Check-ins provide a real time view of engagement and productivity that other feedback methods just can’t match. But beyond that, there are some clear ways that businesses benefit from having regular employee check-ins. Employees feel connected and able to make decisions. Managers know how their people are feeling and performing. And HR can ditch the annual engagement survey!
Regular check-ins give employees autonomy
All the way back in 2015, Gallup discovered they only half of employees reported a strong understanding of their responsibilities. However, they also found that a manager’s relationship with their employees massively influenced engagement. Specifically, employees are more likely to be engaged if they:
- Agree with their manager’s work priorities.
- You hold them accountable for their performance.
- Could approach their manager with questions.
This led Gallup to propose three elements of employee engagement:
- Achievement: A sense of accomplishment is what drives employees. This requires you to set clear goals and expectations, as well as staff recognition processes.
- Accountability: You have to follow through once expectations are set. They do this by making sure employees are accountable for their responsibilities and mistakes.
- Accessibility: Employees are more motivated when they are able to get support or advice from their manager.
Over 2021, Gallup surveyed employees working through the COVID-19 pandemic. 84% who reported getting meaningful feedback within the last week were engaged. And just to be clear, meaningful feedback is an important distinction. It’s not enough to go through the motions each week, so keep the three As in mind. If you want to keep your people engaged, then they need to understand why their work matters. They need to know how it contributes to goals. Regular employee check-ins can help you achieve this, while guiding staff performance and long-term development.
Check-ins are also your staff’s chance to speak up. They give staff the chance to raise issues and concerns. But they also provide chances to share success stories and recognize the hard work of others.
Most goals are typically set-and-forget. But OKRs and goals stay top of mind because they’re viewed – and reviewed – often during employee check-ins: that’s a huge business benefit. Employees stay aligned to the business goals, and understand how their work contributes to business success.
Employee check-ins move the dial faster
The faster we receive feedback on our performance, the quicker we can pivot or make improvements. A OnePoll survey in 2021 asked why employees stayed with a business. Feedback was top at 53%. Joblist found that over a third of full time employees want more feedback.
Employee engagement, performance and well being have one thing in common. They all rely on building good habits both from employees and their managers in order to improve. Regularity is vital when trying to model and promote habits.
Employee check-ins keep your remote workers motivated
Remote work is on the rise. But this means that employers get let in-person time. There’s a real need for new approaches to manager / employee communications. But regular check-ins can be the perfect tool.
While consistent, structured feedback is important for the development of any employee, it’s even more important for staff working remotely. The lack of regular face-to-face interaction makes it harder for remote staff to stay in the loop. Regular you can keep your remote staff updated by having them check in regularly. They can update their goal tracking every week, and always have opportunities to give updates to their managers.
Employee check-ins give your HR team a competitive advantage
Employees want to know that they will feel heard and valued. That their contribution will be recognized and rewarded. Employee check ins are the key tool to run an employee recognition program. That’s because peers and managers can tag anyone who’s done a great job that week. This builds employee advocacy and brand. Helping when it comes to recruiting externally, or holding onto your key talent.
Weekly employee check-ins have the biggest business benefit
The frequency of your check-ins is up to you. But we’ll always champion weekly as the best cadence for a few key reasons.
- Weekly employee check-ins mean your people reflect often. And get timely feedback from their manager. This makes a difference to its impact.
- When you’re checking in weekly, it builds teamwork through collaboration and recognition. Our employee check-in has tools to enable this such as our ‘mention’ and ‘pass-up’ functions.
- The wellbeing of your people is critical. Having weekly check-ins means your people get i the habit of sharing ups and downs often, not just when things escalate. This is essential for building loyalty and reducing staff turnover.
- Practice makes perfect. And that’s why a weekly employee check-in has brilliant business benefits. One of the keys to effective behavior change is frequency. Checking-in weekly builds habits around sharing feedback, reflecting on performance, praising success, and opening up about challenges.
- Gallup reports that Millennials and Gen-Z specifically are keen for weekly feedback.
Zensai makes rolling out employee check-ins a piece of cake
While face-to-face feedback is certainly better than a note on your desk, it isn’t without its own issues. One-to-ones can be time consuming. And that’s is the last thing you want if you’re trying to do away with unessential meetings.
The Zensai check-in only takes a few minutes to do. Questions are easily customizable on the employee level, rather than being a generic questionnaire. They also have plenty of room for extra comments, which help to enable effective two-way feedback. Don’t just take our word for it. Here’s 10 experts who champion an regular employee check-in to underpin business benefits.
Check-ins focus on goals too
The weekly check-in also includes SMART Goal and OKR (Objectives and Key Results). These enable employees to provide regular updates to their assigned tasks. SMART Goals help you to break things down into sub goals and assign manageable workloads. While OKRs help employees to see how their contributions benefit the business as a whole.
