Proposal: Conscious decision about regular project meetings

Ensuring that all students and postdocs who would like regular feedback can get it

Increase efficiency and motivation. Decrease isolation.
Many trainees desire regular meetings with their PI and/or other members of their team but feel inhibited from asking for this.
Make a culture in which trainees feel comfortable/obligated to set up the working conditions in which they do best, and modifying them as needed.

HR tells each scientist (phd student, masters student, postdoc, RA) to have a conversation with their “project team” in which they decide whether they would like regular meetings about how the project is going. If so, how frequent, ~how long, who will attend, and on what day/time
This conversation occurs as soon as someone joins a lab
While the PI is usually part of the “project team”, they don’t necessarily need to be in all the meetings. It could be just a student and postdoc for example
The “first author” of the project sends the output of this conversation to HR, who doesn’t need to do anything with this information
This decision is not binding and its parameters can be adjusted by the team at any point
To be clear: meetings are not enforced, registered, or accounted for. People are just asked to have an explicit conversation about whether this is something that they want.
Twice per year, HR asks the “first authors”: 1) are they satisfied with how the meetings are going? 2) are they generally satisfied with their motivation, productivity, and long-term project prospects? 3) If no, are they able to engage in constructive dialogue with their team during these meetings? 4) If no, offer to help them figure out how to do this.

Should this only be put in place for incoming students/postdocs or for everyone?
Does HR have the overhead to check in with researchers (or just students) on whether they are satisfied with the project-management aspect of their work, once or twice per year? Should they? Should/can we do this without involving HR?