How to Conduct Effective Employee Check Ins: A Checklist for Managers

In our blog and with our clients, we frequently address the importance of employee ‘check-ins’ or one-on-one meetings. Regardless of the term used – be it progress meetings, sit-downs, or other names – enhancing the frequency and quality of these performance conversations remains a top priority for most companies nowadays.

Various approaches exist across different companies regarding these check-ins – some enforce weekly check-ins for their employees, while others schedule them on an as-needed basis. Some companies require managers to conduct meetings after each project, and others set up formal check-ins periodically throughout the year. Despite the frequency differences, the fundamental purpose of these conversations remains constant: fostering open communication channels between managers and employees to effectively engage and manage performance.

The more employees and managers can communicate, the better they will be able to work together to accomplish goals, develop skills, and give/receive feedback. Although check-ins should appear relatively casual to employees, managers should follow a loose structure to ensure this time spent remains valuable and drives action.

We thought it would be handy to prepare a checklist of discussion points and conversation-starters that managers could use to make the most of check-ins with employees…

Conducting Effective 1-2-1 Meetings

Before the meeting: Prepare

Nothing is worse than going into a meeting with a manager that comes off as uninvested or unprepared. Take a couple of minutes to prepare before the meeting. Managers should easily access and skim past meeting notes and performance if they are using a central location or tool for goal tracking, feedback, and/or journal/meeting notes.

• Review any notes taken during the last meeting to get up to speed on any planned deliverables.
• Review the employee’s list of goals and projects to see if there are any due or running off course.
• Make a note of important department or company changes that should be discussed.
• Review any feedback sent/received to identify any discussion points.
• Unplug from other activities so the employee knows they have your complete focus.

During the Meeting: Possible Discussion Points

The advantage of regular check-ins with employees is that managers need not unleash a deluge of information in every meeting. They can instead pinpoint particular goals, projects, or coaching aspects to concentrate on during each session. Additionally, employees may take the lead in the conversation and direct the focus, which is even more beneficial.

In general, managers and employees should prioritise discussion topics depending on deadlines and progress. The content of these discussions will vary from one meeting to another.

Example Employee Review Points:

• Get the Conversation Flowing
  • Use conversation starters to engage the employee in conversation
  • Use open-ended questions to keep them talking
  • Let the employee steer the conversation but make sure you discuss any essential messages
• Goal/Project Updates
  • Discuss the status of short-term goals and long-term projects
  • Adjust/update existing goals with the employee
  • Discuss any challenges or lessons learned
  • Offer coaching and/or assistance for any issues
  • Discuss if any other priorities might affect the goal progress
  • Ensure all goals are still on track
  • Acknowledge any milestones or accomplishments
  • Discuss/confirm any new goals for the employee
• Recent Accomplishments
  • Acknowledge recent accomplishments and provide feedback
  • Ask the employee for any recent accomplishments
• Status of Training/Learning
  • Discuss any training items due/in progress
  • Ask the employee if there are any training requests
  • Ask if the employee feels they are getting enough feedback
  • Ask if the employee is learning from peers/mentors or if they would like to
  • Recommend training items to improve skills and further career
  • Discuss how training is/should be executed
• Company or Team Updates/News
  • Discuss any vital company/team updates or news
  • Confirm any action items needed
• Employee Ideas/Requests for change
  • Ask the employee for any ideas/input
  • Discuss any areas needing change (company, team, project etc.)
  • Ask the employee if your management style is effective for them and get suggestions for change
  • Discuss any overall roadblocks or distractions that might be affecting the employee
• Employee Career Development
  • Discuss employee’s career goals
  • Discuss how you can work together to achieve their career goals
  • Discuss opportunities and career paths for the employee
  • Set clear expectations for any lateral/upward movement
• Plan for the Week/Month/Quarter
  • Review the priorities for the short and long term

Conversation Starters: Continue the Chat

Some employees are more reluctant to speak up, but this doesn’t mean that a manager should do the bulk of the talking. There are simple ways to get the employee to engage and keep talking during the meeting.

Remember, this meeting is about them. The more they contribute to the conversation the better.

Here are some open-ended questions to get employees talking:

• Tell me about your week/month – what’s it been like?
• Tell me about what you’ve been working on.
• Where do you think I can be most helpful?
• Are you on track to meet the deadline?
• What areas are ahead of schedule?
• What questions do you have about this area of responsibility or project?
• How are you going to approach this?
• What have you learned about this area of responsibility or project?
• What didn’t go as you had hoped? Why?
• What can you/we do differently next time?
• What suggestions do you have?

Here are some tried and true conversation starters to keep employees talking:

“Go on…..”

“Tell me more…”

“Why do you say that..”

“How do you mean…”

“Can you give me an example…”

“What else…”

At the End of the Meeting: Summary points

Before the employee leaves the meeting, spend a few moments summarising the key discussion points. This will help remind employees of any action items and reinforce any acknowledgment or coaching tips provided. Ask the employee if anything was missed and remind them of when the next meeting will be.

After the Meeting: Document the Details

This small step is significant and often skipped over, but it can make a big difference. Take 2-5 minutes after each meeting to record key discussion points, action items or feedback. This will help kick-start the next meeting and serve as a useful log when managers need to review performance trends. Keep these notes in a centralised location. A performance feedback and journaling tool like emPerform tag can serve this purpose nicely.

We polled our clients and found that managers who made 1-2 notes about each employee per month shaved 50% of the time off of entering year-end comments during the annual review – that is because they aren’t sitting trying to remember key milestones or trends in behaviour.

Self-Reflecting After a Meeting

Take a few moments after each meeting to evaluate how you did. Even the best managers should strive to improve their communication and meeting skills.

• Did you talk too much/not enough?
• Did you actively listen?
• Did you ask questions?
• Did you acknowledge the employee’s feelings?
• Did you paraphrase essential items to confirm understanding?
• Did you provide practical coaching tips?
• Were you distracted in the meeting?
• Do you feel the meeting was valuable?
• Did you discuss all the critical points?
• What could you do to improve the next meeting?

In essence, regular check-ins with employees are imperative to ensure clarity, offer coaching, and provide the necessary support for employees to thrive. Though finding time in the day can be a challenge for many managers, these check-ins are time well-invested and will yield benefits in the long run for the manager, the employee, the team, and the company.

Align, Develop & Retain Top Talent with emPerform

By following these tips, you can create a workplace where employees are motivated and engaged, which will lead to improved retention. Plus, by using emPerform, you can streamline your employee performance management and boost employee motivation and retention.

Book a demo

How to Give Constructive Feedback That Employees Will Actually Receive

Delivering feedback isn’t always an easy task, it can be filled with challenges, questions and awkward conversations, but it’s extremely important to know how to deliver difficult feedback in a positive manner – something we like to call, constructive criticism.

Feedback is crucial when it comes to employee development and business expansion – a key factor to the progression of employees and healthy workplace constructs. Without feedback, many employees won’t know if they are under-performing or even over-performing – this may cause them to be stuck in a limbo of uncertainty, which isn’t going to harvest motivation.

Here are our top tips to consider when delivering negative or challenging feedback and how to turn that situation into one that will benefit your employees and business in a positive manner…

Delivering Feedback at the Right Time & Place

Feedback can cause some awkward conversations, as many people can find such conversations confrontational or intimidating – approaching them with sensitivity and grace may place you in a better position to deliver feedback in a positive manner.

It’s important not to deliver feedback in front of others, or at least not in a large group setting, where an employee can already be stressed or overwhelmed. Instead, find a private time and place where you can calmy instigate a conversation and put your employee at ease.

Start with Positive Feedback

Before you begin with the negatives, take some time to acknowledge the efforts and strengths that your employee has developed, think about where they started and where they are now, or highlight the things they are doing well within the role and that you appreciate.

Doing so will soften the blow of negative feedback, and will also make your employee feel appreciated and valued, as there is no doubt that they will be putting time and effort into your business which can sometimes escape the net.

Starting with the positives will show that there is a balance between the actions your employee is smashing, and those they need to work on – it’s not all doom and gloom!

Provide Specific Feedback Examples

Feedback that isn’t specific can seem like a drop in the ocean – it will definitely get lost and non-actionable pointers will disappear as soon as you’ve mentioned them.

Don’t just say “your work is not good enough.” Instead, be specific about what the employee is doing wrong and how they can improve. For example, you might say “I noticed that you missed a few deadlines this week. Can you tell me what happened?” or “I’m concerned about the quality of your work on the recent project. Can we talk about how we can improve it?”

Specific feedback will allow you to provide an employee with clear examples about where they might’ve gone wrong and also create a clear trajectory for progress.

Offer Suggestions for Improvement

Feedback is great, but it’s easy to point out the problems without offering solutions, and then what? Most of the time, problems without solutions will not be actioned upon, as your employee is probably going to look towards you for guidance on what the next steps may be.

Don’t just tell them what they’re doing wrong – instead, offer suggestions on how they can improve, put plans in action and offer a schedule or timeline of events, whereby both you and the employee will know exactly what to expect if the improvements haven’t been made or progressed.

Receive Feedback Yourself

Although the session between you and the employee should focus on their development and challenges, you should also be open to hearing their perspective. Feedback isn’t a one-way street and it should never be, as back-and-forth conversations are some of the most valuable moments as a professional.

Be willing to listen and address concerns without becoming defensive or challenging.

Giving negative feedback can be a difficult task, but it’s important to do it in a way that is constructive and helpful. By following the tips in this blog post, you can learn how to give negative feedback in a positive way that will help your employees improve their performance.

Remember to choose the right time and place for the conversation, remain positive, deliver it with clear and specific examples and be open to feedback yourself.

Align, Develop & Retain Top Talent with emPerform

By following these tips, you can create a workplace where employees are motivated and engaged, which will lead to improved retention. Plus, by using emPerform, you can streamline your employee performance management and boost employee motivation and retention.

Book a demo

Performance Review Rating Scales: To Keep or Not to Keep?

In recent times, there has been a noticeable trend towards abandoning performance rating scales in favour of performance appraisals and management centred around meaningful conversations and ongoing feedback. Renowned organisations such as Adobe®, Deloitte®, Microsoft®, Accenture®, and even GE® have all made the commitment to move away from relying on a single numerical rating to evaluate performance.

At first glance, this approach seems logical and promising, however, the reality on the ground tells a different story, suggesting that this approach may not be effective or suitable for many companies. Simply discarding ratings without careful consideration of the underlying processes and implementation can yield disappointing results.

It is important to examine the details of these “no rating” processes and recognise that many prominent organisations, which discarded traditional ratings, also introduced a series of new initiatives and procedures to engage their workforce and enhance performance development. Therefore, organisations seeking to eliminate ratings and replace them with mere comment boxes should not be surprised to find that this alone does not lead to significant improvements.

So, here’s the question: Are we disregarding a potentially valuable system along with its flaws? Is it possible to establish an ideal “rating” system that allows for fair and accurate performance measurement without adversely affecting employee engagement, while still providing the necessary metrics for performance monitoring and future planning? Our answer is positive but…

Yes, it is indeed possible to optimise how ratings are defined and utilised in order to minimise any negative impact on engagement and performance. However, for these ratings to truly benefit employees and the organisation, they must be accompanied by a redesigned performance management process.

Now, let’s delve into an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of ratings and their impact on performance.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Performance Ratings

Negatives of Performance Ratings

It’s clear that there has been a love-hate relationship with ratings over the years. They can be subjective and the less-than-ideal rating scales can be quite confusing. Our experience tells us that people are also biased when handing out ratings and they tend to be more “nice” than “accurate”.

So what do the numbers say? What is the actual impact on businesses that use ‘ratings’, you may wonder?

Here is our case study: We recently hosted a great webinar through HR.com where host, Edie Goldberg presented a case study. Edie stated that Ely Lilly shared some interesting research results that were part of their own business case for eliminating ratings and moving to a more continuous performance management process.  The data they share has to do with their employee engagement scores and the impact that ratings had on these engagement scores.

The research reflected the impact on employee engagement when making a once-a-year review – based on monthly pulse surveys, they noticed an interesting trend over the years. Immediately following the performance rating process, there was a significant drop in engagement for 80% of the employee population. That drop stayed down for up to 3 months after the ratings were given out. A drill-down on this data also revealed that it was employees who were rated a ‘4’ or lower (based on a standard 5-point scale) that had the biggest drop in engagement.

Surprisingly, even the employees with a rating of 5 still experienced a dip in engagement, even though they recovered from the drop more quickly. They determined their rating process was causing a drop in engagement and performance for almost an entire quarter.

The data is self-explanatory – if ratings are causing a drop in engagement and performance, you’d think to rid of them, right? Not quite…

Let’s dive into the details before making any decisions – Eli Lilly also states that these ratings are the only form of feedback given in a 12-month period. There is no question that employees experience a level of shock and subsequent loss in engagement when feedback and ratings are saved up for 12 months and then suddenly thrown at them, or when they are given one number that defines an entire year’s worth of work and accomplishments.

Even Eli Lilly concluded that decreases in employee engagement after being rated has as much to do with the initial shock as it does with the ‘labels’.

Positives of Performance Ratings

Although they can seem intimidating, ratings can deliver some value and it’s important to acknowledge the positives that come with performance ratings. Ratings offer a quantifiable view of performance – this means an organisation can report on its talent base and use trends to plan for improvements.

Which managers are most effective? Which employees are most likely to become leaders? Are there severe skill gaps we need to address? These are examples of queries that performance ratings may answer.

Some can argue that the ratings themselves are not accurate and thus any data cannot be trusted but overall, we are seeing organisations refusing the let go of any let alone all visibility into their largest investment and determinant of success – talent. Instead, companies are opting to improve the accuracy and validity of ‘ratings’ so any data can be used for decision-making.

Besides providing data and metrics, it has been shown that ratings also provide a clear indicator of relative performance, which makes it easier for managers to focus development discussions and helps employees link pay decisions to results.

The Reality of Performance Ratings

Performance ratings, in their various forms, serve as valuable tools within companies. However, the widespread dislike towards ratings stems not from flaws of the tools themselves, but rather from the inadequate provision of suitable tools and information for proper utilisation.

Consequently, ratings are often distributed inconsistently across the organisation, leading to predictable outcomes – managers dislike assigning them, and employees are dissatisfied with receiving them.

Achieving a Balance of Performance Ratings

Typically, a uniform rating scale is employed for evaluating all aspects of an employee’s performance, including goals and competencies. This frequently involves a 5-point rating scale (5 – Outstanding, 4 – Exceeds Expectations, 3 – Meets Expectations, 2 – Needs Improvement, 1 – Unacceptable). However, applying this scale to certain evaluation criteria proves problematic and unreasonable to expect managers and employees to do so.

For example, goals cannot be classified as ‘Outstanding’ or ‘Needs Improvement’; they are better described as ‘Achieved,’ ‘In Progress,’ ‘Deferred,’ or ‘Cancelled.’ The same principle applies to development items or accomplishments. The negative impact of these ratings on employee engagement likely arises from forcing employees into an arbitrary quality scale for matters that are more objectively defined.

Our recommendation is to redefine rating scales, tailoring them to the specific criteria being evaluated.

Let’s discard the term ‘rating’ entirely and instead adopt a text-based ‘status’ scale as a replacement for the 5-point ‘rating’ scale. This shift enables employees to be assessed based on their actions rather than subjective assessments of quality. Consequently, tracking can occur without the negative stigma typically associated with ratings.

To further enhance this approach, users should only see the text-based ratings, while a numeric scale can be assigned on the backend to facilitate effortless reporting

Goal Status Scale

Development Item Status Scale

• 100% Complete
• 75% to 99% Complete
• 50% to 74% Complete
• Less than 50% Completed
• Not Started

For areas of evaluation that have to do with soft skills and require a little more subjectivity, we suggest using a behaviour-based scale where employees are evaluated on the frequency of said behaviours being observed.

Observation Frequency Scale

Remove the Stigma of ‘Meets’

Everyone wants to progress within their role. This is why employees can get frustrated if they are shot into a ‘Meets Expectations’ category – vocabulary such as ‘satisfactory’ and ‘meets’ can come off as ‘just about good enough’, which isn’t great in the minds of many employees.

We suggest using an ‘observed’ or ‘achieved’ rating scale (see above) so that an employee can feel perfectly happy and proud about their performance.

Avoid Numbers

We suggest displaying only text ratings instead of having numbers or text and numbers – this way, employees are not associated with a number but instead a relative ‘category’ of a performer. This allows everyone involved to focus on the behaviours and observations instead of getting too hung up on a number. If you are in the process of finding a new performance management system, be sure to check if they can accommodate text-based ratings with a defined scale on the back end for reporting.

Ghost Ratings

Something we are seeing more and more of is the concept of ‘ghost ratings’ where a manager is asked to provide an overall rating for an employee that the employee does not see. This allows organisations to report on the status of performance and potential while keeping the review open and conversation-based for the employee.

If you are currently looking into performance management systems, be sure to ask if the forms can accommodate hidden sections and ratings for the manager.

Remove the Shock-Factor & Provide Consistency

A little feedback goes a long way. The research presented above (in the case of Eli Lilly) was based on organisations engaging in performance management once a year. There is no doubt that employees experience a level of shock when feedback and ratings are saved up for 12 months and then thrown at them.

It is essential that organisations remove this shock by re-tooling traditional once-a-year reviews with continuous feedback and status updates. Quarterly meetings, performance logs, ongoing coaching and feedback are ways to not only engage managers and employees in performance-boosting dialogue throughout the year, but it removes the air of mystery surrounding appraisals. Both parties enter into the final review knowing more or less what to expect and the conversation can look ahead instead of scrambling to come to an agreement about the past.

Although the idea of managers providing consistent feedback sounds easy, the reality is that ongoing feedback is probably the most important part of an effective performance management strategy and yet it is the most difficult to enforce and monitor.

We have dedicated many posts to that very topic but the main understanding is this – train managers to give effective feedback, create a culture of feedback, encourage organisation-wide feedback and lead by example from the top. If you would like to learn more about how to implement an ongoing feedback strategy in your company, click here to watch our webinar.

Prioritise the Future

Building upon the previous points, recent research indicates that overhauled performance reviews, which prioritise future-focused discussions rather than dwelling on the past, appear to be the most effective approach. When employees receive more frequent updates on their progress throughout the year, and the year-end “review” is treated as a formal opportunity for reflection and development, it brings greater value to both employees and managers. Gone are the days when it feels like a nerve-wracking parents’ evening in school.

All in all, it is indeed feasible for organisations to mitigate the adverse impact of ratings while still reaping their benefits, however, it’s important to remember that the culture and specific requirements of your organisation should shape how the evaluation criteria is defined and measured.

By aligning the evaluation process with your organisation’s unique needs, you can establish a more effective and tailor-made approach to performance management.

Analyse what process is best for you and your company, and don’t forget, ratings don’t have to be harsh and basic. We wish you ‘happy rating’ from EmPerform!

Align, Develop & Retain Top Talent with emPerform

emPerform includes the tools needed to identify and engage high-performing teams. With online reviews, year-round goal tracking, ongoing feedback, pulse surveys & complete merit & bonus management – you can create a performance program that drives engagement & results.

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