A stay interview is a short, scheduled one-on-one where a manager asks a team member what keeps them at the practice and what might pull them away, while there's still time to act on the answer. In a veterinary practice, stay interviews work best when each person's direct supervisor runs them at least quarterly, asks the same 5 open-ended questions every time, and reports back within two weeks on what will change. According to AVMA News coverage of Veterinary Hospital Managers Association (VHMA) surveys, only 41% of responding practices conduct stay interviews, while 57% conduct exit interviews.
Put plainly, more practices ask people why they left than why they stay.
Why Stay Interviews Catch What Exit Interviews Miss
An exit interview is a post-mortem. By the time someone sits down for one, the offer letter is signed and the only thing left to learn is what went wrong. A stay interview asks the same questions while the answer can still change the outcome.
The timing matters because most preventable departures happen quietly. In a Gallup study of 717 people who voluntarily left a job in the prior year, 42% said their manager or organization could have done something to keep them. The same study found how rarely anyone tried:
- 45% said no manager or leader proactively discussed their job satisfaction, performance, or future with them in the 3 months before they left.
- 36% didn't talk to anyone at all before deciding to resign.
- Among leavers whose manager did check in, only 17% discussed what it would take for them to stay.
Vet med can't afford that silence. In Phase 1 of the American Animal Hospital Association's (AAHA) Stay, Please retention study, about 30% of veterinary professionals said they plan to leave their current jobs, and half of those plan to leave clinical practice completely. A conversation your practice never has can push someone out of the profession entirely.
Who Should Run Stay Interviews, and How Often
The person who runs the stay interview should be the person whose decisions shape that team member's day: their direct supervisor. Gallup found that people weighing a resignation were more likely to talk it over with coworkers than with their manager, so a manager has to start the conversation rather than wait for one.
Owners shouldn't assume they already know the answers, either. AAHA's Stay, Please Phase 2 research found that the further a role sits from the owner on the org chart, the more its priorities and experiences differ from leadership's. Dr. Jessica Vogelsang, chief medical officer at AAHA, explained to AVMA News who has to adjust when those views don't match.
In practical terms, that points to a split like this one for a typical general practice:
On cadence, AAHA's stay interview template suggests monthly, quarterly, or annual check-ins, whatever fits your team. Dr. Melissa Magnuson, who owns three AAHA-accredited practices in New Hampshire, has her practice manager run them monthly. Quarterly is a sensible floor for most teams. Gallup's finding about the 3 months before an exit suggests a yearly conversation leaves too long a gap.
Keep the stay interview separate from the annual performance review. When the same meeting decides someone's raise, people tell you what's safe to say instead of what's true.
5 Stay Interview Questions Worth Asking Every Time
Asking the same core questions each round lets you hear when an answer changes. These 5 are adapted from AAHA's sample list, and each one maps to a reason people actually leave:
- What do you look forward to when you come in each day? This tells you what to protect. If the answer shrinks from "my patients and my team" to "nothing, really," you've learned something no schedule report will show.
- What would make your job more satisfying? Open-ended on purpose. Let them name the problem before you suggest one.
- Do you have the right resources to do your job well? In vet med this is often about staffing, equipment, and whether tasks land on the right person. In Gallup's study, 9% of the fixes leavers named were about staffing, workload, or scheduling.
- What are your short-term or long-term career goals? Career advancement made up 11% of the preventable-exit fixes in the same Gallup research. A technician who wants to grow into dentistry or anesthesia needs to hear how that could happen here.
- What, if anything, might tempt you to leave? This is the hardest one to ask and the most useful. Ask it last, after trust has built up over the earlier answers.
Share the questions a few days ahead so people can think instead of improvise. AAHA recommends it, and so does Dr. Karen Felsted, a financial and operational consultant to veterinary practices. Then protect the time: no phones, no "can you look at this ear real quick," no meeting squeezed between appointments.
The listener's posture decides whether any of this works, Dr. Felsted told a VHMA webinar.
If someone raises a scheduling complaint, resist the urge to explain why the schedule is built the way it is. Write it down and ask a follow-up question instead. Consider rotating in a question about whether people feel they can be themselves at work, since belonging shapes how clinicians grow as much as whether they stay.
What to Do With Stay Interview Answers
A stay interview with no follow-through does more damage than no stay interview at all. It teaches people that speaking up changes nothing. Sort every answer into one of three buckets before the next shift starts:
- Fix it now. A broken pulse oximeter, a recurring double-booking, a missing lunch break. Handle it this week and say so.
- Fix it by a date. A request for new continuing education (CE), a schedule change, a path to a lead role. Name a date for a real answer and keep it.
- Can't fix it, and explain why. Some requests won't happen. Saying so honestly, with the reason, builds more trust than letting them disappear.
Pay will come up, and it should. In Gallup's research, compensation and benefits made up 30% of what leavers said could have kept them, which means 70% came down to how people were managed day to day. Don't negotiate salary on the spot. Note it, commit to a date for an answer, and treat the rest of the conversation as just as important.
Then look across interviews, not just within them. If three technicians name the same bottleneck, treat it as one system problem to fix once. AAHA's Phase 2 report found that multiple practices with 90% retention rates shared one habit, as AVMA News reported: they survey staff regularly and use what they hear.
Stay interviews and anonymous surveys do different jobs, and they work best together. Some people will only raise a concern when their name isn't attached, so it helps to break anonymous feedback out by role and tenure rather than reading one practice-wide average. Rally by Hound's anonymous feedback and pulse surveys can fill the months between stay interviews.
The first round is the hardest, so start small. Pick one technician, one client service representative, and one associate this month. Send them the 5 questions a few days ahead, book 20 uninterrupted minutes with each, and put a follow-up date on your calendar before you walk out of the room.