Team bonds

In our research, we interview our client’s employees to find out what makes them decide to stay. The most common #1 positive at work? ‘The people I work with’.

Creating the sense of 'team' and encouraging the positive aspects of work should be a priority for team leaders and managers.

Last week I was talking with an HRD about how she creates a sense of togetherness within their team. In their quarterly team meeting, each person has to present three 'wins' that they have achieved at work during the quarter. All achievements are celebrated by the team and the sense of togetherness is developed. This is a simple initiative but has created a great sense of sharing and team interaction as everyone now really looks forward to this quarterly meeting.

How does your organisation encourage togetherness? How do you celebrate success? We'd love to hear your ideas and experiences for how a sense of 'togetherness' can be created?!

Do your managers skill share?

In my research, I speak to a lot of employees about their managers and last week I spoke to two employees from the same company that had very different manager experiences. One said:
 
"He very rarely has discussions with me - he is on a needs only basis. I don't know what he wants or even if I'm doing a good job, let alone learn anything from him". While another said:

"I have learned so much from my manager. He spends time with us one-one-one and has asked us all what skills we want to develop and coaches us in that area. And if he makes an appointment with us, he keeps it. Couldn't ask for more".

Aside from the great impact that this kind of manager has on an employee, here’s what’s so great about managers like this: when your training budget is slashed, a low cost, high impact substitue for training is having your managers allocate time for one-on-one skill sharing. Remember that we’ve spent 10 years in talking with current and former employees? What we learned is that employees learn more, faster, from their managers (and then from their peers) than via any other training source.

Who’s doing this well in your business? Can you see examples of managers who REFUSE to share their skills for fear of being superseded (or because they’re just not very nice!)? What have you done to successfully get managers developing their people?

Your managers wouldn't do this, would they?

Last Monday, a high value employee said to me:

"I don't hear from my manager much. I'm not sure whether that’s because I'm doing ok or because I'm just not important enough".

Have you seen Dr Emoto's research? His work shows that plants and other living things that receive attention and positive influences grow faster while living things that receive negative influences have slower rates of growth!

Even MORE interesting – living things that are completely IGNORED grow even more slowly than the ones that receive negative influences!

Why does being ignored have a worse effect than a mildly negative influence? Because everyone wants to feel valued, to feel important, to feel that someone takes notice of what they’re doing. We’ve been in the employee engagement business for almost 10 years now, and we can guarantee that employees are exactly the same!

What do you see in your organisation? Are employees (or just some of them) routinely ignored? What’s the effect of that? Have you seen examples where people flourish with even a little bit of TLC?

We'd love to hear your stories!

To tell or not to tell?

When there is a lot of change happening within an organisation is it better to tell employees about the strategy, which may include redundancies, or only share this information as it become necessary?

Our involvement with many organisations undergoing major change has shown the following:

• People tend to flee from uncertainty, especially high performing employees
  
• People need to understand 'how does this affect me?' at all times and need to be told repeatedly
  
• People need regular and frequent communication and should never hear rumours from the media or market first
  
• People want to know that the organisation cares about they care about (i.e. their future)
  
• Employees with longer tenure, older employees and women are more likely to wait around for a redundancy payout than leave for another job
• Transparent communication develops a sense of trust in the executive management team and promotes 'buy in' by employees during periods of change
  

When have you been transparent about decisions? Did it pay off? When would you not be transparent about decisions?

Looking forward to hearing your stories!