32 Great Questions for 1-on-1 Meetings with New Employees
“So, how are you liking it so far?” – Sure, that’s a nice question. But is it enough to really get to know new employees? The first 1-on-1 meeting should be more than just small talk. With the right questions, you can create a relationship that makes the rest of the onboarding process much easier and gets your new employees up to full productivity faster.
New employees not only have the challenge of fitting into a team – you as a manager also have a great opportunity: to make the right first impression. The first 1-to-1 meeting is your opportunity to build trust, clarify expectations and show that you are not just a boss, but also a mentor.
Which leads us to today’s topic: One-on-one meeting questions that managers can ask new employees.
Whether in a digital or virtual one-on-one meeting, 1-to-1 meetings offer space for feedback and thus for personal development, which is essential in today’s working world.
First of all: If you’re still unsure about what good one-on-one meetings look like, take a look at our guide: The guide with 6 tips for successful one-on-one meetings.
For Managers: Good One-on-One Meeting Questions for New Employees
Your most important goal of your one-on-one meeting with a new employee
The most important goal of your first one-on-one meeting is to build a relationship between you as a manager or supervisor and your employee.
In addition, these discussions serve to provide the best possible support for the Direct Report: Identify and remove blockers, provide resources and solve individual challenges.
Finally, regular 1:1 meetings help to define clear next steps and become clear about an effective meeting routine that provides structure in employee development in the long term.
What you don’t want is caricatured in the comic below: Your employee perceives the one-on-one meetings as wasted time. But don’t worry, that’s what this article is for.
For Managers: Good One-on-One Meeting Questions for New Employees
Basic template for the first one-on-one meeting with a new Direct Report
The fact that you clicked on this article tells me that you are looking for smart questions for the first one-on-one meeting with a new employee. Of course, these questions can have different focuses.
That’s why I’ve saved a basic template for you here, which should work well for the classic first performance review with new employees. I will give you many more questions below.
Let’s start with the template for the first 1-on-1 meeting with new employees. You can download it as a Doc below the actual template, or alternatively as a PDF, Google Sheets, Excel, or Word document. Just click on the “Plus” toggle.
Check-In
- How are you feeling in your new environment so far?
🔍 Manager's Topics: Review
- How was the onboarding process for you? Is there anything you'd like more clarity on?
- Are there any tools, resources, or support that you need?
🛠️ Manager's Topics: Role & Responsibilities
- How do you feel about your role and responsibilities?
- Are there any immediate challenges or concerns you'd like to discuss?
📅 Manager's Topics: One-on-One Routine & Next Steps
- How often do you think we should hold one-on-one meetings?
- What do you expect from our regular one-on-one meetings?
- How can I better support you as you continue to settle in?
Wrap-up
- Once again, welcome to [our organization].
- What else should I ask in such first one-on-one meetings?
- Is there anything else on your mind?
⁉️ Mood Check (Survey)
As you can see, the aim of a monthly one-on-one meeting is primarily to pick up the employee and clarify the organizational framework.
By the way, don’t be fooled by the agenda: Basically, your goal should be for your intrinsically motivated employee to bring as many topics as possible to the table themselves.
Now let’s move on to a few questions that take a more creative approach to the one-on-one conversation with your new colleague.
“I like the employee, but they aren't performing as desired. How can I address this in 1:1s?”
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"Sometimes I’m not sure if I was too harsh - or too soft - in my 1:1s to be effective."
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"I can’t identify patterns or trends across my 1:1s. Everything feels isolated."
Solve this challengeFor Managers: Good One-on-One Meeting Questions for New Employees
32 smart questions for the first 1-to-1 meeting with a new employee
First impressions count. What kind of boss do you want to be? How do you want to be perceived?
Your first one-on-one meeting is actually very important. And your conversation style will have a decisive influence on how your new employee perceives you.
You’re looking for questions, so I’m going to assume that you’re also a fan of the leadership principle “Leading through questions.” The following questions are primarily intended to get to know your new colleagues.
🧘♀️ One-on-One Questions About Personal Life & Relationship Building
- What should I know about you?
- Do you have an idea where you would like to be professionally in a few years? If so, where?
- Operational question: What routines would you like to have between the two of us?
- Relationship building: What did you do on the weekend? (works well in the entire team after the weekend)
- Relationship building: How is your family doing?
- Relationship building: What is the highlight of your weekend? (also works well as a team icebreaker after the weekend)
- What puts you in a good mood?
- What things in your daily life make you happy?
- Operational question: How would you like to shape the communication between us?
Hopefully some of these questions are to your liking. Important to note 🚸: Basically, relationship building works according to the reciprocity effect, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
This means that it is best to share your own answers to the questions openly and honestly so that your employee gets to know you as a person right from the start. And not as a KPI-driven robot.
What do you do in your free time? Do you have a dog? What is your family situation like? These things are basic knowledge if you want to build trusting relationships.
Questions to get to know each other
Let’s continue with the text: What are other questions I can ask a new Direct Report to get to know him or her?
Here are some examples for you.
💭 Quick 1-on-1 Questions (Getting to Know Each Other)
- Do you prefer to start the day early or late?
- What does your perfect Saturday look like?
- What was the worst job you ever had?
- What is your favorite travel destination, and why does it draw you there?
- Were/are you in a sports club?
- Which book would you most like to read again for the first time?
- What do you like to watch on YouTube?
- What was the last movie you saw in the cinema and what did you think of it?
- What do you like to drink during happy hour?
- Would you rather be locked in a room full of kittens or puppies?
- What activity do you enjoy so much that you lose track of time when you do it?
- If you had an extra hour in the day, what would you do?
- If you had one less hour in the day, what would you cut out?
And, can you hardly wait to ask these questions in your one-on-one meeting? Very good, I’m glad.
If you would like more creative input, I can recommend our corresponding article: 129 Good One-on-One Meeting Questions (by a Psychologist) .
For Managers: Good One-on-One Meeting Questions for New Employees
15 more Templates for One-on-One Meetings (as Doc, PDF etc.)
You’ve probably already guessed it. Of course, there are many more templates for one-on-one meetings that you will need sooner or later.
For example, I talk about templates for your one-on-one meeting about salary or your conversation with a difficult employee.
We have additional templates for all of these use cases, which you can find in this article: 15 Free Proven One-on-one Meeting Templates to Edit & Print
For Managers: Good One-on-One Meeting Questions for New Employees
Conclusion: Questions for the first performance review
First of all, congratulations: you seem to take your leadership role seriously if you prepare your meeting agenda in advance.
The text presented here should not let you forget one piece of wisdom: There are countless questions you can ask - but the most important thing is that you tailor the conversation individually to your employee.
So if you can find out something about a new employee that shows, “Hey, I was paying attention during the application process, I remembered that you’re a big movie fan,” then that’s a magic ingredient for a successful one-on-one conversation.
Our AI meeting assistant for one-on-one meetings can also help you in your conversation. If you’d like to find out more, take a look at our website: The best 1-on-1 meeting software .
"Many team members are afraid to speak up!"
Solve this challenge "We discover too many unexpected issues & bugs at a late stage!"
Solve this challenge "Why does it sometimes take me hours to prepare a simple retrospective?"
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