When we talk about employee or customer engagement, the conversation is often about what is not working.

It isn’t until we decide to take our business elsewhere that we get the call from the customer service rep we’ve been trying to reach for weeks who then tries to fix our problem and convince us to stay.

And when an employee is unhappy, we don’t always know about it until they decide to leave.

Gina Schaefer who owns a chain of hardware stores in the greater Washington DC region, flips this on its ear.

She has incredible employee retention rates in part because she spends time on what she calls the “stay” interview.

She asks employees why they stay, what they like about the company.

She doesn’t wait until someone wants to leave to have the exit interview.

That is such a powerful concept. And it’s probably something we should all adopt, asking people what they like about us and why they stick with us.

There are profound insights to be uncovered about your enterprise as well as your employee and customers/clients who are so critical to your success.

What do you think?