Managerial Effectiveness

A Manager’s Guide to 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meetings [+ Free Template]

A Manager’s Guide to 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meetings [+ Free Template]

A Manager’s Guide to 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meetings [+ Free Template]

Maxim Dsouza

Jul 22, 2025

Introduction

Work is important, but it is not the only thing that can create success. We often avoid investing too much on unnecessary things, and one of those unnecessary things may be employee welfare for you. We know it may sound weird, but if your employees have a bad mental state, it will directly affect not just one department, but every single one of them. As they say, a bad vibe is like an illness that spreads far and wide. That's why the well-being meetings are so important, and today we will find out exactly why it should be your first priority and how to achieve it.

Purpose of 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meetings

The 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meetings serve a wide range of functions in an organisation. Sometimes it works as a morale boost, and sometimes it helps those who work extra hard to take it easy. Anyways, here are the main purposes that these 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meetings manage to accomplish:

  1. Beyond Work: Truly understand how your employees are doing, apart from work and performance. 

  2. Build Trust: When an employee feels heard and not taken lightly, they open up and share things that they usually wouldn't. This symbolises trust that lasts a generation.

  3. Precaution is better than Cure: Catching potential issues early on and dealing with them before they can turn into something big. Like irregular sleep schedules or being unable to focus on work due to constant noise. These play a part in destroying the mental health of employees from within.

  4. Provide Support: Providing much needed support, resources to deal with issues and adjusting work to match the situation. These not only create an environment where people want to work, but also help them work even better since they are not being heard and actions are taken accordingly.

  5. Promote employee satisfaction: When employees feel heard, their morality improves by ten levels. It makes them feel at ease and focus properly on work instead of worrying about their well-being all the time.

  6. Personal and professional growth: Discussing outside of the work and fully immerse into talks like career, promotion, hobbies, etc, helps grow the personal and professional relationship between the manager and its underlings. Be a friend, not a fiend.

Read More: The Sales Manager’s Guide to Pipeline Tracking (Template Included)

Manager’s 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meeting Free Template

Download our free 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meeting template from our multiple available download links.

Conclusion

The 1-on-1 Wellbeing Meetings are always overlooked, and employees are expected to manage everything on their own. In one way that may feel ok, but in reality that is just being ignorant to the obvious. Employees are born heroes, but they can surely become a villain if not taken carefully. So think carefully, which one you want, train a villain by ignoring them, or a hero by listening, it's your call.

Read More: How to Create a Monthly Sales Report (Free Template)

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is the key difference between regular 1 on 1 meetings and the wellbeing ones?

Ans. The regular meetings are mostly geared toward the performance department. If someone works good, he gets praised, and if someone doesn't work good, he gets assigned to a training program. Meanwhile the wellbeing meetings are totally different. These aim at understanding the mental state of the employee, and help him balance the work-life experience.

Q2. How often should these meetings be held?

Ans. The 1 on 1 wellbeing meetings should be held twice a week at least. It is important to provide a dedicated space to your employees and help them overcome time related issues. Because these issues will turn into depression and anxiety if not taken care of at the right time.

Q3. How to deal with employees who don't want to open up?

Ans. Most new employees will act that way. No one shares all their secrets to a stranger, and right now you are that stranger. So try to remove that strange air around you, and convert yourself from a superior to a friend. It takes time, but it is always worth it.

Read More: Employee Development Plan Template & Examples for HR Leaders

Q4. What kind of Fixes should I offer for wellbeing issues?

Ans. It is tempting to fix something that is broken, but let's not forget that that is not the purpose of this meeting. Its primary purpose is to listen and empathise with the speaker. In most cases that is enough since they only want to be here and taken seriously. Be a friend, not a therapist.

Q5. Will discussing wellbeing affect the performance in a negative way?

Ans. It should absolutely not. This meeting isn't taken to punish or penalise an underperforming employee. Instead it is taken to help them cope with worklife balance and prevail. It can definitely improve their work in some cases, but that should not be the reason why it is taken.

Sources:

  1. Your Guide to Running An Incredible One-On-One Meeting | Nivati

  2. Effective One-on-One Meetings: Free Template and Agenda [2025] • Asana

  3. 70 One to One Meeting Questions for Employee Wellbeing

  4. 7 tips for better 1-on-1 meetings - Work Life by Atlassian

  5. 10 One-on-One Meeting Templates for Productive Meetings - AIHR

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Co-founder & CTO

Co-founder & CTO

Maxim Dsouza is the Chief Technology Officer at Eubrics, where he drives technology strategy and leads a 15‑person engineering team. Eubrics is an AI productivity and performance platform that empowers organizations to boost efficiency, measure impact, and accelerate growth. With 16 years of experience in engineering leadership, AI/ML, systems architecture, team building, and project management, Maxim has built and scaled high‑performing technology organizations across startups and Fortune‑100. From 2010 to 2016, he co‑founded and served as CTO of InoVVorX—an IoT‑automation startup—where he led a 40‑person engineering team. Between 2016 and 2022, he was Engineering Head at Apple for Strategic Data Solutions, overseeing a cross‑functional group of approximately 80–100 engineers.