Introducing Rippling 1:1s: Build a culture of consistent, high-quality check-ins

It’s hard to make 1:1s a consistent practice. Schedules shift. Deadlines loom. Work mounts. What should be a valuable growth opportunity is often the first thing managers skip–or maybe worse, rush through without an agenda. 

This is a huge missed opportunity. 1:1s aren’t just a “nice to have.” They’re one of the most critical tools in the entire performance management toolkit. Gallup found that employees whose managers hold routine 1:1 meetings are almost three times more likely to be engaged at work. 

That’s why we built Rippling 1:1s. 

Rippling 1:1s makes regular, structured check-ins a seamless part of your performance management system. Managers can connect 1:1s to feedback, leaders get visibility to ensure meetings happen, and the app is intuitive enough that employees want to use it. 

The result: a company culture of consistent, high-quality 1:1s that drive alignment, engagement, and growth.

Meet Rippling 1:1s

With Rippling 1:1s, it is easy to make 1:1s a regular part of your company’s performance management practices – so you can cultivate a culture of continuous feedback and build more aligned and engaged teams. Because 1:1s is seamlessly integrated into Rippling, it’s simple to use, designed to fit your team, connected to performance, and easy to monitor.

Provide structure and guidance to every meeting 

When managers lack structure or guidance for 1:1s, the quality is inconsistent. Many conversations turn into simple status updates rather than impactful coaching sessions, leaving employees unclear about their path to growth. 

Rippling 1:1s makes it easy to add structure to every meeting. You can start with our library of off-the-shelf templates or customize your own. Because it’s powered by Rippling’s HRIS data, you can create unique templates tailored to each department’s needs — ensuring conversations are always relevant. For example, your Sales template could have recurring sections for pipeline review, while your Engineering template focuses on current sprint progress and roadblocks. 

This built-in structure helps guarantee every conversation is a mix of sharing feedback, clearing roadblocks, and making progress. And with a shared agenda, both managers and employees arrive prepared and ready for a productive discussion.

Ensure 1:1s happen consistently 

For many HR teams, 1:1s happen inside a black box, making it impossible to know if they’re happening consistently. This lack of accountability means these critical meetings often get skipped or deprioritized, leaving employees feeling disconnected. 

With Rippling, you get a real-time dashboard of 1:1 activity across your organization. You can easily see which managers are holding regular check-ins and, more importantly, identify who might need additional support or coaching to build a consistent habit. 

Promote development by connecting to performance 

Without an easy way to reference an employee's goals or past feedback during 1:1s, it's difficult to have a meaningful discussion about development. 

Rippling solves this by bringing performance context directly into every meeting. You can display an employee's goals and past feedback during the conversation, making it easy to track progress and have more meaningful discussions. By assigning and tracking action items, you create a clear, documented record of progress and ensure accountability.

Increase adoption with an employee-friendly experience  

If a 1:1s tool isn’t user-friendly, employees simply won’t use it. Employees will inevitably turn to familiar workarounds like personal notes. This defeats the purpose of a centralized system and scatters important feedback. 

That’s why we designed Rippling 1:1s with an intuitive, doc-style editor that feels instantly familiar. It’s as easy to use as your favorite note-taking app. Employees can format notes the way they work best — changing fonts, adding bullets and tables, and keeping everything easy to scan and act on later. Because it’s built directly into Rippling, there are no new logins or extra platforms to learn, ensuring adoption is seamless.

Everything you need to build high-performing teams

1:1s is just one part of Rippling’s Performance Management solution. Together with Goals, Review Cycles, Calibration, and Compensation, it gives you everything you need to grow, engage, and reward your workforce. Since it’s all connected, context on your employees flows seamlessly from one app to another, giving you a complete view of performance and eliminating the hassle of moving information back and forth. 

And when your performance data lives in the same system as HR and Payroll, you can create end-to-end automations, stay current with real-time data, and unlock powerful insights. For example, once a merit raise is approved, it flows directly to Rippling Payroll, no manual updates needed. Similarly, when an employee’s manager changes in the HRIS, their entire performance history instantly and securely transfers to the new manager. And you can see trends that aren’t visible in other systems — like how performance ratings change with employee tenure and how goal completion rates vary by department. 

When your systems are truly connected, you spend less time on busywork and more time building a high-performing culture. Book a demo today to see Rippling 1:1s in action.