It’s HR’s responsibility to make one-on-one meetings better

That could’ve been an email. We’ve all said it. After all, when workers spend approximately two days a week either attending meetings or reading and responding to emails, according to the Wall Street Journal, they’re not all going to be winners.

In his recent book, Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings, author and organizational psychologist Steven Rogelberg shares how workers can maximize the time they spend in meetings, specifically one-on-ones.

Rogelberg told HR Brew that it’s on people teams to help managers improve their one-on-ones.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why should HR pros concern themselves with employee-manager one-on-ones?

One-on-ones are such a critical talent process, and the fact that HR is quiet on it is so problematic. It’s problematic not just from not getting the full potential out of these things, but…we want employees [to have] generally consistent experiences.

HR, in summary, has a really meaningful role they can play…There’s so many things in our HR world that are already pretty well-baked…But when it comes to meetings and one-on-ones, we’re at a much, much lower rate of success, so HR then has a much, much greater opportunity to show tremendous value to the organization around this topic.

How would you describe an effective one-on-one meeting?

[It’s] this notion of a manager facilitating and orchestrating a meeting with their directs to better understand what’s on their minds, to understand their needs, hopes, goals, so that they can help and support and learn…that this meeting is for the direct [report] to feel seen by their manager, and it’s not for the manager to get their needs met.

It’s a regular cadence…The manager is fully present and dialed in…They’re actively facilitating, they’re asking good questions. They’re listening carefully. They’re helping to make connections. They’re addressing these practical, tactical needs, but they’re also addressing the direct’s personal needs…When you meet a direct’s practical needs, but you don’t meet the personal needs, you’re still not going to excel in a one-on-one.

Why should HR care about the effectiveness of one-on-one meetings?

Research shows that [when] one-on-ones are being executed effectively, the outcomes are fabulous. We see employee engagement gains, we see individual performance gains, we see team performance gains. As individuals thrive, teams thrive. Obviously, that’s a direct reflection on the manager, so manager success increases. So, these one-on-ones really move the dial on critical outcomes that we, in HR, care about.

How can HR help make one-on-ones more effective?

[HR] can actively work to level up [managers’] skills around these one-on-ones. Managers…typically are relying on what they themselves have experienced. When we look at the effectiveness data, what they themselves have experienced is mostly dysfunctional.

A second key thing for HR is to start addressing the blind spot that exists…We want to examine our employee engagement surveys to see, do we have content there around one-on-ones?...Another approach is to have some type of evaluation plugin that integrates with the calendar, so managers can get a dashboard of how their directs are evaluating their one-on-ones…HR can facilitate this feedback and accountability approach.

The third thing is HR can take the lead on creating a structure and support around one-on-one meetings…Managers are all doing their own thing, and HR can create a more meaningful infrastructure that’s lightweight, but allows for one-on-ones to be more effective…They can develop a protocol that managers can follow. They can develop a mechanism for tracking these one-on-ones for looking at progress on action items and goals.