Good employees are hard to find, and they can be easy to lose. But there's a simple tool every manager can use to ensure that star performers and solid contributors alike will feel energized, engaged, and excited - and that they will give you fair warning if they're unhappy. It's called the stay interview, and this book is the manager's definitive guide, written by the women who created the concept.

The idea is simple: ask people how they like their jobs and what would keep them there. Worried that your talented people will want things you can't deliver, like more money or a big promotion? Kaye and Jordan-Evans have a simple four-step process for dealing with that. Feel just plain awkward about doing stay interviews? They explain how to create an atmosphere that will make the interview more comfortable and provide dozens of suggested questions and icebreakers, as well as tips for easing any performance anxiety you might feel. Think you don't have time? They offer all kinds of options for where, when, and how you can do stay interviews, from folding them into other business processes to doing them casually, like on a walk to get a cup of coffee.

Stay interviews prevent exit interviews. They cost nothing, and the price of not doing them - in lost talent and time - can be huge. Now that you have the most practical, authoritative, soup-to-nuts guide available, you have no excuse. Just ask!