Wellbeing check-in template
Questions a manager can ask about wellbeing without overstepping — grounded in work, not in someone’s private life. Take it and change it.
11 questions · 1-on-1 meetings
The template
Open it honestly
Name why you are asking. A wellbeing question that arrives with no framing reads as a performance question in disguise.
- How have the last few weeks been — genuinely, not the short answer?
- How are your energy levels compared with a couple of months ago?
Workload and pace
- Is the volume of work sustainable at the pace you are going?
- Are you switching off properly in the evenings and at weekends?
- Which part of the week do you dread most?
What is in the way
- What is the most draining part of your work at the moment?
- Is anything outside your control making the job harder than it needs to be?
- Is there anything I have asked of you that you have been struggling to say no to?
Support
- What would make the biggest difference over the next month?
- Is there support you want that you have not asked for?
- What do you need from me specifically?
What this one assumes
There is more than one way to run this. Here is what we assumed, so you can tell quickly whether it fits — and what to change if it does not.
- The manager is checking in, not diagnosing anything — their job is to notice, adjust what they control, and know where to refer
- Every question is about work, which is the part a manager can legitimately ask about and actually change
- The manager knows the referral routes before the meeting, not during it
- Nothing from this conversation goes into a performance record
The reason managers avoid this conversation
Two fears, and they pull in opposite directions. Overstepping — asking something personal that was not theirs to ask. And being unable to help — opening something they are not equipped to deal with and leaving it open.
Both are reasonable, and both are solved the same way: keep every question about work. A manager can legitimately ask about workload, pace and what is draining someone, and those are also the things they can actually change. If something personal comes up, it comes up because the person chose to raise it, which is different from being asked.
How the template is built
Open it honestly. Say why you are asking before you ask. "I wanted to check in properly rather than just talk about work" costs one sentence and prevents the question landing as a performance probe. The energy question is there because it is easier to answer than "how are you" and more revealing.
Workload and pace is the legitimate territory and usually the actual cause. The question about which part of the week someone dreads is the most useful in the set — it is specific, people answer it accurately, and the answer is nearly always something that can be changed.
What is in the way separates the load from its source. The last question — whether you have asked for something they struggled to refuse — is uncomfortable to ask and the one most likely to surface something a manager can fix immediately.
Support stays concrete. "What would make the biggest difference over the next month" produces an actionable answer where "is there anything I can do" produces "no, I'm fine".
Before you run it
Know the referral routes first — EAP, leave policy, whoever handles flexible arrangements. The failure mode here is a manager who asks a good question, gets a serious answer, and has nothing to offer.
Do not take notes into a system. If someone tells you something difficult and watches you type it into a performance tool, you will not be told anything difficult again.
Follow up within a fortnight on anything you agreed. A wellbeing conversation with no visible consequence is worse than not having one, because it proves the exercise is cosmetic.
What we would change, and when
If you are checking in on someone you are already worried about, cut to three questions — how the last few weeks have been, what is most draining, what would make the biggest difference. The full set is for a regular rhythm, and in a difficult moment the length itself becomes pressure.
For shift or frontline teams, replace the evenings-and-weekends question with one about recovery between shifts. Switching off is the wrong frame when the pattern is rotating.
Run this on a schedule rather than only when you are concerned. A check-in that only ever happens when a manager has noticed something tells the person they have been noticed.
Run this one, then change it
Load it into Crewmojo as a starting point and reshape the questions, the timing and who is involved around how your organisation actually works.