Season 2 Episode 2: Stay Interviews - with Chief Inspector Mike Russell, Greater Manchester Police
Episode Summary
In this episode, Sheila Lord and Dr Jacqui Wilmshurst talk to Mike Russell, the Chief Inspector of Greater Manchester Police, about his innovative approach to retention and well-being in the police force.
Mike shares how he implemented stay interviews, and created a psychologically safe way to engage with officers who are considering leaving the job, and how this has resulted in significant savings and improved morale.
What You’ll Learn
What are stay interviews and how they differ from exit interviews
How to create a psychologically safe space for honest and open conversations
What are the benefits of stay interviews for both the organisation and the individual
How to conduct stay interviews effectively and what questions to ask
What are the challenges and opportunities of stay interviews in the police context
Transcript Extract
Dr Jacqui Wilmshurst: In the world of workplace well-being, we know there’s a lot going on.
And there’s a lot going on that’s the same over and over again and we like to challenge that and we like to bring to you things that are different and are successful and are and are basically going to push the edge of what we’re doing around workplace well-being to make it more proactive and more useful to all those involved. So, Mike’s here today to talk about something that started in Greater Manchester just over a year ago and has so far been a raging success and I’ll say no more about it other than to say go for it.
Mike, please tell us all about it.
Mike Russell: OK. Thanks very much. Thank you for inviting me to your podcast. It’s the first time I’ve done a podcast, so I’m interested to see what this is like. So yeah, so I’m a police officer. I’ve been a police officer for nearly two decades now, and most of my career has been operational.
In the last sort of 15 months, I went into workforce development role and was asked to look at retention and this is probably something that’s become more important in police, as you’ll have seen in.
You may know from the press around the numbers leaving policing as a whole.
I came up with sort of 6 steps to improve retention and one of those steps was something called stay interviews, which I don’t think is particularly well known.
There’ll be some organisations that probably use it, but it’s certainly a first for British policing to look at stay interviews, which are different, to exit interviews . The purpose of stay interviews is to talk to those that are thinking that policing might not be for them.
And we talk to people on all ranges of the spectrum, from people that have resigned and they’re just working their notice to those that are in much earlier stages of the leave process, such as those who are thinking that the job may not be for them.
And they then get what we call a stay interview, which we can go into later if that’s of interest. But the key thing around the stay interviews is conducted in a psychologically safe space.
And I think that is the biggest impact that we can have is allowing people to talk freely and and for me psychological safety’s around that freedom and safety to express yourself, ask questions, say how you’re feeling, maybe ask some questions around the work, the workplace, be able to, you know, be vulnerable without fear of damaging your reputation or affecting your career or just affecting your standing within the team. And that’s been a massive success.
And we can measure the success of these interviews and can see that we’ve saved millions of pounds for GMP in people that would have left the force
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