Overview
Relay takes five minutes to set up. Getting genuine, useful signal out of it takes about a month. Not because the product is complicated, but because the habit on both sides needs time to form. This guide covers what to focus on in each of the first four weeks and what to look for when month one is done.
Week one: send the first check-in
Choose one team. Not your whole organisation, not every department at once. One team with a shared context and a single manager.
Pick a question that's specific enough to act on. Don't spend more than 30 minutes on it. 'Did you have what you needed to do your best work this week?' is a reasonable starting point for almost any team. The question can be refined later. What you can't manufacture later is the habit of answering, and that starts now.
Send it. Note the response rate when it comes back. That's the only number that matters in week one. You're not looking for insight yet. You're checking that the channel works.
Week two: read, don't act
By the end of week two you have two data points. That's not enough to act on. It's enough to start paying attention.
Read the score. Read the comments if there are any. Notice anything that surprises you, and then do nothing. Single-week drops are almost always noise: the end of a sprint, a difficult conversation the day before the check-in went out, someone having a rough Tuesday. One data point in either direction means nothing on its own.
The urge to respond is strongest in week two. 'I noticed some of the responses this week and wanted to check in.' Don't. Even a well-intentioned message like that signals you're watching closely enough to connect scores to people. That breaks the dynamic before it has a chance to build. Read the results. Say nothing.
Weeks three and four: close the loop
This is the step most managers skip. Response rates fall after the first month for one reason: people answered twice, nothing happened, and they stopped bothering.
By now you have three or four check-ins. There's probably at least one theme in the comments, even if it's small. Acknowledge it. Not by referencing Relay directly, and not by sharing percentages in a team meeting. Pick one concrete thing and say something in your next team call or a brief written message.
'I've been reading through the weekly check-ins. One thing that keeps coming up is meeting load. I'm going to cut two recurring meetings this week and see if that changes things.' You don't need to fix the issue comprehensively. You need to demonstrate that the signal is being read. That's what turns a check-in into a real conversation rather than a form people fill in and forget.
One thing at a time. Don't try to address three separate themes in one message. Pick the most concrete one. The others will surface again if they're real.
After month one: evaluate what you have
At the end of the first month, ask yourself three questions.
Are you reading the results every week? Not skimming. Reading: looking at the score, reading the comments, thinking about what's shifted since the previous week. If the answer is no, the process isn't embedded yet. The results need to be in your Monday routine before anything else here matters.
Is the question generating useful signal? If every result has sat above 80% and the comments are sparse, the question is probably too comfortable. If the results are all over the place and the comments contradict each other, the question may be too broad. The signal should feel like it's pointing somewhere, even if you're not sure exactly where yet.
Is there one pattern you haven't responded to yet? Three weeks of the same theme is a signal. Not an emergency, but something worth a targeted conversation, a process change, or at minimum a direct acknowledgement.
Month two is when the signal starts to mean something. The team is in the habit of answering. You're in the habit of reading. The results have moved in at least one direction you can point to. Everything from here is consistency: show up each week and do something small with what you hear.