Are managerial routines, reviews and 1-to-1s a waste of time?

Nowadays, managerial routines are essential. We explain their importance and how to ensure that they positively impact employees' daily lives.

Managerial routines, reviews and 1-to-1s, sometimes called 'management rituals', are key moments for team building. They provide an opportunity for communication, to establish structure, organise actions to be taken or decisions to be made or even highlight those accomplished. They can take place either individually or collectively and as often as desired (annually, monthly, weekly or daily). The most common types are professional, individual reviews-such as individual appraisals or 1-to-1s-and traditional team meetings.

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Individual and collective management reviews

Individual routines

Individual reviews are essential and allow for recognising the value of the employees role and motivating, helping guide them, creating future milestones with them and looking at past ones.

Going forward it is necessary to adapt these routines to every employee, as they will be different for each person. They can be more occasional, longer, more formal, more direct, or totally the opposite depending on the autonomy and needs of the employee.

These routines might need to take place more often if the individual works remotely, which will result in more frequent check-ins.

These reviews are an opportunity for the employee to voice certain requests or topics that they would not necessarily bring up in group settings or dedicated working time.

Some interviews are more 'important' than others, especially annual appraisals for example.

Defined as an end-of-year interview, this meeting is an opportunity to look back on the past year and to get feedback on work performances.

It's an assessment of the past year and is the time to create an action plan and objectives for the coming year. This is essential time for both the manager and employee which should not be neglected and should be well prepared.

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Collective routines

Collective management routines, and particularly weekly check-ins, are the most well-known.

At the start of the week it is common to schedule a short, or longer, check-in meeting to kick-start the team, take stock, establish new objectives and set priorities.

It is also an opportunity to communicate with your team and strengthen it, talk about decisions and give other information.

Besides these weekly check-ins, other, more formal 'rituals' (team meetings, annual appraisals, seminars etc) allow for discussing broader objectives, presentations and longer reviews. They are less about looking at certain details, but focusing more on strategic issues, such as the long term vision for example.

Sara Kalick says that "When you give your employees permission to be themselves, their passion and imagination become very powerful".

Ensure that the meeting doesn't last too long so as not to be seen as tedious by employees or a waste of time.

Whether this meeting is in person or via video call, you can make it less formal by having it in a more social setting, perhaps over a coffee or lunch.

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7 things you can implement in your management routines, reviews & 1-to-1s:

Remind everyone of their roles and respective job tasks.
Recontextualise current job tasks in relation to the overall final objective.
Plan for the future: whether that's weekly, monthly or the years to come. Individually for every employee, but also for the company on the whole.
Find out what every employee needs or must learn to succeed.
Talk about any failures, what was learned from them and even celebrate them to counter this fear of failure.
Encourage meetings between team members, in order to improve group cohesion.
Ask several people for their opinions on different subjects and engage in debate so that everyone agrees on the decision made.

These management 'rituals' are powerful moments for conversation, reflection and creativity, hence their name. Klara is a feedback based solution which enables you to implement impactful management routines, reviews and 1-to-1s, and helps you 'ritualise' them by making them more organised and regular. Click here to discover our platform.

It's a good idea to take the time to recontextualise what your team needs and must do to achieve the overall objective. It is, however, important not to turn these meetings into a mere automatic reflex that just becomes an excessive formality. Let your imagination take over and make these meetings motivating!

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Do you want to find out how Klara can help with management reviews & 1-to-1s? Get started now

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