Editorial
People are at the heart of every business. Their performance, both as individuals and as part of a team, should always be top-of-mind for managers and people operations. Every organization strives to create and maintain an environment where employees can perform at their best. This involves providing everything they need to get their jobs done, creating a positive company culture, and ensuring HR processes run smoothly without causing delays or hampering productivity. It also includes conducting check-ins.
Time Well Spent or Time Down the Drain?
Regular check-ins are one opportunity to follow the progress employees make on goals for the employee are set. Check-ins are commonly viewed as a formal sit-down with each employee: on a chair-to-chair or one-to-one basis. At times they may also involve a written self-assessment or peer feedback or review to factor in, all of which take time to prepare and incorporate.
But there’s a fine line between an efficient and inefficient check-in process. And when that line is crossed, they run the danger of things becoming over-baked and over-formalized. When you devote more effort to administering the check-in than the actual time spent on the face-to-face component, it's time to look at how you can improve things.
Those improvement initiatives can take several forms.
First, automating the more burdensome parts of the check-in process can reduce administrative overhead and create a time dividend that can be invested back into the more people-centric part.
We've see this trend first-hand. We offer a gallery of workflow templates and process maps designed to help organizations get started on process automation. The most downloaded assets are consistently those aimed at improving employee onboarding and check-ins. It’s a clear indication that managers are trying to automate aspects of HR to free up time to spend with people. A process improvement that can shave off a minute here or an hour there, is ensuring that face time between the manager and employee is maximized, and any associated administrative burden is minimized. That will always be an attractive proposition.
The second trend is the emergence of a different type of check-in. One that occurs more frequently than the standard quarterly one, that’s shorter in average duration and where the timing of the check-in may be influenced by changes in leading or lagging indicators. These act as early warning signals. As with any issue that arises in a team-based or organizational setting, things are generally better addressed as they appear, rather than delaying the conversation to be raised as part of the next formal check-in cycle.
Dynamic check-ins can allow performance issues to be addressed before they become a drag on personal, team and organizational productivity. That will happen if issues go unchecked, particularly for an extended period.
Dynamic check-ins may take the appearance of a regular pulse check. If these occur regularly, with intervention as and when it’s needed, the requirement for more in-depth and formal check-in processes is likely to become less and less over time.
Related Article: 5 Ways to Have More Effective Performance Conversations
Making Check-Ins More Dynamic
There is no singular path to achieving more dynamic employee check-ins. Leaders can use a variety of strategies.
Check-ins are often about measuring progress towards achieving a pre-set goal. Because they usually occur on a one-to-one basis, the goals tend to be highly individualized, but this may not be the best strategy for growing an individual. One strategy I use is to set a mix of individual and team goals. Team-based goals not only aid an individual’s development, particularly where people are paired up across internal functions, but also create benefits for the broader organization.
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The point is: before any check-in occurs, we need to rethink the way goals are set, and open people up to new challenges and skills development opportunities that go beyond the individual. Teamwork naturally lends itself to more dynamic interaction and that extends to the way performance goals are set, tracked and measured.
Once goals are set, frequent online work surveys provide a way to informalize check-in processes. Even when survey responses are anonymous, the return of a quick, regular survey questionnaire is insightful. It provides a sense of participation and engagement, and can also act as an early warning system if there is sudden movement in team metrics. Rather than wait for a formal check-in process, movements are often best addressed at the next team meeting.
For example, a negative movement in work-life balance scores may hint at uneven workload distribution or other pressures being felt by individual team members. By raising the existence of that in a team setting, it enables the team to understand a quiet alteration in its dynamic or collective behavior, and to come together on ways to resolve it. This kind of informal check-in lends itself to continuity: teams and individuals, and their goals, are less likely to drift out of alignment. And that reduces the need or requirement for a quarterly "resuscitation exercise" to get things back on track.
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