Retention Interviews: Holding on to Employees

  Pete makes the case for something he thinks rent-to-own has underutilized: the stay interview, or what he prefers to call the retention interview. The numbers frame the problem. In 2022, 75.8% of hourly retail positions turned over — up from 68% the year before. Even store managers and assistant managers saw significant jumps. In stores that typically run four to six people, that kind of churn means you could be replacing your entire staff more than once in a single year.

A retention interview is a one-on-one conversation with a current employee, not a performance review. The goal is to find out what's keeping them there, what they'd change, whether they've thought about leaving, and what you as a manager could do differently to support them. Pete offers six starter questions: what do you enjoy about your job, what are you learning, what else do you want to learn, have you ever thought about leaving, do you feel valued, and is there anything more I can do to support you. He also highlights a question from a book he's been reading — The Ten Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times by Tom Ziglar — that he found particularly powerful: "How are you handling your current workload?" Simple, direct, and heavy with meaning when asked sincerely and twice.

On format, Pete is clear: these are individual conversations, not group sessions. Pull the employee somewhere private, away from the floor where coworkers can watch. Come with an open mind and no defensiveness, because they might say something that's hard to hear. Don't promise that every suggestion will be acted on, but do commit to listening earnestly. Don't do them when the store is struggling, right after a promotion, or in the middle of a personal hardship — timing matters.

The distinction between a retention interview and an exit interview is the whole point. Exit interviews tell you why someone left. Retention interviews catch the warning signs before it gets that far. One is proactive, one is reactive. Pete's view is that if you're only doing exit interviews, you've already lost.

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Pete Shau 1:21

Hello and welcome to the RTO show. I'm your host, Pete, and today we're talking to you about stay interviews or what I like to call retention interviews because retention is the name of the game. Yeah, this is something we need to talk about. Because it's the same thing I was thinking the same, you know, the other day I was talking to Danny and we were just like, man, we have a lot of turnover. And I think one of the things we need to work on is keeping what we got, right? And how do you keep what we got? Well, retention interviews, in my opinion, are probably something that have not been worked on enough in Rent2Own. And I think it's something that we can work on with better. And I just want to go over some reasons why I would do it, how to do it, and how it affects what you're doing in your stores. I mean, first off, what is a stay interview, right? A stay interview or a retention interview, like I had to call it, is basically like a one-on-one conversation. This is what you have with your employees, and you want to find out why they like working for your company, why they like working for you, why they like your brand, and what they would possibly change about the particular rent to own, about the business, about maybe your particular team or your staff, and the role if they could that they play, right? So this is I'm a CSR, this is what I think a CSR should do or should do better or shouldn't do, or I'm an account manager. This is, you know, if you give me more time to do this and less time to do that, and if I wasn't doing this or I wasn't doing that, this is what would help me. And you got to remember, I mean, these retention interviews are for current employees that you have that you want to talk to and just get their feedback because their feedback on staying could just open some doors, right? I mean, here's some figures for you. In retail stores alone, in 2022, there were more than three quarters. Three quarters, 75.8% to be exact, turnover rate for all hourly positions. Hourly in-store positions, 75.8%. That's amazing. That's that's a super high number. That's up from 68% in just 2021. I mean, we're talking about seven, almost eight percent more. In twenty twenty-two the turnover rate for store managers and assistant store managers was seventeen point seven percent and twenty-nine point two percent, up from fourteen point six and twenty-two percent in twenty twenty-one. In other words, store managers went from fourteen point six percent to seventeen point seven, and assistant store managers went up from twenty-two percent to twenty-two point nine percent. Think about those numbers. Even the people that we count on the most have increased. Your overall hourly positions, three-quarters of them, 75.8% in retail stores, they took a hike. They went somewhere else. So, I mean, the big question, obviously, why do we hold stay interviews? If you guys have any idea what it's like to do what we, you know, we do. I mean, I was just talking to uh a good good friend of the RTO show, Lee Resteen, and we were talking about the successes of people who have been in the business starting as drivers, right? And they start as drivers and they work their way up. So they've done all the positions. You know, you go from a driver to maybe a lead driver to an account manager to a salesperson to an assistant to a manager, and then possibly even more. And you learn to appreciate all the positions and you do see a lot of things along the way. And when you finally get to that management role, whether you're an assistant manager, whether you're a GM, you kind of try to implement what you know and what you think, but times change. Things aren't the same. Uh, you know, we were just talking to Danny. I've been talking to a lot of friends of the RTO show, and let me tell you, they can tell you within the last few years, within the last 10 years, and with the last 20 years, this is not the same business. We are not in the same business. It's rent-to-owned, sure, but it it it lives differently, it acts differently, it has a different heartbeat. And let me tell you, there's there's a whole different vibe to it, right? So, why do we do the stay interviews then? Why do we want to hold retention interviews? Well, you do the interview and you and you question it in a way to help your most valuable employees understand that you recognize and appreciate their loyalty because that's what you're trying to get out of it, right? You want them to get something out of it as well. You want information as what's going to get them to stay, but you also want them to feel a certain way about it. And you want them to recognize and appreciate their loyalty. You're asking them these questions to get them to stay. You're asking them these questions to make it better on them, hopefully, in the future. To show them that you care about more than just their performance. It's not just a what did you close at? How many sales did you bring me this week? You know, have we gained customers? Have we gained rental revenues? What are our peripherals like? What are our fees like? You know, how are we paying the bills? That's all important, but it's not just about performance. You want to know about them as well. And you want them to know as employees, you're doing the best you can. Well, so am I. And this is why I'm asking you, because I want them, you want them to feel like you're open to making changes. You're open to making changes that will give them more satisfaction and make them feel better about working for you and your company and your brand. That's why you do them, right? And in essence, what you're really doing is, I mean, you're telling them things, right? And you want them to learn, you want them to get it, but you want to discover a few things. And what can these things help you discover? What can you find if you're asking these interview questions? These retention questions, these questions that are gonna, you know, open up. You really want to get your guys to open up, right? I don't know if you want to take them to lunch, I don't know if you want to do it in the office. You want to do it a specific way, but you want you want the walls to be down. And you got to remember that you can't have your walls up either. You have to be ready to take a couple of shots if that's the case. But they can help you discover warning signs, you know, warning signs of the pivotal employees that you have that they might need support, they might need more direction, they might need more training. Understanding and seeing these warning signs before something bad happens, it's something that you can't put a dollar sign on. Because when you have these pivotal employees, and I'm talking about people that have been around a long time, or you might have that great employee that has just come on, they've been in three months, and they have just made the change in your store. They have that work ethic, they have that ability to just go up and meet and greet customers, they have the ability to counsel customers in a way that everybody understands. This is to get them to ownership, right? It's important to know also when they're not having a good time, when they're not able to do anything, they're not able to do it right, and and they're they're having trouble with the specific subject. Maybe you have uh, you know, an account manager who needs a little help with the sales, or a salesperson who just doesn't understand, hey man, give them a week. Don't worry about it, they'll pay you. They talk to you about it, you know, uh, and they're they're they're finding out from their their GM, they're finding out from their assistant manager, their ASM, hey man, that's not how it's done, and you're applying a little pressure, and they don't understand it, right? This is going to help you find those warning signs so that you can address it earlier before they get burnt out. It helps the company find ways to keep employees in which you've invested the most time training, right? Because there's nothing like training somebody and then realizing that they're the ones gone. You spend the most time and resources training them, getting them to understand the business, learning what's going on, and then they walk. Man, that's a that's a tough sell right there, man. That's that's that's a hard day when you think that you've done everything that you possibly can. And at the end, after all the time, all the resources, all the work, all the training, they leave you anyways. That's rough, you know? And you could possibly discover, let's just say, quick and simple changes to day-to-day workload that could, you know, possibly re-ignite your employees' commitment and engagement to the cause, to the store, to the brand, to the customers. So, with that being said, I'm sure that you guys are asking, what are the questions? What is it that I want to ask? Well, here's some basic questions that you can ask. You always want to do it, or you always want to ask the questions that you think best suit your people and your situation. But here's some questions you can ask. Number one, what do you enjoy about your job? What does the employee think that we do well? What do they like about it? What do they get out of it? What's a way to make them smile? Number two, what are you learning here? And do you feel like you're learning your position? That's always important. Do they feel like they're they're getting out of it what they meant to get out of it? Number three, what else do you want to learn? Find out from them if there is more, they want to reach higher, they want to do more, and we're we're not giving it to them because we really don't know what it is they want to do. We don't know about their goals, we don't know about their aspirations. This is a good way to find out. Number four, have you ever thought about leaving the company? This is gonna be hard, guys. Sometimes people are gonna tell you something that you don't want to hear, but this is what it's all about. Finding out those niches and those things. What is causing them to feel like they want to go? Is it pay? Is it vacation time? Is it French benefits? Is it the fact that they work on the weekends? Or maybe they uh maybe they just don't like the way you talk to them. It might be a hard sell and it might be a hard swallow, but it's something that you need to hear. Number five, do you feel valued and recognized in the company? That recognition can go a long way. Millennials, especially uh going down to Gen Z, they want to be they want to be recognized. They want to know they're doing a good job. You know, number six, as your manager, is there anything that I can do, anything else that I can do to support you? Find out how that you can support them and what they do and what's going on in our day-to-day. And is there something that you can do to help them make their day much, much better? These are some questions that we put together here at the RTO show to help. But I mean, this is not the only questions you can have. Those are this the kind of questions that you want to structure so that they can give you the feedback you need to increase your employee retention. Wouldn't it be great to find out that if you just changed one simple thing, it didn't cost a million dollars, you didn't have to change a show them around, you didn't have to change a slogan. Would you change this one simple thing and it gets your employees excited? You know, that's that's a great thing. Right now, I try to learn, you know, and I Danny and I talk about this all the time, but I try to learn different things. I try to learn new ways to get things done through my people, try to find out new ways to lead, try to find out new ways that I can bring out the most in the people that work for me. So I'm reading a book actually that was brought to me by one of the guys that I really I've I've looked up to for years. We we talk all the time. He's a great person. Uh I'm not gonna say his name on here, but I will tell you that we meet all the time or we talk all the time, I should say. And he always gives me great insight, regardless of what I'm going through, always gave gives me great insight. But he actually gave me this book to read called The Ten Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times. It's a book by Tom Ziggler, and that name might ring a bell, you know, Ziggy Ziggy Ziggy. Tom Ziggler is Zig Ziglar's son. Okay, he's gotten into the uh, I guess the book writing situation, and uh my friend thought it was absolutely great to pass this along, and I and I really appreciate it. I really do, because actually, Tom, on top of just being Zig Ziggler's son, he's actually the CEO of Zig Ziglar Corporation, right? And I'm reading through this book, and I will say I'm not all the way through it. I don't agree with everything because uh some of it is geared towards working from home, and you guys all know that rent to own is a face-to-face in in-face business. It's a brick and mortar business, and I don't know if that'll ever change. I will not say never ever, because there were a couple of things that I never ever thought I'd see in rent to own, and here we are. But one of the biggest things that I took out of this was a question that I read so far, and the question was, how are you handling your current workload? Man, that was a question to me that was profound. It had a lot of meaning. It didn't have a long, outdrawn question that you had to kind of oh, God, this thing's got three parts, I gotta think about it. No. A very simple, very quick, very easy question that carries a lot of weight. Sit down with who you're talking to, look them in the face, and ask them, how are you handling your current workload? And if they give you that, no, I'm doing great, it's all good, you know, everything's good, I don't have any problems, I'm getting it all. You know how I'm doing, boss, man. I appreciate it. Ask them again. Look them in the eye, ask them again with all sincerity, ask them, okay, I hear you, but tell me the truth. How are you handling your current workload? Now you're probably gonna ask this to somebody who is not necessarily getting it all right, right? You probably wouldn't ask that to somebody under your superstar, right? Now you you definitely want to have your retention interview with your superstar, but you probably wouldn't ask somebody who's not struggling, right? If they're performing extremely well and they're doing great for you, you would probably not go, hey, how are you handling your current workload? They're gonna say, I'm knocking it out of the park, man. Like, uh, is there something I don't know? No, you're doing good. All right, then I gotta go. Um, but you do want to do it with somebody who's probably struggling a little bit, somebody who has a little bit of learn, somebody who's maybe not be not getting it, you can tell that they're having, you know, they're they're sweating behind the ears, you know, they're they're sweating a little bit. And uh you want to talk to them and find out what's going on. Because when you do these, when you do these meetings, when you do these retention interviews, you've got to bring an open mind. You have to. It's paramount. Because what they say might be hard to hear, but you have to approach it with the intent of learning what could be done to save more employees. No doubt that's the goal. Because if anything, 75.8% of our hourly employees in 2002 took a hike. Whether we didn't want them, where they didn't want to stay, whether it wasn't the right fit, whether they got more money, whether they moved, doesn't matter. 75.8% of employees went somewhere else. That means one out of four people, that means two out of eight people hired stayed. Most of our stores are only four, five, or six man stores. That's a big turnover. A lot. That's a lot. Now, when you're saying that management takes up a quarter of that, I mean you have a four-man crew. It's very possible that in one year you've switched out all your employees more than once. That's not good. How do we change that? Retention interviews. I can't say it enough. This is so important. Right next to exit interviews, retention interviews are so important because you want to learn what's going to keep your guys happy. You're going to want to learn the tricks of the trade. Uh, and when I say that, I don't mean how to do a rental order faster, how to type this up easier, how to do your terms and your pricing better. No, no, no. When I say tricks of the trade in this particular part is do I appreciate my employees enough? Do I tell them that I appreciate them enough? Have I gone out of my way to really train in a way that they understand? And I know every book, every person, everything says, go out of your way to do it the way they need it. And a lot of you guys are like, man, I do that, but God dog, I'm I'm tired. How can why can't they just learn? Because this is 2023, and we have discovered so many different ways to do so many different things. Our workloads, our times, they're all different. But what we need to do is figure out a way to keep the people that we've accepted, that we say, you are, I want you on my team. You have the right style, you have the right commitment, you have the right set. I've sat down with you, I've interviewed you, I've talked to you, you have the right personality and the right mindset. I want you to be on my team. I'm gonna train you, I'm gonna coach you, and then three months you're gonna leave me? Man, that's hard. Let's stop that. Let's keep them. In the past, we've talked about in other podcasts, we've talked about how big retention can affect profitability. It it there's nothing that you're gonna do better than keep those employees because it's proven time and time again. The one store, the stores that have the longest time, the longevity of employees is the ones that make the most money. And that doesn't mean it's always that way. I mean, there's always gonna be that diamond in the rough. There's gonna be things that change that. You can have a new team doing well, but you also have a good coach. And the good coach is gonna want to do these retention interviews. They're gonna they're gonna want to. But here's some of the things you don't want to do. As you're doing these retention interviews, here's some of your don'ts. Don't make it like a performance review. Don't make it seem like it's, you know, hey, you're coming in here and you're and you're just kind of judging them. You're not. This is not a performance review. Even if they're not doing so well, it's not a performance review. Okay? This is not a reflection of the employee sharing the feedback. You are asking them questions and you are taking what you're getting back, and you're really learning and listening sincerely and earnestly. Don't promise employees that their suggestions will be followed up specifically as described. Or even at all. Because just because they say it doesn't mean it's a great idea. You're doing retention interviews, you're doing stay interviews, you want to hear from them, but that doesn't mean everything that they have to say is something that you want to follow. Yes, that's the truth. We understand that not everybody thinks that we should have a cappuccino machine, that we should have a three-hour lunch, that we should get paid for going home. No, not all of those things are gonna be done. Okay. We do have to come, we do have to be very open with them and let them know, hey, you know, I'm gonna listen to you, but be very earnest and honest with me because I I I really want to take this back, and I really want to take this back to who matters, whether it's HR, whether it's the owners, whether it's the board staff, whether it's the CEOs, and say, I really believe that this can make a difference, right? But you don't want to you don't want to say, yeah, everything you tell me is gonna happen. It might not happen, right? Don't meet with them at all if things aren't going so well. Okay. And when I mean that, let's be honest, timing matters. Okay. If you want to talk to Joe and he's had a death in their family and he just got back, probably not a good time to talk to him. If somebody has had some really, really big issues with learning a position or getting it right, or they've been just recently demoted, probably not a good time to ask them questions. Or vice versa, somebody just got promoted. They're riding high. They're feeling great. Is it a really great time to ask them? Uh, probably not. Wait till the dust settles, then ask them. You know, don't ask them when the overall store performance is down, because yeah, they're gonna feel the heat. If they have a manager on top of them or a DM or an owner or whoever, uh, they're probably gonna feel a certain way. Make sure that you you you do take timing into consideration. Remember that you don't want to meet with these employees in a group setting. This is not a group activity. Remember, like we said in the beginning, one-on-one, like a one-on-one basketball game. Um, it can be informative, it can be intuitive, it cannot be done as a team. You want to keep them to themselves. You want them to be able to open up because sometimes they might have something to say about somebody else. Sometimes they might have something to say about the team. They might have something to say about the way things work or click or whatever the case is. They don't want to say it in front of everybody, and you might not want them to either. You need to let them know that this is confidential. And no matter what they say, how crazy, how different they think it might be, you are really taking what they have to say in consideration. And it's okay to talk to me. It's okay to say what you need to say. And you don't want to do that in a group setting. These interviews should be conducted individually and preferably away from their normal work environment. If you can take them out of the store, great. If you can, it's okay. Pull them somewhere to the side. Don't do it where everybody's staring at them and kind of looking at them. If the if you have uh, you know, some some shades to put down, put them down. Or, you know, if you can do it in the office that doesn't have windows and people are gonna be like eyeballing them as they go by, do that. Because you want them to feel open, you don't want them to feel pressured, you don't want them to feel like they're gonna give you an idea from somebody else's idea, right? If somebody else says something, oh you know, well, well, Johnny says this, I should say it too. You want it to come from them, right? Remember that you can't be judgmental, but you also can't be argumentative. They might tell you something that you don't want to hear. And they might tell you something in a way that you're like, no, you don't understand. This is the way it works. You can't do that. You can't do that. When somebody says, you know, hey man, I don't think we should have any overs. I think we should pick up everybody in the world. One day late, I should be able to go pick them up. When I call them on the phone, no matter what state I'm in, I just tell them, looking, dude, miss, person, give me your junk. I want to pick it up. No, you can't do that either, right? But you don't want to argue with that person, you're there to listen. And if you don't understand what they're really saying, by that, you know, because if somebody says that to you, like, I just want to get on the phone, I want to tell them, just give me my stuff back, man. You're not paying, just give my stuff back. Find out where it's coming from. Find out why they feel that way. You know, John, I hear you, man. I I know sometimes it can get frustrating, but why would you handle it that way? What is it that makes you feel like handling it that way would be the best? Why do you feel like being strong and and and and dominant in that conversation when you're talking to that customer? What about that will help you? What what what are you trying to get out of it? Really try to get to the nitty-gritty of it. Because that's what you want to do. You want to get to the bottom line of everything and figure it out what's going on in their mind because that's super, super, super important, right? It's super important. You don't want to make the conversations a one time event. Do not go in there and have this great conversation and get all this feedback and then never go back again. It should be a regular thing. Retention interview should not be done with one person in the entire uh employment span that's. They have. It should be something done on a regular basis, whether it be quarterly, whether it be semi-annually, whether it be annually. I personally think that quarterly is probably a little bit too much. Um, semi-annually might be good. You don't want to do it too far. Um, I I don't know if you know, every third, like every three months, you know, every third part of the year, but you don't want it to be so far apart that you can't implement what you want to do and then get the feedback to it. You do not want to have it every other weekend, right? Maybe you make it a certain way where they can request a retention interview. And they might not call it in that situation because when you're talking to the employee, that might be a retention interview. But maybe you can call it a feedback session. Or maybe you can put a feedback note on an online, maybe an intranet, or you know, someplace on an email or something like that where they can email and say, hey, this is what I think. Anonymously. Anonymously. But you don't want to make it so far in between the follow-ups that you really just don't get to hear were they implemented, was it good, was it not good? Because the company should learn what ideas uh were shared during the stay interviews and whether the chain is or the improvements really made a difference. Because that's important. And you know, when we're talking about these these stay interviews, what's the difference between a stay interview and an exit interview? I think is important to really understand what you're trying to get at. Because a stay interview is learning what motivates the person to stay engaged, where an exit interview is basically focusing on what motivated the employee to leave. Why did you go? Was it more pay? Was it the time? Was it vacation? Did you just not like your your your GM? Did you not like your assistant? You know, the dogs barking or whatever it was when you went to run a customer. It's the difference between on us, you know, on a retention interview, what's what are we doing right? What do you like about us as opposed to what went wrong? Or what are we doing wrong that could prevent you from leaving before it's too late? Because state interviews are not gonna be as formal, right? They're gonna be a little bit more laid back and they're gonna be a little bit more open. And here's here's the thing is you're trying to de-escalate any situation that might be, you know, more a lot more pressure in the city. You don't want that. Let's just talk about it. It's just open. Versus an exit interview, it's a lot more formal. Why'd you go? What happened? Did somebody say something to you? Okay, what when did this happen? Give me an example. You know, oh man, those things are just terrible. Um, you want to be proactive instead of reactive? A retention interview is to be proactive, is to find out what's going on in your stores. And I would recommend this to anybody at a GM level and above. I don't know if an assistant manager can really hold one of these and be as meaningful to an employee, but I do believe that as a GM and above, it's very important to get your guys involved. If you're listening to this and you're not a GM and you're not a DM and you're not an owner, go to your GM. Go to your owner, go to your DM and ask him if it's possible that they can start doing stay interviews, retention interviews, and find out what's going on with the staff, especially if you have something to say. Find out if you can talk anonymously, find out if you can give a tip if you don't feel comfortable. But one, uh, a retention interview can be done by managers or somebody in a district manager or an HR, but most of the time, exit views are kind of just done by HR or somebody that has been pre-selected to do it for HR at the end. And I'm telling you, exit interviews are great, but they're not as profound as stay interviews or retention interviews because they're gonna be structured and focused, right? They're one-time conversation, they're not just one-time conversations, but they're one-time conversations in the sense that, you know, they're not gonna happen every day. And it does create, you know, you want to listen in, you really want to be open and everything, but one has a profound effect on your overall success. One is just finding out what you can do wrong after it's already too late. Now, I'm not gonna knock out interviews, I think they're awesome. Stay interviews are better, retention interviews are better, right? That's what Pete has to say from the RTO show. I want you guys to know that everything that I look up, everything that we review, everything that I'm talking about is done in-house. We see it every single day. Danny and I talk about these things every single day. And if you have any questions or comments, absolutely anything, especially on our last topic, hit us up, Pete at the RTO Show Podcast.com or Danny at the rto showpodcast.com. If you have any questions, please email us there. You can follow us on social media. We're gonna get a little bit better at that. Guys, I keep saying that, but we do have day jobs, and sometimes it just it just gets crazy. I've got some interviews coming up very soon. Uh, my last interview, probably one of the best interviews I've ever done. Um, I'm having a little bit of trouble with the equipment, so I'm really hoping that I can get that out. But amazing, amazing interviews. We have some things coming up. FRDA uh is coming up in June or July, I believe. We got the APRO RTO world coming up in August. These things are so important. If you listen, if you guys can make it to those shows, go. If you cannot, it's okay. Learn from somebody who went. But I'm gonna tell you right now, we're gonna do our best to represent an RTO world. I'm hoping that we get selected as a speakers over there. I definitely want to talk to you guys. If anybody can see us, listen, it's Pete, it's Danny, it's the RTO show forever and ever. Listen, guys, we want to do the best we can. If there's anything that you have, reach out to us. If you want to see us online, you want to see what we look like, go to www.therto showpodcast.com. Feel free to buy a shirt. I actually um I've gotten the works of uh getting some shirts for some people that have already done some orders. We do appreciate that. And Leroy, I got a shirt coming out to you. And as always, I want to ask you guys one question before I go because he is reminding me, I'm gonna say this all day. Sales of credit. Are you sales of credit? One way or the other, we'll find out. We appreciate you guys listening. Every time that we we do a show, I'm telling you guys, we appreciate the downloads, we appreciate everything that you do. Listen on the Spotify, listen to Apple, listen anywhere you can hear your podcast, or visit us, and you can see our crazy antics at Rent King on YouTube and uh follow what me and Dan are doing. That's it for the RTO show. Have a great day, and we'll catch you next time.