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Employee Stay Interview: Retention & Engagement Survey

A proactive check-in that surfaces why current employees stay, what's quietly pushing them toward the exit, and which factors actually drive retention versus which just feel important. Built for HR and people managers running regular stay interviews. The AI follow-up interview digs into the real story behind each person's retention risk score before it turns into a resignation.

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Sample questions

A preview of what’s in the template. Every question is editable before you launch.

13 questions · ~7 min
Q01
Message

Thanks for taking a few minutes for this check-in. Your responses are completely confidential and anonymized. We'd rather hear what's working (and what isn't) now than find out later — nothing here affects performance reviews, and honest answers are the most useful ones. About 5-6 minutes.

Q02
Opinion ScaleRequired

How likely are you to still be working here one year from now?

Scale: 0 – 10
Min:Definitely notMax:Definitely yes
Q03
MatrixRequired

How satisfied are you with each of the following aspects of your job right now?

7 rows × 5 columns
  • Support from your direct manager
  • Opportunities to grow your skills or career
  • Recognition for your contributions
  • Your day-to-day workload
  • Pay and benefits
  • +2 more
Columns: Very dissatisfied · Dissatisfied · Neutral · Satisfied · Very satisfied
Q04
Best–Worst Trade-off (MaxDiff)Required

From the list below, which factor matters most to your decision to stay, and which matters least?

  • Fair pay and benefits
  • A supportive manager
  • Opportunities to grow or get promoted
  • Flexible work arrangements
  • Meaningful, interesting work
  • Recognition for good work
  • A strong team and culture
Pick best & worst per setBest:Matters most to me stayingWorst:Matters least to me staying
Q05
Multiple ChoiceRequired

In the last 6 months, have you seriously considered leaving this job?

  • No, not at all
  • I've had passing thoughts
  • Yes, I've actively looked or applied elsewhere
  • Yes, I have another offer or am in final-stage interviews
Q06
AI Interview

Explore the honest reasoning behind the respondent's likelihood-to-stay score and their lowest-rated factor from the satisfaction battery. If they rated pay, workload, or growth low, ask for a specific recent example that illustrates it. If they said they've considered leaving, ask what almost made them go and what would need to change to remove that risk. If the score is high and nothing stands out, probe for the one thing that could still tip them toward leaving over the next year.

Q07
Long Text

What is the single change your manager or the company could make that would most increase your chances of staying here long-term?

Q08
Rating ScaleRequired

How would you rate your working relationship with your direct manager?

Range: 1 – 5
Min:PoorMax:Excellent
Q09
Multiple Choice

Do you know what your next role or promotion path could look like here?

  • Yes, clearly
  • Somewhat
  • No, not at all
  • Not applicable / not seeking growth right now
Q10
Dropdown

How long have you worked at this company?

  • Less than 6 months
  • 6 months to 1 year
  • 1-2 years
  • 3-5 years
  • More than 5 years
  • Prefer not to say
Q11
Short Text

What team or department do you work in? (Template note: replace with your own team/department list or make this a dropdown before launching.)

Q12
Multiple Choice

Which best describes your role level?

  • Individual contributor
  • People manager
  • Senior leader / executive
  • Prefer not to say
Q13
Message

That's everything — thank you for the honesty. Your manager and HR will use these responses (grouped with others, not singled out) to fix the things most likely to make people leave.

What’s included

  • AI follow-ups

    Adaptive probes on open-ended answers that pull out detail a static form would miss.

  • Attention checks

    Built-in safeguards against rushed answers and low-quality respondents.

  • AI-drafted copy

    Wording, ordering, and branching written by the AI — tuned to your research goal.

  • Auto report

    Themes, quotes, and a plain-English summary write themselves once responses come in.

How it compares

We reviewed the closest templates from other survey tools. Here’s what they do well — and where this template goes further.

Why this template

  • Uses an opinion-scale likelihood-to-stay score paired with an AI follow-up interview that digs into the actual reasoning behind that score, rather than leaving it as an unexplained number.
  • Combines a satisfaction matrix and a max-diff ranking so you see which factors respondents rate highly AND which ones actually drive their decision to stay — surfacing the gap between the two.
  • Includes rating and multiple-choice questions on manager relationship and promotion clarity, plus an open long-text question on the single change that would most improve retention, all feeding into one auto-generated report.
  • Opens and closes with plain-language chat messages that frame the check-in as supportive rather than clinical, which matters for honest responses on a sensitive topic like flight risk.

SurveyMonkey

Stay Interview Survey Template & Questions

A directly comparable stay interview template with a fixed, pre-written question set aimed at the same use case — understanding why current employees stay. It's a fielding-ready survey rather than an interview-style tool, so every respondent gets identical static questions with no follow-up. Best suited for teams that want a quick, standard set of retention questions without customization or deeper probing.

What it does well

  • Established, widely-used survey platform with mature distribution and reporting tools
  • Pre-written question set means fast setup with minimal configuration
  • Likely benefits from SurveyMonkey's broader library of HR/engagement templates for cross-referencing

Where it falls short

  • Static question list with no adaptive AI follow-up — can't dig deeper into an individual's specific retention risk reasoning
  • No voice AI interview option or guided screen-share tasks
  • No automated per-response quality scoring or transparent prompt methodology published on the page

Frequently asked questions

What questions are in the “Employee Stay Interview: Retention & Engagement Survey” template?

The template includes 13 ready-to-use questions, starting with: “Thanks for taking a few minutes for this check-in. Your responses are completely confidential and anonymized. We'd rathe…” · “How likely are you to still be working here one year from now?” · “How satisfied are you with each of the following aspects of your job right now?”. The full set is previewed above, and every question is editable.

How long does this survey take to complete?

Respondents typically finish the 13 questions in about 7 minutes.

Can I customize this template?

Yes — every question, answer option, and the ordering is editable before you launch. You can add or remove questions, or ask the AI editor to rework the survey around your research goal.

Is this template free to use?

Yes. Open it in the editor and start customizing right away — no account required to try it, and the free plan covers launching your survey.

Ready to launch?

Open this template in the editor. Every part is yours to change before the first respondent sees it.

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