One to one meeting template
A one to one (1:1) is a short, regular meeting between a manager and one person in their team. Unlike a team meeting, it runs mostly on the employee's agenda: how they are, what's blocking them, feedback in both directions, and how they want to develop. This free Word template gives you a 30-minute agenda with prompts for each part, and an action log that carries over from one meeting to the next.
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It's designed for weekly or fortnightly use. Below: how to run one, how it differs from a team meeting and a performance review, a fictional example, questions that get past "fine, thanks", and the habits that make 1:1s quietly fade out.
What's in the template
One to one meeting
| Employee | |
|---|---|
| Manager | |
| Date | |
| How often we meet | e.g. every two weeks, 30 minutes |
| Previous 1:1 |
Agenda (both add items by the day before; the employee's come first)
| Topic | Added by | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Employee | ||
| Employee | ||
| Manager |
1. Check-in (5 minutes)
- How are you doing, at work and generally, as far as you want to share?
- Workload right now, from 1 (plenty of room) to 5 (overloaded):
- Anything from last time still on your mind?
2. Actions from last time
| Action | Owner | Done? |
|---|---|---|
3. Priorities and blockers (10 minutes)
| Priority for the next two weeks | Blocked by | What would help |
|---|---|---|
4. Feedback in both directions (5 minutes)
| From the manager | One thing to keep doing and one to change, each with an example |
|---|---|
| To the manager | One thing the manager could do differently |
5. Growth (5 minutes, at least once a month)
- Progress on development goals or training
- A skill to practise before next time
- Longer term: where would you like to be in a year?
6. Actions
| Action | Owner | By when |
|---|---|---|
Private notes
Agree at the first meeting who keeps the notes and where. Health or personal matters stay out of shared documents unless the employee agrees.
How to run a one to one
- Fix the rhythm. Same day and time, weekly or fortnightly, 30 minutes. If you have to, move it rather than cancel it; repeated cancellations tell people where they rank.
- Share the agenda the day before. Both of you add topics, and the employee's go first.
- Open with a real check-in. Ask for the workload score every time. One number means little, but a slide from 2 to 4 over a month is worth a conversation. When someone is struggling, the six areas HSE says can lead to work-related stress (demands, control, support, relationships, role and change) help you find where the pressure is coming from.
- Spend the middle on blockers, not status. Get progress updates from a tracker or the team meeting, and use this time for what only a conversation can fix.
- Swap feedback both ways, each with one specific example. Asking what you could do differently, then acting on the answer, is what earns honest feedback next time.
- Make room for development at least monthly: skills, training, the next role.
- Finish with two or three actions with owners and dates, and start the next 1:1 by checking them.
One to one, team meeting or performance review?
| One to one | Team meeting | Performance review | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Support, unblock and develop one person | Coordinate work and make group decisions | Formally assess performance against objectives |
| Agenda set by | Mainly the employee | The chair | The manager, using a set form |
| How often | Weekly or fortnightly | As the work needs | Yearly or half-yearly |
| Output | A few personal actions | Decisions and minutes | Ratings, new objectives and a signed record |
Acas's guidance on performance management describes regular check-ins, sometimes known as one-to-ones, as the informal side of managing performance alongside formal reviews. Good 1:1 notes are also what make the yearly performance review quick to write.
Example: a support engineer's fortnightly 1:1
Notes from a 1:1 at a fictional 25-person software company. Both people are fictional.
- Check-in: Tom scores his workload 4, up from 2 a month ago, after two on-call weeks out of three.
- Last time's actions: his access to the billing system, requested nine days ago, still hasn't been granted.
- Blockers: without that access every refund goes through finance, adding a day to each one.
- Feedback from the manager: his outage write-up was clear enough to send to the customer unedited. One change: update tickets before handing over at the end of a shift.
- Feedback to the manager: tell the team sooner when sales changes priorities.
- Growth: he wants to move towards testing, so he'll shadow release testing next sprint.
- Actions: manager to escalate the billing access with IT by Thursday and rebalance the on-call rota; Tom to book the shadowing.
Questions that get past "fine, thanks"
- What's taking more energy than it should at the moment?
- If you could drop one thing this week, what would it be?
- What are you waiting on someone else for?
- What's one thing I do that slows you down?
- Which part of your work would you like more of?
For a deeper conversation about stress, HSE's Talking Toolkits are designed for managers, and HSE says they can be used in one-to-one meetings to identify causes and possible solutions.
Common mistakes
- Turning it into a status meeting, so the employee's real problems never come up.
- The manager doing most of the talking. The employee should have most of the airtime.
- Saving feedback for the annual review instead of giving it while it can still change something.
- No written actions, so the same blocker comes back three meetings running.
- Putting health or personal details in a shared document. Keep them in private notes, and only with the employee's agreement.
Frequently asked questions
How often should one to ones be?
Weekly or fortnightly for most people, for about 30 minutes. New starters and people in a period of change get more from weekly; experienced people in stable roles may prefer fortnightly or monthly. Shorten the slot rather than drop it.
Who should keep the notes?
Agree it at the first meeting. A shared document you can both edit works well for the agenda and actions; anything personal or sensitive belongs in separate private notes.
What's the difference between a one to one and a performance review?
A one to one is frequent, informal and mostly about support and unblocking work. A performance review is a formal assessment against objectives, once or twice a year, with ratings and a signed record. The first feeds the second.