How to Run Efficient Check-In Meetings: Tips & Template

As a manager, terms like ” micromanager,” “overbearing,” and “controlling” are ones we all fear. We want to help our employees but in the right way.

Learning the fine line between giving your employees space while also checking up on them can be difficult. By learning how to run effective check-in meetings with your employees, you can successfully touch base with them, offer them help, and improve the overall employee experience.

• What is a check-in meeting?
• Why are check-ins important?
• How often should you check in on employees?
• Tips for effective check-in meetings
• Check-in meeting template for insightful meetings
• Streamline your check-in meetings with Fellow

What is a check-in meeting?

Some managers hold weekly or biweekly one-on-one meetings to review employee engagement and performance. These meetings are important because they keep everyone in check on their annual, quarterly, and monthly goals. 

But what about day-to-day progress? Implementing quick 10-15 minute check-in meetings is a great way for managers to stay up-to-date and help employees with their daily work. When done correctly, check-ins can foster collaboration and teamwork.

Why are check-ins important?

Having regular check-ins with your team members is important because it creates relationships, releases tension, teaches communication styles, and saves time at formal 1:1 meetings. 

• Create relationships
• Release tension
• Learning communication styles
• Save time

1 Create relationships

Bonding with your team members is an important part of being a good manager. Asking simple questions like “What did you do on the weekend?” or “Share one thing you’ve done outside of work this past week” can be a great way to create relationships with your team or any new hires.

2 Release tension

Team members can feel stressed when meeting with their superiors one-on-one. Therefore, to release this tension, it is important to remind your team members that these check-in meetings are for their benefit. 

It is also important to remind your team members that this is an opportunity for them to reach out to you and ask for help if they need it. Being overly stressed in the workplace will only produce negative results; therefore, it is important to ensure your team members are not overwhelmed with work.

3 Learning communication styles

Learning how to communicate effectively is a crucial skill for anyone, but it’s particularly important for leaders to cultivate. You must consider different communication styles or tailor your communication to different situations and contexts. For example, in a company-wide team meeting, you may not feel comfortable sharing personal information that’s affecting your performance. A check-in meeting, however, is a perfect platform to let your manager know about any challenges you’re facing outside of work. This conversation can help determine your bandwidth and encourage your manager to adjust your workload or time off. This may also be an opportunity to learn how to communicate with empathy and create psychological safety.

4 Save time

Long meetings that seem never to end are neither productive nor time-worthy. Regular check-in meetings make longer meetings shorter since you’ve already had the opportunity to update each other on important information. Since they can be conducted much quicker than other types of meetings, they can give your employees valuable time for focused work.

How often should you check in on employees?

Managers who check in on their employees too often are typically labeled as micromanagers. However, managers that don’t check in on their employees enough may be labeled as bad managers. Therefore, finding the right balance between too often and not often enough is the key. So, what is the right balance?

It is first important to identify your team’s needs. For example, weekly check-ins should suffice for a smaller, more intimate company. But daily cadances may work better for a larger company. It is also important to consider the type of environment your employees are working in. For example, you may want to do daily check-ins for those in a remote environment and weekly check-ins for those working hybrid or in-person. 

The benefits of daily check-ins:

• Updates managers on what employees are doing daily 
• Ensures team members are always staying busy
• Allows managers to help employees if they have questions about their task for the day

The benefits of weekly check-ins:

• Updates managers on what employees have been working on over the past week
• Updates managers on what employees are planning on working on this coming week
• Updates employees on any work updates effectively
• Gives employees space to come to managers with help/questions if needed

Whether you decide that your team would benefit from daily or weekly check-ins, it is important to follow a meeting agenda. 

Tips for effective check-in meetings

Although check-in meetings are typically short, they still require a lot of planning. An unplanned meeting is a recipe for disaster, so it’s important to know how to plan effective check-ins. 

Here are 5 tips for productive check-in meetings:

• Stick to the meeting agenda
• Take notes
• Set a list of action items
• End with clarity
• Ensure your employees feel like the meeting was helpful

1 Stick to the meeting agenda

Sticking to your meeting agenda is very important to avoid going off-topic and over time. This will also ensure that your meeting is brief and to the point, only addressing the necessary points. Make sure you’re asking the right check-in questions so you cover everything pertinent.

2 Take notes

Taking notes during the check-in allows you to document key points, questions you must address with others, and action items you need to work on. This also creates a written record of your notes, which you can refer to after the meeting to solidify the next steps.

Taking manual notes, however, can sometimes distract you from the conversation since you’re hyper-focused on writing down every key detail. Automating this process can make it more effective and efficient.

With Fellow’s advanced AI Meeting Copilot, you can automatically transcribe and summarize your check-ins, thereby replacing the need for manual notes and enabling everyone to stay present in the call.

3 Set a list of action items

Outlining action items clearly gives employees clarity on what needs to be done and by when. It helps create a benchmark of what they can work on or achieve in the future and track progress against.

4 End with clarity

Nothing is worse than ending a meeting and feeling just as confused as you were when the meeting started. Additionally, in check-in meetings, managers usually give constructive feedback, so if your employees do not grasp the feedback, they cannot fix their mistakes. Therefore, ensuring that your employees understand the key takeaways of their check-in meetings is important. 

5 Ensure your employees feel like the meeting was helpful

It’s crucial that your direct report feels that the check-in was helpful, so don’t forget to ask them for feedback about the meeting. This is a great way to see what they felt was helpful and what they felt was not helpful so that moving forward, you can ensure your meetings are productive. You can either ask them separately, have them fill out a questionnaire, or use software that streamlines giving and getting feedback like Fellow.

Check-in meeting template for insightful meetings

Check-in meetings are only valuable if you know exactly what needs to be achieved or discussed in advance. This Quick Check-In Meeting Template from Fellow provides the right framework for you and your direct to check-in on priorities, challenges, and action items until you next meet. It’s completely customizable, too, so you can tailor it to your and your direct’s unique needs. By using this template, you ensure your check-in meeting runs efficiently and productively and is worth the time spent.

Streamline your check-in meetings with Fellow

Conducting check-ins—whether daily or weekly—is very important for a couple of reasons. First, they help managers increase employee engagement, so finding seamless ways to socialize and engage with your team is very important. Implementing check-ins also fosters a work environment that encourages team building. To be a successful manager, you need to build trust, and being able to create relationships with your employees will ensure this.

With an all-in-one AI meeting transcription and management software like Fellow, you’re empowered to execute check-in meetings effectively. With powerful AI meeting recordings, transcriptions, and summaries, Fellow captures key discussion points, action items, and decisions made during the meeting, not only serving as a record of the meeting but also automating any follow-up actions. Managers can easily refer back to previous check-in meetings, ensuring that important matters are not forgotten or overlooked. You can even easily assign, prioritize, and track action items from the meeting in Fellow, so your team stays accountable and on track.

Managers and team leaders can choose from Fellow’s extensive library of over 500+ expert-approved meeting templates that you and your team can leverage that cater to different check-in formats and objectives. These templates provide a solid foundation, allowing for quick and easy meeting setup, saving valuable time and effort. Plus, your team can collaborate on the agenda format and then save it as the default template for your meetings, so you never have to spend time on this again.