These answers draw in part from “Utilizing Stay Interviews to Increase Employee Engagement in ABA Organizations” by Emily Jenkins, M.Ed., BCBA (BehaviorLive), and extend it with peer-reviewed research from our library of 27,900+ ABA research articles. Clinical framing, BACB ethics code references, and cross-links below are synthesized by Behaviorist Book Club.
View the original presentation →A regular supervision check-in is primarily focused on clinical work: case progress, procedural questions, skill development. A stay interview is explicitly focused on the employee's experience of their role: what motivates them, what creates friction, what would improve their engagement and retention. Stay interviews are also more structured — they follow a consistent question set designed to surface retention-relevant information — and they result in explicit commitments from the supervisor about actions that will be taken. They happen less frequently than supervision sessions (quarterly or semi-annually) and are distinct enough in purpose that employees understand they are being asked about their experience, not evaluated on their clinical performance.
Validated questions for ABA contexts include: 'What makes you look forward to coming to work?' 'What's one thing that, if changed, would make your job significantly more satisfying?' 'When was the last time you thought about leaving, and what prompted that?' 'What do you wish you could do more of in your current role?' 'What would a manager need to do to make you feel genuinely supported?' 'What's one thing about your schedule or workload that creates the most stress?' Open-ended questions that invite narrative responses provide richer information than satisfaction rating scales. Follow-up probes — 'Tell me more about that' — generate the detail that turns a general concern into an actionable intervention.
Be honest. If a staff member's primary concern is compensation and you genuinely cannot change their pay rate, say so directly rather than deflecting: 'I hear that compensation is a real issue for you. I'm not in a position to change pay rates unilaterally, but I can bring this to leadership as a retention concern, and I want to do that. In the meantime, let's talk about what else would make the biggest difference.' This response validates the concern, is honest about constraints, commits to an action within the supervisor's actual authority, and redirects to areas where change is possible. Employees can tolerate structural constraints better than they can tolerate being dismissed or handled.
Quarterly is the recommended frequency for direct care staff in ABA settings given the sector's turnover rates. This is frequent enough to catch emerging disengagement before it becomes a resignation decision. All staff should receive stay interviews, not just employees who appear to be flight risks — high performers and highly engaged employees benefit from the conversation too, and conducting interviews selectively signals that the process is reactive rather than genuinely developmental. Clinical directors managing multiple supervisors should receive semi-annual stay interviews from their own supervisors to model the practice organizationally.
Motivating operations analysis is directly applicable. Before conducting a stay interview, consider what MOs are likely operating for this employee right now: are they coming off a difficult client situation that may be abolishing the reinforcing value of their work? Have they recently had a significant success that could be establishing the value of recognition and advancement? MO state affects what the employee values most in the moment, and questions that are sensitive to current context generate more useful information than standardized questions delivered uniformly. Additionally, think about the reinforcement history of the supervisory relationship: employees who have experienced their feedback as primarily corrective may need explicit reassurance that this conversation is safe before they will share genuine concerns.
Treat stay interview commitments the same way you treat clinical action items: write them down immediately, assign a completion date, and review at the follow-up check-in. A simple tracking log with the employee name, date of interview, commitments made, and follow-up date is sufficient. Some supervisors build this into their weekly task review; others keep a dedicated stay interview log. The critical behavior is the follow-up check-in at 30-60 days, where the supervisor explicitly reports on what was done in response to the interview. This closes the feedback loop and communicates that the process is genuine.
Turnover cost estimates for direct care staff in ABA typically range from $5,000 to $10,000 per departing employee when recruiting, onboarding, and productivity loss are included. A stay interview requires 45-60 minutes per employee per quarter. If quarterly stay interviews with a team of ten direct care staff prevent even one turnover per year, the return on the time investment is substantial. The harder-to-quantify clinical cost — disruption to client treatment continuity during transitions — makes the case even stronger. Organizations that have systematically implemented stay interview programs consistently report reduced turnover in the literature, making this a reasonable evidence-based investment.
Use BST: describe what a stay interview is and why it differs from supervision, model a complete stay interview with a colleague or in a role-play scenario, have the supervisor rehearse the interview with performance feedback before conducting a real one, and debrief after their first real stay interview with specific behavioral feedback. Common deficits to address include: moving too quickly to problem-solving before the employee has fully expressed their concern, asking leading questions that constrain the response, and failing to make specific action commitments at the end. Recording and reviewing mock interviews is useful for developing the open-ended follow-up question skills that make stay interviews productive.
Stay interview themes often have direct clinical implications. Staff who report inadequate clinical support — unclear program instructions, inconsistent feedback on implementation, no access to supervision when problems arise — are describing conditions that predict procedural integrity problems. Staff who report high emotional exhaustion are at elevated risk for reduced implementation fidelity, inconsistent reinforcer delivery, and avoidance of the most challenging client behaviors. Treating stay interview data as organizational safety data — not just an HR exercise — connects it to clinical quality outcomes and gives clinical leaders a reason to take it seriously beyond employee satisfaction.
Structure the interview to balance what is working alongside what is not. Starting with a genuine question about what the employee values most about their role establishes a constructive frame and generates information the supervisor can use to reinforce and protect those positive factors. When concerns emerge, use follow-up questions that move from problem identification to what a solution would look like: 'If that scheduling constraint were resolved, how would it change your experience?' This moves the conversation toward actionable information while still giving the employee full space to express their concerns. Ending with specific mutual commitments — from both the employee and supervisor — closes the session on a forward-looking note.
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Utilizing Stay Interviews to Increase Employee Engagement in ABA Organizations — Emily Jenkins · 1 BACB Supervision CEUs · $30
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.