. and it just makes for a very positive work environment.

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For anyone that is thinking, okay, stay interviews. This might be for me. I feel a little overwhelmed. Where should I start? Where do I begin? Maybe they are not in the HR team, maybe they're just, uh, on the management team, the executive team, the leadership team, and they're not sure how to kind of approach it with their leaders.

What is some advice that you would share to help people get started with this process?

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I feel like you can start small. if you have a small organization, it'd be great to, to get the feedback from your whole organization and then share it with. but if you're in a larger organization, I feel like you could start small and just do a small population of people.

I think the key to everything, is communication. So letting the organization know what you're trying to accomplish from the stay interviews, how you're going to go about them, who is going to perform them, And I think that is, is the key to success for the whole entire thing I had a leader here who said, oh my gosh, we did stay interviews at our last organization was a disaster. you know, some leaders were into it. Some leaders could care less. They never gave the organization feedback. People had no idea. Why we were doing it. people didn't wanna say anything. people dreaded going into them.

It's just a whole different vibe than what we had here. I mean, we even had people go to their leader and be like, Hey, I had my stay interview today. Thank you for allowing me the time to give my feedback. Like it was just a, it was a very awesome experience for our organization, but I feel like, you know, we told everybody what, why we were doing it, what we were doing.

We gave them the questions beforehand and what we were trying to accomplish. we won, number one in medium size category and best place to work this year. And we had this huge celebration. We were so happy. But then after all that was over, we. We cannot get stagnant and just think, Hey, our culture's awesome.

Our people got us this number one nomination. We have to continue to strive to do better, or our culture is gonna go the opposite direction. So that was one of the reasons we used, to do it, is, hey, we, we know we got first place and we love that, but we wanna continue, um, this journey of trying to create the best culture for our people.

So, I just feel like communication would.

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We would love to speak with you about it. Thanks again for listening. Until next time, lead with.