FAQs

Since Andy Grove’s High Output Management first hit bookstore shelves in 1983, a lot has been written about the benefits of 1-on-1s in the workplace.

In brief, 1-on-1s are one of the best ways to improve the performance of a team or an organisation. They:

• ‍Build a culture of high performance by building trust and accountability
• Save time by eliminating the need for other inefficient meetings, such as performative group meetings and ad hoc status checks
• Enable managers to resolve any big issues early on, provide guidance and coaching without judgement, avoid micromanaging, and build a connection with each of their employees
• ‍Empower employees to take charge or their work week and get more done, whilst also maintaining a check in for timely feedback, and providing a safe space to ask for help

However, these benefits are only realised if the 1-on-1s are done well.

A good quality 1-on-1 is:

• Effective - The 1-on-1 results in well-informed and crystal-clear agreement on priorities for the next week.
• Efficient - Any time invested in the 1-on-1 pays off for all participants. It is straight to the point, with no time wasted on performative rituals.
• Consistent - The 1-on-1 becomes the cornerstone of the work week, providing a reliable opportunity to review performance, escalate issues, and agree actions.

Achieving this week in and week out is no mean feat.

It requires open, honest, and trusted lines of communication between a team member and their manager, a sense of personal ownership and accountability, and having the right information at hand to identify issues and make changes.

It takes a long time for these elements to come together organically.

Easy 1-on-1s helps to shortcut the path to good quality 1-on-1s by providing users with a simple weekly routine, structured templates, and guidance at each step along the way.

Yes, good quality 1-on-1s are good for your team's wellbeing. They:

• Provide a psychologically safe space - Reduce the fear of rejection or embarrassment when sharing ideas, addressing challenges, or soliciting honest feedback
• Elevate discussion of wellbeing and professional development - Including these topics in the same way as traditional production or sales topics (i.e. in terms of metrics, priorities, tasks, etc.) ensures the same level of importance and attention.

They are also effective at reducing anxiety by providing a framework for:

• Unloading concerns and issues - 1-on-1s are a regular opportunity for team members to escalate concerns or issues that they have identified, but are unable to address on their own.
• Deprioritising low-importance work - There's always more work to do, and never any more time to do it. Agreeing the relative order of priorities each week means that team members can confidently focus their efforts on the most critical work. It's better for everyone to do one important thing well, then to complete 3 or 4 less important things in a rushed and slipshod way.
• Providing assurance - Team members can confidently proceed with the priorities agreed in each week's 1-on-1, knowing that they have the full support of their manager.

Most people within an organisation can benefit from having a good quality 1-on-1.

The structure and routine recommended by Easy 1-on-1s is suitable for any role from CEO to Supervisor.

However, the topics discussed & reviewed in a 1-on-1 will vary depending on the team member's role.

• Operational roles will naturally focus more on production metrics, and review performance variances to inform blockers, priorities, and tasks over the coming week.
• Project roles or Support roles will tend to focus more on longer term objectives, and review weekly progress against previously agreed commitments to inform blockers, priorities, and tasks over the coming week.

Note that weekly 1-on-1s between Supervisors and the workers they supervise can be challenging to coordinate. At this level, performance-focused shift start meeting are a useful alternative.

1-on-1s are most effective when done weekly.

This frequency allows issues or concerns to be escalated and addressed in a timely manner.

No. Experienced and motivated participants can have good quality 1-on-1s with nothing more than some handwritten notes on a bit of paper.

However getting into the habit of conducting 1-on-1s well requires coaching, discipline, and practice.

Easy 1-on-1s helps anyone within your organisation have good quality 1-on-1s by making it easy to:

• Introduce new users to 1-on-1s, with inbuilt tutorials and intuitive templates
• Follow the 1-on-1 routine each week, with convenient workflows, insightful prompts, and email reminders
• Maintain good 1-on-1 disciplines, with expert tips, checklists, and quality self-assessments

1-on-1s are only beneficial if they are done well.

Over time, the quality of 1-on-1s tends to degrade.

• Productive problem solving gives way to idle chatter
• Punctuality gives way to the occasional missed meeting
• Instead of tackling the critical issues head on, you superficially talk about the weather

Before long, what was once the beating heart of the workweek is now universally resented as a pointless waste of 30 minutes. Perhaps they have been re-scheduled to take place only once a month, or have simply become a tick-box exercise as part of a six-monthly performance review.

If this sounds familiar then Easy 1-on-1s can help you and your team get more out of your 1-on-1s.

Easy 1-on-1s is a web app that makes it easy to have simple, efficient, and effective 1‑on‑1 meetings.

Users are guided through a simple weekly routine, provided with a smart template to help them prepare insightful notes for discussion, and coached with tutorials and tips each step of the way.

This structured approach ensures that managers and their team members get the most out of their weekly 1-on-1 meetings.

Easy 1-on-1s has been designed to be easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to roll-out within an organisation.

Easy 1-on-1s users follow a simple four step routine each week.

• Prepare - The day before your 1-on-1, users prepare a brief summary of the week just gone and their plan for the week ahead. Easy 1-on-1s provides a template for this summary and prepopulates it with info from the previous 1-on-1.
• Review - Prior to the 1-on-1 meeting, managers read the prepared summary and flag a few specific topics they want to dive into during the discussion.
• Discuss - Users meet with their manager for 30 minutes and discuss only the flag topics. This ensures deep understanding of the topics that matter, and joint understanding of the path forward.
• Assess - At the end of the 1-on-1 meeting, agree any required changed to next week's plan and assess the quality of this week's 1-on-1.

The Easy 1-on-1s web app facilitates each of these steps in a way that is easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to teach.

This structured approach helps managers and their team members achieve the most valuable outcome of the 1-on-1 process - agreement on the right set of priorities for the coming week.

Ahead of each 1-on-1, users are asked to prepare a brief set of discussion notes to efficiently summarise and contextualise the meeting.

These discussion notes are collated by completing a template containing:

• Headlines - A few dot points summarising the Successes and Challenges of the week just gone, and the identified Blockers , Priorities, and Requests for Help in the week ahead
• Metrics - Actuals, forecasts, and long-term targets for a few metrics that have been hand selected to provide useful and actionable insights into where to prioritise your efforts, and to provide clues as to whether your efforts are having the desired effect.
• Tasks - A proposed set of specific and well-defined tasks you are planning to complete or coordinate over the coming week, and an update on the actions agreed in the previous week.
• Dependencies - A brief assessment of the team members and resources you rely upon to do your job well.

The most valuable outcome of the 1-on-1 process is an agreed set of priorities.

All other information - metrics, tasks, team updates, etc. - provide the necessary context to ensure that agreed priorities are truly the right priorities.

To help users prepare these discussion notes, Easy 1-on-1s includes Preparation Coach. This is an overlay for the Easy 1-on-1s interface that provides users with step-by-step instruction to guide them through the preparation of complete and insightful discussion notes.

User-friendly help and guidance is available throughout Easy 1-on-1s in various formats.

• Quick start guide - A one page cheat sheet that explains how to follow the Easy 1-on-1s routine and how to use the Easy 1-on-1s web app.
• Preparation Coach - Discussion notes are temporarily re-ordered in a way that makes it easier to write a succinct and complete summary. Step-by-step prompts help users prepare insightful notes to discuss in the 1-on-1 meeting.
• Help pull-out panel - Context aware tips and tricks are available via the Help pull-out panel on each screen, to coach best-practice use of Easy 1-on-1s.

If further assistance is required, Easy 1-on-1s also makes it easy to share your 1-on-1 discussion notes with a third-party observer or business improvement coach.

Customers on Enterprise plans have the option of customising the look and feel of Easy 1-on-1s, and editing supporting documentation.

The recommended weekly routine and meeting templates recommended by Easy 1-on-1s can not be customised. Easy 1-on-1s is designed and structured so that all users can get the most out of their 1-on-1 meetings.

The metrics, priorities, and other discussion content within any given 1-on-1 are flexible and determined by the participants of the meeting.

To ensure an effective discussion on each and every important topic (e.g. employee wellbeing), it is recommended that they be framed in the exact same way as traditional production, safety, or quality topics - that is, in terms of Headlines, Metrics, Dependencies, and Tasks.

Easy 1-on-1s is compatible with any existing KPI reporting, HRIS, or task management systems in place at your organisation.

Rather than directly integrating with these systems, Easy 1-on-1s captures an brief additional set of user-generated insights and discussion notes. This is to:

• Improve focus and engagement - The Easy 1-on-1s preparation step - physically typing in a few metrics and listing a few priorities - cuts through the noise (e.g. lengthy KPI reports that no-one reads, and action tracking software that no-one updates) and requires users to focus on, and think critically, about what matters right now.
• Speed up implementation - Start using Easy 1-on-1s in minutes, without a slow and costly integration, data pipelining, and change management effort.

In part, this is what makes the Easy 1-on-1s method successful.

Your 1-on-1 discussion notes are private.

Managers, administrators, and other users at your organisation will not be able to view your 1-on-1 discussion notes. Only Easy 1-on-1 users invited to a particular 1-on-1 will have access to the discussion notes.

Your 1-on-1 quality self-assessments will be visible to all users within your organisation with access to quality reporting.

All Easy 1-on-1s user data, including the content of 1-on-1 discussion notes, is secured in offsite cloud storage. Refer to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for more information.

There are many meeting management products available on the market. ClickUp, Monday.com, Trello, and various MS Teams plugins, just to name a few.

These alternative products are like a Lego set. They are infinitely customisable, but require a big investment to design, construct, and configure a process that is efficient and effective. And even then, the implementation may prove fragile if not put together by a team of experts.

Easy 1-on-1s is like a remote control race car, with batteries included. No thick instruction manuals, no configuration, no clunky templates, no online training seminars. Just turn it on and immediately you are on your way to better 1-on-1s.

Getting started is easy.

Step 1: Sign up for a one month free trial

• Click here to launch the Easy 1-on-1s app in a new tab and register an account. Note that Easy 1-on-1s is designed to be used in a desktop web browser.
• Your one month free trial will start automatically

Step 2: Set-up a new 1-on-1 series with a colleague

• Create a new 1-on-1 series from your Easy 1-on-1s dashboard. The in-app help will guide you.
• Your invited colleague will receive an email alerting them to this new 1-on-1 series. If they are new to Easy 1-on-1s, they will also be automatically granted a one month free trial.
• It can be a good idea to talk to your colleague prior to creating the new series in Easy 1-on-1s. This way you can brief them on why you'd like to start doing 1-on-1s, agree a regular timeslot in advance, and let them know to expect the email notification.

Step 3: Follow the prompts to prepare for your first 1-on-1

• You, or the more junior team member you've invited, can then start preparing discussion notes ahead of your first 1-on-1 meeting.
• Follow the inbuilt tutorials within Easy 1-on-1s for guidance on what to write. For additional tips, refer to the in-app 'Help' pull-out on the right side of the screen.
• Don't worry if your notes are a bit sparse the first week. The tutorials evolve in later weeks to help you improve the richness of your discussion notes, and to incorporate changing priorities and feedback from your first few discussions.