The Significance of One-On-One Meetings

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” – Simon Sinek

Building a good rapport is a fundamental technique to gain an employee’s trust and confidence. It is a basic rule for a manager to have an open and regular communication with the employees to keep them happy and motivated. There should be an activity for them to express themselves after those long working hours. This makes them engage more with a pumped up feeling to contribute. These one-on-ones are so valuable and an employee can bring you a buck more.

How this helps

One-on-ones provide an obvious feedback on various issues through direct interaction with the employee. As a whole, you can gather definite aspects, also sometimes employees bring out loopholes thereby you can take steps to improvise on them. These surely play a key role in the growth of the organization.

This helps a manager in:

• Keeping his people focused and engaged
• Creating a room for an open discussion
• The excellent mechanism for the flow of ideas and information
• Understanding the opinions of the employee

One on one meeting is great for team members in:

• Having an opportunity to get inputs and learn
• Strengthening relationship with their manager
• Expressing their views and issues that bother them
• Re-aligning themselves with the team and company goals

Millennials love one-on-ones:

• Asking questions to foster communication also to break the ice.
• Communication should be both ways which mean you shouldn’t be dominating the discussion.
• Linking up with stats of performance and summary of the previous meeting would help in easy flow and a better understanding of information.

How To Kickstart The Perfect One On One Meetings

If you are totally unaware of these one-on-one meetings, then you should really make up mind to start them. Also, you need a planned approach to have a successful one. There are few things to keep in mind to avoid a few predicaments.

“Quality is more important than quantity” – Having so many meetings won’t get you anything if there is no ‘proper orientation and agenda’ towards it.

Recurring meeting with each employee

Every employee needs to have a one-on-one meeting with their reporting manager. For a manager, there could be different subordinates such as staff, veterans, millennials or low-level managers. It should be seen that there is a right frequency for meeting each person. Sometimes, it might become difficult to reach out to all of them. Hence, there should be a definite planning.

• Team Size :- The more the size of your team, the lesser it becomes to meet the same person every time for a one-on-one. Managing a bigger team becomes a constraint. Also, realize that with proper scheduling there will be time left to cover this gap. Avoiding topics that aren’t really necessary during the meeting would leave time to catch up with others.
• Millennials or Veterans :- A new employee or recently promoted existing employee in the company needs coaching and guidance regarding their roles and responsibilities. So, you need to make time for meetings with them as frequent as possible (ideally every week or two). Change the frequency of meeting depending on their roles and their familiarity with it.
• Your Schedule :- As a manager if you travel a lot or busy in other meetings then it limits your interaction with the team. You need to schedule such that you can meet them at least a month otherwise, you will miss out on a lot of valuable information from them. Also, it creates a bad impression as not giving them a voice to express. So always make sure to adjust your calendar for them

Planning them right

Now that you’ve got an idea on how to conduct one-on-one often, you need to set some things up regarding its characteristics.

• Meeting Duration :- If you want to squeeze out full value from one-on-one meetings then you got to invest your time. It should neither be too long nor too short. A minimum of 30 minutes to a maximum of 1 hour would be the ideal duration for the meeting. If your time doesn’t support, then reschedule it to another time but don’t cancel it.
• Place :- All the discussions could not be done at the desk. Sometimes employees might feel insecure talking about some issues. So, having the conversation in private (like in conference room, going to the café or eating together) will encourage them to open up even more.

Announcing the New One-On-One Plan to Team 

Usually, people create a fear in them whenever they come to know that there’s meeting. They feel so attacked thinking that it’s about something they’ve done wrong. It’s the manager’s duty to take that way by giving them announcements with clearly stated objectives. This way it would be easier for employee afterward and would get better with a series of meetings.

Do’s & Don’ts:

• Don’t Schedule Spontaneously :- The employee should be notified prior to the date of the meeting. Make a proper schedule that fits yours and your employee’s time and to maintain the frequency of meeting the same employee on a recurring period.
• Be Talkative & Friendly :- When in meeting blur the lines between employer and employee by posing pleasant questions and being a good listener. Be the talkative person instead of giving place to awkward silence. Do not dominate the discussion, let your employee take over and see how issues are reflected honestly. It makes them feel more secure, and you will have their trust and confidence.
• Bring out other topics :- You need to create an interest in them. Talk about their career interests and development, give guidance or try helping them out instead of asking status updates, projects progress and all. You should effectively utilize the time by completely involving each other in it.

KEKA is one of the best HRMS portal available in the market. With KEKA you can arrange the meetings with employees for a specific date, time, duration with ease and can also edit afterward. It also provides flexibility of storing and viewing the past reports of previous one on one meetings.