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Stay Interview Questions Template

Three documents and three sheets that rank who gets interviewed first from tenure, engagement and manager history you already hold.

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What you get

Pack of 6 files: 3 documents, 3 spreadsheets

Stay Interview Questions Template
  • Interview GuideDocument
  • Manager PreparationDocument
  • Follow-up NoteDocument
  • Interview ScheduleSpreadsheet
  • Theme RegisterSpreadsheet
  • Retention Action LogSpreadsheet
RiverStay Interview Questions Template

Interview Schedule

Two of the five highest scores share a manager

Marloe Logistics, fictional 240-person warehouse software company. Flight Risk Score: tenure band weight plus team engagement risk plus a recent manager-change bonus.

EmployeeTeamManagerScoreInterviewer
Amara ChukwuImplementation RotterdamTomas Berg67.5Routed: VP Customer
Ines KowalczykProduct and DesignHanna Weiss52.5Direct manager
Jonas EriksrudImplementation RotterdamTomas Berg51.5Routed: VP Customer
Devon LarsenPlatformInes Duarte37.5Direct manager

Amara and Jonas both report to Tomas Berg, and both clear this quarter's interview threshold. Two or more flagged reports under one manager routes every one of that manager's interviews to a skip-level, because a stay interview run by the actual retention risk produces silence, not signal.

A stay interview questions template is a list: pick five or six from a set of categories, ask them in a 30-minute conversation, log the themes, assign an action. Every template we reviewed stops there. None of them say who gets one of those 30-minute conversations first. Most companies default to interviewing everyone, which does not scale past a small team, or interviewing whoever happens to ask, close to interviewing no one. That gap costs the most in the first year, exactly when an onboarding program was supposed to keep someone past it.

This pack ranks a workforce by a Flight Risk Score built from three things already on file. Tenure band is weighted against the published distribution of when voluntary turnover actually happens, about a third within the first year (Work Institute, Retention Report). Team engagement score adds risk in proportion to how far a team sits below full favorability. A recent manager change adds a fixed bonus. At Marloe Logistics, 240 employees, this ranks Amara Chukwu highest at 67.5, eleven months' tenure on a 33 percent team.

Amara's teammate Jonas Eriksrud also clears this quarter's threshold, and both report to the same manager, Tomas Berg. Two or more flagged reports under one manager routes every one of that manager's scheduled interviews to a skip-level instead, because a stay interview run by the actual retention risk produces silence rather than signal. The pack opens with the Interview Guide, Manager Preparation and Follow-up Note, then the Interview Schedule, Theme Register and Retention Action Log that carries each theme from the engagement survey to a named owner and date.

Five employees ranked, two routed away from their own manager

The Flight Risk Score behind the ranking, and what came out of each conversation once it ran.

Stay Interview Questions Template
RiverInterview Schedule

Interview Schedule

Illustrative. Marloe Logistics, fictional warehouse software company. Cut line at score 37, this quarter's capacity of 12 of 240 employees.

EmployeeTenureTeam scoreMgr changed?ScoreInterviewer
Amara Chukwu11mo33%No67.5Routed, flagged manager
Ines Kowalczyk16mo61%Yes, +1552.5Direct manager
Jonas Eriksrud14mo33%No51.5Routed, flagged manager
Devon Larsen9mo93%No37.5Direct manager
Marcus Obi132mo54%No37.0Direct manager

Devon Larsen has only 9 months' tenure but sits on the highest-scoring team in the company, so the first-year weight alone is not enough to put him above the cut line's neighbors. Rank uses all three inputs together, not tenure alone.

RiverTheme Register

Theme Register

What came out of each conversation, and whether it needs escalating beyond the interviewer.

EmployeeInterviewerKey themeEscalation
Amara ChukwuVP CustomerSolely responsible for go-lives with no backupYes, staffing plan
Jonas EriksrudVP CustomerRarely gets feedback beyond project statusYes, manager coaching
Ines KowalczykDirect managerWants a path toward design leadNo, handled directly
Devon LarsenDirect managerWins attributed to the platform, not the personNo, handled directly

Both Rotterdam themes point at Tomas Berg's own management pattern, not at two unrelated complaints. That is the signal the manager flag exists to surface before either resignation letter arrives.

Rank my interview list

What is in the pack

01

Interview Guide

Open questions by category, motivation, friction, growth, recognition, workload and direct retention risk, with guidance to pick five or six per conversation.

02

Manager Preparation

How to ask the direct retention question without it sounding like a threat, and what a routed interviewer needs to know when they are not the direct manager.

03

Follow-up Note

What was heard, what is being done, and the honest version for anything that cannot change right now, sent while the conversation is still fresh.

04

Interview Schedule

Every employee ranked by Flight Risk Score, tenure band, team engagement and manager change combined, with the cut line for this quarter's real capacity.

05

Theme Register

What came out of each conversation and whether it needs escalating, so a pattern across several interviews under one manager becomes visible.

06

Retention Action Log

Every commitment made in a stay interview with a named owner and date, the same tracking discipline an action planning pack applies to survey commitments.

How it works

  1. 1

    Send headcount, tenure and engagement scores

    Current employees with start dates and manager assignments, the latest engagement survey by team, and any manager changes in the last six months.

  2. 2

    Get the ranked Interview Schedule

    Every employee scored by tenure band, team engagement and manager change, ranked and cut to the number of conversations you can actually run.

  3. 3

    Flagged managers get routed automatically

    Any manager with two or more of their own reports above the threshold has those specific interviews reassigned to a skip-level.

  4. 4

    Log themes and commitments

    Each conversation's themes go in the Theme Register, and every commitment gets a named owner and date in the Retention Action Log.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes. The whole pack, the Interview Guide, Manager Preparation and Follow-up Note, plus all three sheets, downloads as real files with no signup. Edit with AI is a separate, optional path that creates a free account and installs the same pack as a private workspace.

How is this different from a normal stay interview template?

Every stay interview template we reviewed is a question list with an action tracker bolted on. None of them decide who gets interviewed first. This pack ranks your workforce by tenure, team engagement and manager history you already hold, so a limited number of conversations goes to the highest-risk people.

Why would a 9-month employee score lower than a 132-month one?

Because tenure is only one of three inputs. Devon Larsen has 9 months on the company's highest-scoring team, 93 percent favorable, so his engagement risk is nearly zero. Marcus Obi has 11 years on a 54 percent team, which is enough engagement risk on its own to land close to the same score.

What happens when a manager gets flagged?

Every one of that manager's reports who cleared the interview threshold gets reassigned to a skip-level or HR business partner, quietly, without naming the manager as a confirmed cause to anyone. The flag changes who runs the conversation. It does not decide in advance what that conversation will find.

Won't the flagged manager notice their reports are being interviewed by someone else?

Possibly, and that is a smaller cost than the alternative. A stay interview conducted by the person a report might be describing produces a polite, uninformative conversation almost every time, which defeats the point of running one at all.

How many stay interviews should we actually run?

As many 30-minute conversations as your HR team can genuinely follow up on well, not as many as the ranked list could technically support. In the worked example, Marloe runs 12 of 240 employees a quarter, about 5 percent, and the schedule shows exactly where that cut line falls.

What format are the downloaded files?

Word documents for the Interview Guide, Manager Preparation and Follow-up Note, and CSV spreadsheets for the Interview Schedule, Theme Register and Retention Action Log. All open natively in Word, Google Docs, Excel or Sheets, and nothing requires a specific HRIS to compute the ranking.

Sources

  1. cdn2.hubspot.net10YearTrendsChart.eps (opens in a new tab)

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.

LinkedInGitHubX

Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

LinkedInX

Related

Employee engagement survey template

Where the team engagement scores behind this pack's Flight Risk Score come from, computed and segmented before this schedule is ranked.

Engagement survey action plan template

Tracks commitments made from survey themes the same way this pack tracks commitments made from stay interview themes: owner, date, and a real recheck.

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Find out who your data says to talk to first

Send current headcount with tenure and manager assignments, and your latest engagement survey by team. The Interview Schedule comes back ranked, with any flagged manager already routed around.

Rank my interview list