One-to-one meetings with shift staff: how to run them around the rota

It’s 15:10 on a Wednesday. Lunch is done, the dinner prep list is up, and Sam, the GM, has twenty minutes before the evening team walks in. Chloe is two hours into a four-hour shift on the bar. She’s been here eight months, and nobody has asked her how it’s going since her first week.

Sam knows she’s good. He also knows she’s started picking up shifts at the place across the road.

Most advice on one-to-one meetings assumes a calendar invite, a meeting room and a laptop. You’ve got a rota, a pass and a back office with the safe in it. This guide is for that job.

What is a one-to-one meeting?

A one-to-one meeting is a short, regular, private conversation between a team member and their manager about how work is going. For shift teams, we suggest three habits: keep it to about 15 minutes, hold it inside a paid shift, and make it monthly for regular staff. Casual and zero-hours staff get one too, every six to eight weeks.

Plenty of UK teams call it a 1-2-1, a 121 or a check-in.

One-to-one or appraisal?

• A one-to-one is the short, regular conversation. ACAS’s performance management guidance (updated June 2026) mentions “regular check-ins, sometimes known as one-to-ones” alongside formal reviews.
• An appraisal, or staff appraisal, is the formal review. ACAS says it’s a good idea to review employees “at least once a year”.

No general UK law requires one-to-ones or appraisals in hospitality or retail. ACAS treats them as good practice. A one-to-one also isn’t a disciplinary, a return to work interview or a probation review. If one turns into a conduct or capability issue, stop and use your proper procedure.

CIPD’s appraisals factsheet (January 2026) notes that annual reviews have been questioned “in favour of more regular conversations”. Our suggestion: build the yearly appraisal from the year’s one-to-ones, and most of it is already written. Keep pay decisions out of the monthly talk.

Why most one-to-one advice doesn’t fit a rota

• There’s no free Tuesday at ten. You and a team member might share two shifts a month.
• Much of your team works part-time, casually or on zero hours. A review built around a nine-to-five diary tends to miss them, even though part-timers should get the same reviews as everyone else.
• Managers move between sites, and teams turn over. When the GM moves on, the notebook goes too. More in team communication across several sites.
• Nobody on the floor has a work laptop. It has to work on a phone, like an employee handbook your team actually opens.

In CIPD’s analysis of ONS data for 2022 and 2023, hospitality had the highest staff turnover of the industries it looked at: 52% a year, against a UK average of 34%.

How often should you have one-to-ones with shift staff?

This is our recommendation, built around a rota rather than a calendar, not a legal rule. In our view, short and regular beats long and rare.

Who	How often	When
New starters	End of week 1, end of week 4, and before they reach six months	On a shift they’re already working
Regular full-time and part-time staff	Monthly	A quiet spell inside their shift, like the lull between services, never their break
Casual and zero-hours staff	Every six to eight weeks	On a shift they’ve accepted, never a day off
Shift leads and supervisors	Fortnightly	Inside their shift, around the handover they run
Seasonal temps	At the start, and before the contract ends	Before they go, so you can ask the good ones back

Pair a new starter’s early one-to-ones with training that sticks on a busy floor. For temps, see planning for retail peak season.

How long should a one-to-one take?

Fifteen minutes, on shift, for the regular one. That’s enough for their points, yours and two actions. Hold it in a quiet part of their shift, never in their break.

The quarterly or yearly review gets 45 minutes to an hour, booked ahead on a quieter shift. It’s still paid time.

If someone brings something big, don’t squeeze it in. Book a proper slot within the week.

How to run a one-to-one in 15 minutes

Before: put it on the rota

Write it into the rota like any other part of the shift, so cover is planned. Tell them a few days ahead and ask them to bring two or three things.

During: their points first, then yours

Find somewhere quiet: the office, a corner of the restaurant before doors, the bench out back. Start with what they brought, then last time’s actions, then your points.

Keep feedback on the work, not the person. In a large 1996 review of feedback studies, feedback made performance worse in more than a third of cases, especially when it was about the person rather than the task.

After: two actions, written down

End with two actions at most, each with a name and a date, written where you can both see them.

One-to-one meeting questions that work on the floor

Good questions sound like the floor, not an HR form. The full set is in the template below. Then add your sector:

• In a restaurant kitchen, ask about kit, prep and the pass.
• In hotels, ask about handovers between housekeeping, reception and the night shift.
• In retail, ask about customers. In Usdaw’s 2025 survey of more than 8,980 retail staff, 78% said they’d been verbally abused in the year.

If someone tells you about abuse, harassment or an injury, act on it like any other report and log it in the right place. The one-to-one note just says you talked and what happens next.

Some conversations go somewhere harder. Ask, listen and point people to support: you’re their manager, not their counsellor. Employers have a legal duty to protect workers from stress at work by assessing the risk and acting on it, and HSE suggests using one-to-ones to talk about the causes of stress, with its Talking Toolkits. HSE is clear those shouldn’t be your only measure.

Part-time, casual and zero-hours staff

ACAS’s advice on regular reviews is aimed at people with the legal status of employee. Part-time staff on a contract of employment are employees, so they’re inside that advice, and the law says they mustn’t be treated less favourably than comparable full-timers for being part-time, including on training and promotion. They’re just the easiest to miss when you share two shifts a month. In retail, 1.52 million of about 2.79 million jobs are part-time (British Retail Consortium, June 2026).

Casual and zero-hours staff are a different case. ACAS says agency workers, casual workers and people on zero-hours contracts are “not likely” to be employees, and that employers “might choose” to review workers too. Not likely isn’t never: status depends on the facts. On a shift team they can be a big part of the rota. The Work Foundation’s analysis of ONS data (February 2026) counted a record 1.23 million people on zero-hours contracts in their main job.

So give everyone a one-to-one, short enough that you’ll actually do it. A casual who’s never asked how it’s going will take the shift across the road.

Is a one-to-one paid time?

Yes. Hold it during a paid shift, or pay for the time.

GOV.UK’s minimum wage guidance counts time “spent at the workplace and required to be available for work” for hourly paid staff. Its own worked example, a shop-floor worker asked to attend a weekly team meeting, counts that meeting as working time. We read a one-to-one you ask someone to attend the same way. Zero-hours workers get the minimum wage in the same way as regular workers.

If you’re on shift: you shouldn’t be asked to come in unpaid, early, on a day off or in your break for one. If you’re the manager: fit it inside rostered hours, never their break, and pay the extra if it runs over.

This is a practical guide, not legal advice. For your own situation, check the specifics with someone qualified.

Keeping one-to-one records

For performance reviews, ACAS says “it’s important to keep a written record” of what’s discussed, and to share it with the employee. We’d do the same for a one-to-one: a few lines on what they raised, what you agreed, and who does what by when.

• Write it together. If they never see it, it isn’t shared.
• Write every note as if they’ll read it. Even a manager’s private notes are records about that person, and they can ask for a copy.
• Keep health and other personal details off the form. If someone mentions their health, a pregnancy, a disability, union membership or family, note that you talked and what happens next.
• Keep it with the person, not the manager. Notes in a GM’s notebook leave when the GM does.

Records matter more from 1 January 2027, when employees can claim ordinary unfair dismissal after six months’ service instead of two years. Notes from someone’s first six months show how their start went, for both of you.

Following up after a one-to-one

A one-to-one is only as good as the next shift. If someone raises the broken glasswasher three months running and nothing happens, they’ll stop raising things.

• Open each one-to-one with last time’s actions. Done, not done, or dropped, and why.
• Do your action first. Sort what you promised before you ask about theirs.
• Say what changed because someone spoke up. Mention it at the next pre-shift briefing, so the quiet ones see it’s worth it.

Keeping one-to-ones going across several sites

One GM at one site can run one-to-ones from a notebook. Ten sites with managers who move around can’t. That’s what 1-2-1s and surveys in Todolo People are for.

Todolo is one app for the whole shift: communication, training, handbooks and the day’s tasks, in an employee app that needs no computer or company email address. In People:

• Your own formats, such as a check-in, a follow-up or a performance review, with a question bank and an interval from weekly to yearly.
• Points from both sides. You both add points before the talk, with shared and private notes.
• Actions carry over to the next 1-2-1, so the conversation stops depending on the manager’s notebook, or on the manager.
• Talk rounds. Start a round, say performance reviews this autumn, and see which managers are done and which are behind.
• Surveys that lead somewhere. People includes pulse and targeted surveys, with answers stored without names and only shown once a group has enough of them. A drop in a category surfaces as a suggested talking point in the next 1-2-1, and TOD, Todolo’s AI teammate, can phrase a follow-up question after a low answer.

Todolo doesn’t build your rota, so the slot still goes on the rota you already use.

Free one-to-one meeting template

Here’s the 1-2-1 template we’d use on a shift team, in the order of a 15-minute talk. The PDF adds fields for the details, the agreed actions and the next date. Print it, or keep it on your phone: download the one-to-one meeting template (PDF).

Their points first

• What would you like to talk about today?
• Did last time’s actions get done? If not, what got in the way?
• Has anything changed for you since we last talked?

How the last few weeks went

• How’s it going, in a sentence?
• What’s gone well on your shifts lately?
• What’s made a shift harder than it needed to be?
• Has anything happened with a customer that you want me to know about?

Work and the rota

• Are your hours working for you at the moment?
• Anything you’d like to change on the rota, such as more or fewer shifts?
• Is any equipment, stock or handover slowing you down?
• How are things with the rest of the team on your shifts?
• Is there anything you need from me that you’re not getting?

Support and next steps

• Is there any training you need to do the job well?
• What would you like to learn or try next?
• Do you know where to go for support if you need it?
• What’s one thing that would make your next shift easier?
• Is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to?

Common questions about one-to-ones

What is a one-to-one meeting at work?

A one-to-one meeting, also called a 1-2-1 or 121, is a short, regular, private conversation between a team member and their manager about how work is going. ACAS describes one-to-ones as regular check-ins alongside formal reviews.

How often should you have one-to-ones with staff who work shifts?

We suggest monthly for regular staff, every six to eight weeks for casual and zero-hours staff, and more often for new starters and shift leads. Hold them inside shifts people are already working.

What’s the difference between a one-to-one and an appraisal?

A staff appraisal is a formal review, usually yearly. A one-to-one is the short, regular conversation in between, and a year of one-to-one notes makes the appraisal much easier to write.

Do zero-hours and part-time staff need one-to-ones?

Yes, in practice, even though no general UK law requires one-to-ones in hospitality or retail. Part-time staff are usually employees, so ACAS’s advice to review them at least once a year applies, and they mustn’t be treated less favourably than full-timers. ACAS says zero-hours and casual staff are not likely to be employees, though you might choose to review them too.

Should a one-to-one be paid time?

Yes. GOV.UK’s minimum wage guidance counts a required weekly team meeting as working time, and we’d treat a one-to-one you ask someone to attend the same way, including for zero-hours staff. Hold it inside a paid shift, not in their break, or pay for the time.

Start with next week’s rota

Open next week’s rota and find three people who’ve been with you over a month and never had a one-to-one. Give each of them 15 minutes inside a shift they’re already working, and ask what would make the next shift easier.

In thirty minutes we’ll show you how 1-2-1s, surveys and training work together in Todolo, alongside everything else on the shift. There’s no long contract to sign, and there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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