What is an employee check-in? It’s a quick but structured way to give your manager a snapshot of how your week has gone. It focuses on your day-to-day experiences and progress but doesn’t replace face-to-face discussion. Instead, it makes your formal 1:1 meetings more effective because they’re not bogged down in the daily details.
Check-ins are about you taking time to reflect and record items for your own personal development. They’re an opportunity to build your show-reel of achievements, rather than a list of everything you’ve ever done. Check-ins are the critical foundation of every performance conversation you’ll have with your manager.
This article was originally published May 19th, 2021, and has since been updated.
What we cover in this article:
- Questions to ask in an employee check-in
- See how the Engage365 weekly check-in works in Microsoft Teams
- What is an employee check-in without goal updates?
What an employee check-in is not
Let’s clear up a few things first.
A weekly check-in is not a one-on-one meeting with your manager or employee. These have a different purpose and work better on a monthly cadence. It’s not practical to meet every week with your manager or employees: holidays and workload gets in the way. They very quickly become tick-box time wasters.
So, what is an employee check-in all about?
What is an employee check-in?
At its core, a check-in is about two-way feedback. And feedback is the foundation of personal development, engagement, and great performance.
Do you ever feel like your manager has no idea what you do? Have you ever done amazing work that’s gone completely unnoticed? Or maybe you wanted to raise a concern, but just felt like you’d be ignored.
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines psychological safety as, “…a workplace climate in which workers are comfortable expressing themselves and believe they can take appropriate interpersonal risks.”
However, in their 2024 Work in America survey, APA found that 49% of workers experienced low psychological safety, while 15% described their workplace as “toxic.” This speaks to how silenced US employees feel in general, but the report also found that 48% of younger employees (aged 18-25) reported that people outside their age group did not value their ideas.
How a weekly check-in encourages employees to speak up
A weekly check-in encourages people to open up by giving you and your manager a feedback framework. Think of it like bowling with the bumpers up. Whether you’ve got a stellar boss or a useless lump, when they use Engage365, they’ll have the right process to follow to give you feedback that’s actually useful.
Each week, you send feedback upwards; your manager then responds with feedback that’s specific to that update. That can be a simple like, a comment, or a question to dig deeper. You can then implement that feedback immediately, not 6 months after the fact. It’s also private between you and your manager so it won’t get accidentally forwarded in an email trail.
Should we do check-ins as well as face-to-face meetings?
Brilliant, you’re already doing check-ins! But what happens if your manager’s on holiday? How much time does it take out of each of your diaries? Does that check-in really happen every week? And what if your manager has 8 other direct reports? And… you get the picture.
That’s the benefit of a digital employee check-in. You can check in whether your manager is free or not. You’re also in control of the conversation. We’re more coherent when we have time to compose a message and can be more honest and detailed compared to real-time meetings. Your manager has time to digest your update and can give you feedback that’s useful rather than off-the-cuff.
What is an employee check-in like as an aid to productivity?
Pareto, a keen gardener, noticed that a tiny number of pea pods in his garden produced most of the peas. Fast-forward to The 1 Percent Rule. The idea says you don’t need to be twice as good to get twice the results. You just need to be slightly better. And what is a weekly check-in if not a way of encouraging incremental improvement?
You do your weekly check-in on the same day each week. Think of it like muscle memory. That’s because the more you do something, the more habitual it becomes. Your employee check-in stops being a task to tick off your to do list and becomes an opportunity to learn from the feedback your manager gives.
You make small tweaks regularly rather than monumental shifts once a quarter. Those small changes make you better at your job, help you work smarter, and ultimately, make you perform better.
How long should a weekly check-in take?
Your employees should take about 10 minutes per week to complete their digital check-in. If it’s taking longer than that, your staff are giving you a laundry list of tactical things, rather than focusing on the most important achievements. For conversations that go deeper, consider using 1:1 meetings or an ad hoc Teams meeting.
What is an employee check-in supposed to cover?
In 10 minutes, your people need to cover three key areas: personal reflection, looking beyond themselves with peer recognition, and consistent goal updates.
Weekly check-ins must have a positive impact instead of wasting time as a box-ticking exercise. That way, your employees feel they’re being championed and that their concerns are taken seriously.
Managers must be able to act on what employees tell them, so transparency is critical. The benefit of a weekly check-in is that managers can easily spot the difference between the odd bad week and a steady downward trend, which helps managers see what matters most.
How AI makes check-ins more effective
At Zensai, we use AI to support employee check-ins in a couple of ways:
- Response coaching for managers: If you’re not sure how to respond to an employee’s answer on a check-in question, we’ve got you covered. AI can recommend responses based on data from regular feedback to help you give the best support.
- Sentiment analysis tools: Engage365 includes a sentiment analysis tool that turns qualitative insights into actionable data. That way, you instantly see the trends in employee check-ins so you can respond effectively.
We’re also planning to make response trends visible in employee check-ins instead of just showing the most recent answers. That way, managers have an idea of the patterns before AI sentiment analysis even begins.
Questions to ask in an employee check-in
What good is an employee check-in if you don’t ask the right questions? You can use our extensive question library developed in-house, learn the top 10 weekly check-in questions, or even come up with your own. But the three most common themes we see are:
Successes: Things that have gone well
Employees love focusing on weekly wins, and as a busy manager, you won’t catch everything. So, don’t let your people be bashful. Ask questions that let employees tell you what they’ve achieved and what their priorities are. Seriously, what is an employee check-in for if not spotting excellent performance?
❓A good question to ask would be: What have you achieved this week?
Challenges: Stuff that’s making your job harder than it should be
Check-ins give employees the chance to write down what’s gone wrong and get it out of their heads. When we do that, our errors often don’t seem as massive as first thought. Plus, as a manager, your feedback offers a new perspective to help employees improve incrementally.
❓Try asking: What’s challenged you this week?
Support: Things you need to do your job better
It’s hard to find time in your manager’s diary to ask for support. Your check-in opens the door to start the conversation, so use it to clearly outline your request. It could be a training course you’ve seen, a replacement piece of tech, or advice on how to handle a difficult conversation. Others might be facing the same blockers as you which can prompt your manager to do something about them.
❓Ask a support question with a wide scope for the best feedback: What support do you need?
Look outside of yourself with recognition
How important is recognition to your sense of motivation? The answer must be “very,” as effective recognition makes employees 45% less likely to quit in the next two years. That’s why you should publicly recognize colleagues when they do exceptional work, and encourage employees to do the same in their check-ins.
Employee recognition is without a doubt one of the most loved parts of Engage365. That’s because it motivates team members to thank their colleagues each week, rather than waiting to be asked for 360 feedback during a performance review cycle. Having it recorded also means that employees have access to all that recognition when they’re preparing for their performance review too. It’s a win-win.
❓ Focus on comradery with a kudos question: Who deserves a shout-out this week and why?
What is an employee check-in without goal updates?
Always include SMART goals or OKRs in weekly check-ins so that employees focus on what matters to their role and the business. SMART goals break big projects down into manageable tasks, while OKRs connect everyone’s work to key business objectives.
Weekly updates give a real-time view of progress, so you’ll always know if something is stalling and can reach out to support your people. Just make sure to review goals regularly so they don’t become irrelevant.
What is an employee check-in? The ultimate feedback tool!
Since employee check-ins are asynchronous and lightweight, they’re the ideal two-way feedback tool. You can provide continuous support while collecting real-time employee insights. Just make sure you ask the right questions and act on what employees tell you so they’ll take check-ins seriously.
Unlock the power of continuous performance management – Download your free eBook!
Discover how to build a culture of continuous feedback and performance improvement. Learn practical strategies to track progress, foster growth, and boost employee engagement all year round! Read this guide to move away from outdated annual reviews and embrace a more dynamic approach to managing performance.
Download your free copy of “Embracing Continuous Performance Management” and take your team’s performance to the next level.
