Employees spend as many as 31 unproductive hours in meetings every month. Among these, one of the biggest struggles managers have is making one-on-one meetings fit into everyone’s schedules.
Common mistakes managers make with their one-on-one meetings include not preparing for the meeting, doing all the talking so the employee doesn’t get to have their say, focusing too much on work updates, rushing meetings, and even skipping them altogether.
To turn your one-on-ones into productive and engaging meetings, we’ve put together this brief guide that helps you design one-on-ones that focus on helping your team members grow and handle any challenge.
One of the biggest mistakes managers make when starting to hold their one-on-ones is to assume these are general meetings.
In reality, you want to establish one core purpose for every single meeting you schedule. You can do this by creating an agenda to guide the meeting. This ensures you won’t be missing out on important aspects that are making your employee feel unhappy at work or are affecting their performance.
Long-term goals to take into account for your next one-on-one meeting include:
Break these into smaller goals for every weekly one-on-one meeting so you can spot any struggles or feelings that employees might be hesitant to share directly. For increased transparency, share the meeting’s purpose and expectations beforehand so the employee can also prepare any questions they might have. After all, one-on-ones are a bidirectional conversation.
Yobs helps you reach these business goals through a people-first approach. This psychology-led platform gives you direct insights into how an employee is feeling and if their behavior has changed over the past few months.
You can use this information to check on your team’s wellbeing and prevent burnout before it sets in. This allows you to bring employee experience to the forefront, reduce churn, and get back managers’ time. We recommend doing this type of assessment every 2-3 months to inform the quarterly performance review. Alternatively, you can hold them once a year as part of your annual employee performance and happiness review.
As you create your agenda, divide your one-on-ones into manageable chunks. Five must-have stages of the meeting include:
Tip: For each of these steps, dedicate no more than 10-12 minutes to avoid overextending the meeting or not having time to go over everything.
There are dozens of things that could go wrong with improper meeting timing — from rushing through meetings to holding them when an employee is too tired or distracted.
To prevent this, talk to every individual to see which day and time they’d prefer. Some might opt for the end of a workday so they’re not distracted by work while others will prefer to hold them the first thing in the morning over a cup of coffee.
One-on-one scheduling is also important with remote workers from different time zones. Even if the majority of work is done asynchronously, employees should get 2-3 hours of daily time zone overlap with the rest of their teammates and managers. This time can be used both for one-on-ones and other meetings as well as for real-time feedback and task collaboration.
Regardless of your choice, do a double check to make sure your employee’s day won’t be overcrowded by meetings. You’re looking at no more than 3 meetings/day including the one-on-one you want to schedule.
The challenges you discuss during a one-on-one meeting should always be checked upon and re-evaluated weeks and even months after the meeting.
As a rule of thumb, you can end every one-on-one with an actionable small task either for you or the employee. For example, if a team member is struggling with loneliness while working from home, you could go over the solutions over the next few days and get back with a proposal.
Tip: Take and share the meeting notes so you won’t forget what you need to do by the time next week’s meeting comes around.
For a more continuous approach to your talent development process, record one-on-ones and use them as input for regular talent assessments. Yobs gives you a useful analysis of potential performance risks and employee engagement indicators by making use of the meeting’s video or audio recording. The final development reports give you more insights into how you can overcome performance risks, helping you maximize employee productivity and potential.
You can only make one-on-ones work towards the goals you’ve set by going through all of the steps above.
Every now and then you’ll want to briefly go through everything that happened during past one-on-ones to see what needs to be improved. You can even record these meetings to get a more accurate look at potential mistakes you could be making, like talking too much or getting into work details when you should be looking for potential sources of disengagement.
Another option is to directly ask employees how they’d like their one-on-ones to look like. For accurate insights, consider sending a quick anonymous survey where employees are more likely to share their honest thoughts and wishes.