In this instructional video, HR veteran Matt Vaadi explains how a structured weekly check‑in meeting is the key mechanism for ensuring that a new hire’s onboarding plan—developed in earlier "Perfect 90" videos—is actually followed. He outlines who should attend (the direct supervisor and the new teammate), why the meeting matters (to keep the hire on track, socialize them, and address roadblocks), and provides a detailed 37‑minute agenda broken into five segments: a 5‑minute gut‑check with open‑ended questions, a 6‑minute outcome‑focused review of the 30/60/90 goals, a review of the "last 7" and planning of the "next 7" days of training and stakeholder meetings, a dedicated Q&A slot for the hire, and a final action‑item recap. Vaadi supplies sample questions, timing guidance, and a downloadable template, emphasizing that the meeting should be calendar‑blocked from day one and owned by the supervisor. The video positions the weekly check‑in as a best‑practice, likening its agenda‑first approach to Jeff Bezos’s meeting style, and frames it as essential for engaging, retaining, and developing the organization’s most valuable asset—the new employee.
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Have you ever had a goal, devised an awesome plan to achieve that goal, only to look back a couple weeks or months later and realize you didn't follow the plan? You might have gotten close to the goal or even achieved the goal, but you took the time to invest in the strategy and the tactics only to then not follow it, but you were fortunate enough to get close or achieve the goal. We don't want to mess around with that during onboarding. In this video today, what I'm going to do is give you a simple best practice that you can use to make sure that your plan that we devised in one of our previous videos If you haven't watched our other videos in the employee onboarding series, I highly suggest you go check out the channel and make sure you subscribe and watch the planning for your onboarding process video first. Once we've got this plan in place, now we want to make sure we stick to it. And the easiest way to make sure we stick to it is with the weekly check-in meeting. I'm going to walk you through the perfect format for this meeting to make sure that you are doing everything you can to engage, retain, and grow your number one asset, and that's your new teammate. Thank you for joining me today on Culture and Compliance. My name is Matt Vadie. I've been in HR for nearly 20 years and I've helped hire hundreds of people. I've interviewed thousands of people. I've written a bestselling book on HR and organizational culture. And in today's video, I'm going to help guide you on how you can make sure that your onboarding process is perfect for your small business. All right, so let's dive right in. What is a weekly check-in? The weekly check-in meeting is a meeting that we put in place to make sure that we're staying on target with our new hire. What makes these meetings so effective? Well, Jeff Bezos doesn't take a meeting without an agenda and a written memo and plan for what that meeting is to cover. So we're going to use a similar philosophy in our weekly check-ins that we have a simple process we can follow to make sure we're staying on target with the outcomes and goals that we've aligned for our new hire in the previous planning process for setting up onboarding for this new teammate. Who should be in this meeting? Well, these meetings are meant for the direct supervisor and the teammate. It's important that somebody owns the onboarding success of the new teammate, and that individual should be the one leading this meeting. So let's use an example. Right now we have a new member of our HR outsourcing team at Guru. Her direct supervisor is KB. KB is the one who owns these meetings. I want to make sure I'm checking in with him to ensure the meetings are happening and ensure that she's staying on plan with everything that needs to happen during onboarding. But ultimately, those are his meetings to run. So whoever their direct supervisor is should have these weekly meetings with the new hire. And they should be put on the calendar right from the start before their first day so that we make sure that we don't miss these weekly meetings. All right, I'm gonna dive over and share my screen and show you the exact agenda and walk through the point and how much time we're gonna spend on each of these agenda items so that you can also take this. I'm gonna link to this document in the comments and you can make a copy of this and use it during your weekly check-ins to help ensure the success of your new teammate. This meeting is meant to ensure we are doing all the things we need to do to properly onboard an employee, socialize them in the organization, teach them how to do their job, and stay on top of any tasks or projects that require our attention. It's a 37-minute-long meeting that should happen every single week. Doesn't really matter which day of the week. Sometimes people prefer the beginning or the end of the week so that you can have that opportunity to look back and look forward on a Monday or Friday rather than doing so on a Wednesday or Thursday when you're in the middle of a week. All right. So the first section is the gut check. The gut check is where you're going to simply ask a few questions to get a gut check from your teammate. Where are they at? How are they doing? We're trying to get a sense of their comfort level in the organization. Do they have the resources they need to achieve their desired outcomes and where they could possibly need help? Some sample questions we would ask here is, tell me how you're feeling about things. We want to ask open-ended questions that help us to understand where the new teammate is at. Tell me about are 3 of the most powerful words in the English language when we are asking an open-ended question. We always want these things to be open-ended so that we can try to get a better sense of where they're at and how we can help them to improve. Another good question could be, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your comfort right now with where you're at? And this will change. You might want to ask this once a month, once every 30 days during that new hire pro— during that initial Perfect 90 to make sure that our new teammate is feeling comfortable. Are there any roadblocks I can help you with? What has been your biggest win so far? Is there anywhere you feel like we're missing the mark in your onboarding? These are just some simple questions and prompts that you can use to facilitate this initial component of the meeting, which is meant to be all about the teammate. Not about you. So make sure that 5 minutes is a minute of you talking and 4 of them talking. Next up, we want to get outcome-focused. So let's look at the document that we prepared. Again, if you haven't seen our video on preparing for new hire onboarding, I highly suggest you watch it. Once we've identified these 3 outcomes that are going to determine what a rockstar looks like 12 months from now, we can dial that back in and have the perfect 90-day plan to make sure we're training and expediting the learning and development around the key skills and abilities that are gonna make this person thrive in our organization. So during this section for 6 minutes, we're gonna talk about, we're going to review those 3 outcomes. We're gonna make sure that we have all the training identified and added to the document from the previous week that was completed. And then we're gonna make sure that we have everything scheduled. And you'll see it next up in this document is the last 7 and next 7. We're gonna look at what training was done in the last 7 days, what training's being done in the next 7 days, and we're gonna make sure that not just that, but other things are covered. I'll get to that in just a second. But when we are in the outcome focus section, we just wanna make sure we're staying on track. Are we on track where we need to be 30, 60, 90 to get to those 6-month and 12-month goals for our outcomes? Next up, we have the last 7. So we wanna take a look at the last 7 days. Did we get the training done that we needed to? Did we meet with the internal teammates that we needed to? Did we meet with the external stakeholders that we to— again, this is about not just training and development, it's also about the socialization internally and externally with the key stakeholders that are going to make this teammate successful for the long term and help them not only to achieve the outcomes we've outlined, but more. And so during this component, we want to make sure that we're helping to identify, particularly in this next 7, to steer and make sure that their calendar is loaded with the things that are going to help drive the appropriate outcomes because they will quickly get off course if we do not hold them accountable to making sure that they stay focused on those outcomes. Then next up, we're going to leave it open for their questions. And it's important that the individual teammate has this agenda so they know, hey, I've got 10 minutes every week where we're going to talk about my questions, anything I need to cover, questions I had about training, whatever it may be. This is their opportunity. Dig in, ask those open-ended questions. If they don't have questions for you right now, prompt them again, go back to the outcomes, and let's really push to make sure that we're meeting with the right people internally and externally and completing the right training to stay on course. The next steps, here's where I want to document anything that either one of us have to take away from this meeting as an action item and recap what we covered and then move on with our day. So that's it. 37 minutes once a week, and you and this new teammate will help to continue to build towards those successful outcomes that are going to help you to make sure that you have made an awesome hire and they have everything they need to become a rock star inside your organization. If you found this video to be helpful, please make sure you subscribe to our channel and look out for our next video on employee onboarding as we continue to share our Perfect 90 onboarding system with you. Thanks for your time. Have an awesome day.
