Stay Interviews: How Smart NZ Healthcare Leaders Are Beating Burnout & Turnover
In New Zealand’s healthcare sector, employee retention is no longer just an HR goal, it’s a survival strategy. Between persistent workforce shortages, burnout, and rising workloads, many organisations are finding it harder than ever to keep their best clinicians, nurses, and allied health staff.
The challenge? By the time you’re running an exit interview, it’s already too late.
That’s why more NZ healthcare employers are introducing stay interviews: simple, structured conversations designed to uncover what keeps your staff loyal, motivated, and engaged. When done regularly, they help leaders strengthen engagement, build trust, and reduce turnover before it becomes a crisis.
Why Stay Interviews Matter in NZ Healthcare
Our healthcare workforce is unlike any other: compassionate, skilled, and deeply dedicated, yet under immense pressure. According to the Medical Council of New Zealand’s 2025 Workforce Report, while overall clinician retention remains strong, burnout and workload stress continue to drive attrition, especially in aged care and regional settings.
Stay interviews give leaders real-time insights into what’s working and what’s not. They can help:
- Prevent burnout early: Identify workload pressures or team dynamics before they escalate.
- Strengthen engagement: Healthcare workers who feel heard are significantly more likely to stay long-term.
- Shape smarter HR strategies: Feedback from stay interviews can guide improvements in rostering, training, and flexibility.
- Reduce turnover costs: Retaining just one experienced nurse can save $20,000–$40,000 in replacement and onboarding costs.
Scheduling Stay Interviews: Building a Culture of Connection
When stay interviews are undertaken alongside of regular development-focused performance reviews, you create a retention strategy that’s both reflective and forward-looking.
- Performance reviews look backward: assessing achievements, setting goals, and identifying growth areas.
- Stay interviews look forward, exploring motivation, satisfaction, and future intent.
Together, they humanise the review process. Instead of simply checking KPIs, you’re checking in on the person behind them, showing genuine care, which research shows is one of the top drivers of loyalty in healthcare.
How to Implement Stay Interviews in Your Organisation
If you’re new to the idea, start small and focus on authenticity.
- Pilot with one department. Choose a team with manageable size and engaged leaders.
- Separate it from performance reviews. This keeps the conversation safe and honest.
- Ask open, empathetic questions. Focus on curiosity, not compliance.
- Act on what you hear. Even small, visible changes build trust.
- Track the data. Look for themes that can inform training, leadership, and culture initiatives.
At Frontline Health, we hear from healthcare staff that they value employers that invest time in their career growth and future planning. When leaders take the time to have these conversations, it strengthens not only retention but reputation too.
The Bottom Line
In a sector as demanding as healthcare, retention is about connection not just compensation.
When your people feel heard, valued, and supported, they’re more likely to stay and to perform at their best.
Stay interviews are not another HR formality. They’re an opportunity to say: “We care enough to ask before it’s too late.”
And in today’s healthcare environment, that single conversation might be the difference between losing or keeping your best people.