How to Make Your Employee One-on-Ones a Success

As a boss, one of your main jobs is keeping employees engaged in the company and motivated to continue doing great work. And while employees love perks like work-from-home Fridays or free goodies (everybody loves personalized notepads), one essential way to keep them engaged is to simply treat each person as an individual who plays an integral role in the running of your business. That's why it's a good idea to hold regular one-on-one meetings with your employees – you can check in, provide feedback on their work and allow them to raise any questions or concerns they may have. Here are some tips for making these one-on-ones successful:

Be Prepared
As with any business meeting, it's essential to come prepared – even if you have 12 one-on​-ones in a single day, take the time to sit down and look over each employee's recent work and client feedback. That way, you'll have something more to say then just, "So, how's it going?"

Find a Structure
Having an improvised conversation with an employee may be helpful for both of you, but for one-on-one meetings it's a good idea to provide some sort of structure for the discussion. Meetings can already be a productivity setback, so it's important that you cover everything that needs to be covered to ensure it's worth the break in your employee's day. TribeHR suggests breaking the session down into your time to speak, your employee's time to speak, and time at the end to come up with an action plan.

Use a Neutral Office
Meetings with the boss can be very intimidating, which can cause some people to clam up (the exact opposite of what you want them to do). Make the situation a little less formal by finding a neutral office you can meet in, or by meeting in their office. You can even take your employees to lunch or go on a walk – leaving the office altogether will make the whole discussion feel more relaxed.

Let Them Take the Lead
While one-on-one meetings are definitely a time for you to provide critiques or praise, they should mainly be about your employees' thoughts, feelings and concerns. Say what you need to say up front, then let them take the lead for the rest of the time period. Come prepared with a couple of prompting questions, such as, "How do you feel about …?" or "How has … been going?"

Focus on the Future
If your employee has concerns to raise during the meeting, you should, of course, listen carefully. At the end of the meeting, though, come up with a plan of action – what can each of you do to address any ongoing issues or make your employee's job a little bit easier? 

Follow Up
As you would in client-facing meetings, you should follow up after your one-on​-ones. Send an email that goes over what you talked about and outlines your plans for moving forward. Your employees will appreciate having a written summary, and the email will be something both of you can reference as you continue working together.