The Importance of Checking in with your Employees

By Tess Collins

Genuine, regular communication with your team is important for building and sustaining a mentally healthy workplace. Checking in, asking for feedback, and hearing your employees’ views allows you to learn what is going on from the ground floor up and demonstrates greater care for what your employees have to say. Check-ins also help build empathy with the experience of your employees, which is critical to creating greater trust within the work environment. When employees feel heard, they are more likely to be engaged in their work, committed to the company, more likely to be productive, and stay in their roles for longer.

Ways to Check-in with Employees 

• Schedule regular one-on-one conversations – setting weekly or fortnightly check-ins with employees allows leaders insight into how their employees are doing beyond just work. It helps start a dialogue about the employee’s well-being and provides clarity on any issues they may be facing. This also gives opportunity to make adjustments before things escalate, and for greater support to be given when it’s needed. 
• Hold regular team meetings – a 10-minute check-in at the start of a team meeting is a quick and easy way to keep a pulse on how your team is going and proactively address any issues that they may be facing.
• Send out a survey – surveys are often helpful to get a pulse on how the workforce as a whole is doing. Surveys like the free Workplace Wellbeing Assessment for example, provide an unbiased tool to hear employees’ voice and provides information on how your business is performing in areas critical to workplace mental health, such as leadership and culture. Results from such surveys are often helpful in providing achievable actions to improve your workplace.  
• Run focus groups or workshops – within departments or with the whole company if you are a small business. These groups can help you to identify any psychosocial risk factors in your organisation than may be increasing the stress levels of your employees.

Outcomes of Checking in with Staff

Getting everyone on board and involved rather than using a top-down approach, has a range of benefits that include;

• Builds a culture of strong communication. By holding regular check-ins, it shows that your company values open lines of communication which enables staff to feel more comfortable speaking to each other or senior staff members when they have concerns that need to be addressed. 
• Enhances inclusivity – Gaining input from a range of staff enables the generation of more innovative and inclusive strategies.
• Enables staff to feel heard and valued. This can improve an employee’s opinion of their experience at your company, making them more likely to continue working for you.
• Helps employees gain greater clarity regarding their roles, responsibilities, tasks and priorities. This can help boost productivity, improve role clarity, and reduce work demands. 

Businesses across NSW have access to free coaching from a highly trained expert to help create or fine-tune your mentally healthy workplace. Through confidential one-on-one sessions, a coach will help address issues or identify risks to mental health within your business and give you practical tools and strategies to manage them. Find out more here.