The Best Retention Interview Happens Before Someone Quits

Scotty Wristen owns WE Electric in Abilene, Texas, and he has lost five workers to data center work in the Abilene area. "Some of them were guys that I've had for eight years, five years. They came, they got trained, and they left to go out there," Wristen says, per The Texas Tribune. "I don't blame them."

By his own account he can pay $20 an hour, and the data centers pay $35 plus overtime and per diem, a $15 gap that no talk with a foreman is going to close. Gene Lantrip, an Abilene homebuilder, told the Tribune his houses now take two months longer to finish. "My electrician, he lost two of his lead men and several of his helpers to the data center," Lantrip says.

Pay is one reason people leave. The other reasons tend to come out in an exit interview, after the notice is already in.

Most people who quit were never asked to stay

Gallup surveyed 717 U.S. employees who had voluntarily left an employer in the past year and published the results in a July 2024 report, updated in February 2026. Forty-two percent said their manager or organization could have done something to prevent it. Forty-five percent said no manager or other leader had talked with them about their job satisfaction, performance or future in the three months before they left. Among those who did get that conversation, only 17% discussed what it would take for them to stay.

Thirty-six percent say they talked to no one before they decided to resign.

Gallup's sample is national, not a construction sample. The report's authors, Corey Tatel and Ben Wigert, wrote that "the manager is responsible for initiating the right conversations before their employees make the decision to leave their jobs." Dick Finnegan, CEO of the Finnegan Institute, wrote a SHRM-published book on the subject, and he defines a stay interview as "a structured discussion a leader conducts with each individual employee to learn the specific actions she must take to strengthen that employee's engagement and retention with the organization."

Construction loses new hires in the first 90 days

The AGC and NCCER 2026 Workforce Survey, released September 3 with 1,830 respondents, found that 83% of firms had at least some turnover among new field employees in their first 90 days. The reason given most often was a mismatch between what workers expected and what the work is; physical demands came second, and travel or scheduling requirements came after that. One of the responses contractors listed was "regular check-ins." A better first-day orientation sets expectations before the first shift, and a check-in later on is how a foreman finds out whether the job matched what the worker was told.

Electricians topped the survey's list of hard-to-fill crafts, with 81% of firms that had electrician openings reporting difficulty filling them.

In August 2026, construction recorded 152,000 quits, a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.8%, according to preliminary BLS JOLTS data. "Just 99,000 construction workers were laid off for the month, the fewest in any month since the start of this data series in December 2000," Anirban Basu, chief economist at Associated Builders and Contractors, says in ABC's release. Quits outnumbered layoffs that month by roughly 53,000.

Ace Electric's travel crews turn over fastest

Mindy Bates is HR director at Ace Electric in Valdosta, Georgia, which runs data center work with both local teams and travel teams. "The travel team data center work does have the highest turnover particularly in the field and the electricians and helpers level," Bates says, speaking at an AGC webinar reported by Construction Dive. "You cannot hire your way out of this situation," she says. Ace brings new hires to its Ace University building for a weeklong orientation on safety and career paths before they go out to a first project.

Katie Lane, chief talent officer at Clayco, calls her company's approach "re-recruiting," meaning it keeps courting the people already on the payroll, with onboarding support that runs six months to a year and senior executives visiting sites, HR Dive reported. "Nobody's going to win retention on compensation alone," Lane says.

What to ask about, in the worker's own terms

Keep it apart from a performance review or anything disciplinary, say up front that nobody will promise anything on the spot, and have the foreman walk in knowing the current assignment, the normal shift, the training record, the end date and whatever is confirmed about the next project. If the next job is not confirmed, say so. "We don't know yet" is better than a promise nobody has approved. Never open by asking whether they plan to quit.

Start with what works, the part of the job they would hate to see changed; it tends to point at a good foreman habit or a material setup worth copying. Ask where they lose time for reasons the project could fix, and push for specifics. An answer like "communication" gives the foreman nothing to fix, while "the drawing revision changed but the print in the gang box didn't" names something that can be fixed before the next shift. Ask when help from the supervisor shows up too late.

Ask what skill they want next. Joel Dutton, now preconstruction manager at Evans General Contractors, started as a welder, and his employer sent him to a training program where he learned pipefitting, Construction Dive reported. "Picking up that additional skillset opened the door to me becoming a foreman," Dutton says. Some of the best learning is informal. Corey Silverman, a safety specialist at Highwire, a Burlington, Massachusetts, software company, says he started learning once he asked a superintendent whether he could come along on a walk, according to Construction Dive. "That's when I really started to learn," Silverman says. Check the real prerequisites before offering a path. Nearly 30% of craft workers report no craft training at all, according to a January 2026 NCCER report.

Ask which schedule or travel fact they need sooner. They don't owe a reason. "To find a place for childcare dropoff at 4 a.m. to be on a job site at 6 a.m. is tough," says Lyn Hewitt, VP of human resources at Clark Construction Co. in Detroit, in Construction Dive. For travel hands, a rotation planned around home time is part of the answer. The talk about the next assignment should cover trade, task, shift, location, duration and credentials, and it should keep confirmed facts apart from wishes.

Last, ask whether anything should go through a private route. Diana Eidenshink, president of the ACE Mentor Program of America, counts clean portable restrooms on job sites among the basics the industry has improved since the 1990s, and says her group had not considered the issue until a woman raised it. "We never thought about it until we had a brave woman come and talk to us about it," Eidenshink says, per Construction Dive.

Sort every answer before the worker leaves

Anything the foreman can fix on this assignment gets an owner and a check date. Pay, travel terms, a training seat or a next-project commitment goes up to whoever decides it, with a date for the answer. If nobody has the authority or the opening, say that plainly and write down why. Safety, harassment, discrimination and payroll concerns leave the retention file and go to their own procedure.

Read the list back to the worker before the talk ends.

OSHA's worker participation guidance says to respond to reports promptly, offer an anonymous option and "report back to workers routinely and frequently about action taken." A hazard raised in a stay conversation goes into that process the same day. For staffed W-2 crews, the staffing firm and the host employer "share responsibility for ensuring worker safety and health," per OSHA's temporary worker page. The EEOC says employers should take "immediate and appropriate action when an employee complains," so the foreman writes down the worker's words and passes them to HR.

Pay for the time and make it routine

Under Department of Labor Fact Sheet #22, a meeting can be left off the clock only if it is outside normal hours, voluntary, not job related and done with no other work at the same time; a talk about someone's job fails that test, so hourly workers get paid for it. Run these talks on a regular schedule, the same way for everyone, and keep them to the job itself.

The foremen who would run these talks often have not been trained to. NCCER, citing a 2018 Construction Industry Institute study, says fewer than 48% of foremen report training in effective communication.

What a short crew costs a big job

Keeping a crew costs less than buying one back late in a project. In April 2018, a report Georgia Power filed with the Georgia Public Service Commission on Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 said Bechtel "must attract the necessary labor force to support the project completion goals," according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Four months later, co-owner Oglethorpe Power told investors the cost to finish would rise by approximately $1.5 billion, in part because of "craft labor incentives," according to its second-quarter investor update.

Sources

1. Data centers, Texas home builders compete for electricians, The Texas Tribune, Apr. 28, 2026.
2. 42% of Employee Turnover Is Preventable but Often Ignored, Gallup, July 9, 2024, updated Feb. 16, 2026.
3. What Is a Stay Interview and How to Conduct One, Finnegan Institute, accessed Sept. 29, 2026.
4. 2026 Workforce Survey Analysis, Associated General Contractors of America and NCCER, Sept. 3, 2026.
5. Table 4. Quits levels and rates by industry and region, seasonally adjusted, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sept. 29, 2026.
6. Construction Layoffs Fall to All-Time Low in August, Associated Builders and Contractors, Sept. 29, 2026.
7. Labor squeeze prompts revised construction workforce strategies, Construction Dive, Sept. 14, 2026.
8. Employers offer loan repayment, 're-recruiting' to attract skilled labor, HR Dive, Aug. 28, 2026.
9. 'There's got to be a better way': What Gen Z brings to construction, Construction Dive, Aug. 28, 2026.
10. New Report: Craft Training Remains Powerful, Yet Underutilized Tool for Contractors, NCCER, Jan. 26, 2026.
11. 'Not just a hope and a wish': How contractors can tap underrepresented communities, Construction Dive, Sept. 1, 2026.
12. Safety Management: Worker Participation, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed Sept. 29, 2026.
13. Protecting Temporary Workers, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed Sept. 29, 2026.
14. Harassment, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accessed Sept. 29, 2026.
15. Fact Sheet #22: Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, revised July 2008.
16. Why New Construction Foremen Struggle and How to Set Them Up for Success, NCCER, Aug. 24, 2026.
17. Georgia Power says construction at Plant Vogtle half way complete, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Apr. 20, 2018.
18. 2nd Quarter 2018 Investor Update (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1), Oglethorpe Power Corporation via SEC EDGAR, Aug. 16, 2018.

Featured image: Green Office Engro, via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).