My monthly check-ins at Gravity Switch always had 4 questions:
- What’s your favorite thing about your job?
- What’s your least favorite thing about your job?
- What’s one thing someone can do to make your experience better?
- What’s one thing YOU can do for someone else to make their experience better?
They’re all pretty open-ended but they cover a lot of ground. If someone is in crisis (either at work or personally) I would ask them to send me a daily email with the following:
Rate your stress level on the following scale:
- Totally relaxed (whatever man)
- Feeling good, excited about what’s going on at work This is ideal
- Minor stress directed at one or more things
- Vibrating
- Fuck
Why?
Most people write a sentence or paragraph about “why” and often for people in crisis their comments are about 70% work-related and 30% personal (didn’t sleep well this week, health issues continue to plague my spouse, whatever).
Google has a list of the “best practices” from their best managers. Different format, but similar in terms of mix of clearly defined metrics and open-ended questions.
Some agenda items Google suggests include:
- Check-in and catch-up questions: “What can I help you with?” and “What have you been up to?”
- Roadblocks or issues
- Goal updates
- Administrative topics (e.g., upcoming vacations, expense reports)
- Next steps to confirm actions and agreements
- Career development and coaching
They’re also sharing some other “review-related tools” including how they rate their managers. Read more at Quartz