Grow by caring for your people — Team Building as a culture
Work-Life-Balance and mental health are more important today than they ever were before, and workplace happiness is a major factor. Here are some handy tips that might help you improve the current situation for both employers and employees.
Why does it matter?
There have been many surveys about the positive effects of happy employees while on the other hand numbers told us that way too many people are not happy in their current position and team/company. With the additional issues caused by Covid-19, the situation obviously did not improve. A recent study (links in the footer) shows that from the polled people in various industries about 20% were unhappy and 15% were actively trying to find a new job.
If you think that 20% doesn’t sound too bad, that’s one in 5 people. That is too much.
I could show you a ton of infographics about how happy employees are more productive and improve sales and so on but there are two things I would prefer you to keep in mind.
- The ethics side — we’re talking about people, not resources
- The economics (flip) side — the hidden costs of people leaving your company is huge and even further damages employee happiness and morale
People matter! They should matter more than money and their wellbeing should be of the highest priority. No job should be worth neglecting your own mental (or physical) health and it takes more than some glued-on company culture to solve underlying problems.
By sharing some stories and experiences from my work at “Das Büro am Draht” I hope I can shed some light on this topic, underlying issues and possible ways to change things for the better.
Beanbags and free food/drinks ARE NOT the cure and Millennials ARE NOT the problem!
What does it mean?
The essence of happiness is hard to define and I’ve already been using the word very generously since I started this article. Depending on who you ask, you will receive a variety of definitions, explanations and TED Talks. For example, here is my stance on happiness:
I personally think that happiness is not a goal but a decision of each individual.
For the clarity of this article and because this statement alone is a topic on its own (one I will soon tackle in a separate article), the following article will understand happiness as follows.
Workplace Happiness — A feeling of being trusted, valued and understood in a circle of peers.
Let’s break this apart to get a better understanding of what we are looking for. You won’t be able to please everyone but these points are a good way to start.
What is Trust
In the context of a regular workplace, trust is the ability to assign tasks to a person that can handle assignments according to their seniority and knowing that they will succeed.
While I would expect a senior developer to give me solutions or at least a rough analysis for problems they encountered, it is totally ok for a junior to ask for help, guidance or simply report back that they encountered an issue. Both junior and senior can accept and “own” a task according to their capabilities. I trust them to handle it as best as possible.
What is Value
Feeling valued means that I get positive feedback for tasks solved and decisions made. Many people think that no criticism is a compliment but the opposite is the case.
Not receiving any feedback at all (neither positive nor negative) makes people feel underappreciated. On the other hand, telling people they did well or even exceeded your expectations will make them feel better about their job and tasks and will even motivate them to continue to deliver results like they just did.
What is Empathy
We are all humans. In the workplace environment, this might at times be forgotten but most people can not always perform at 100% let alone continuously perform above that.
Showing empathy towards your colleagues and employees means that you value them as human beings and not solely as part of the workforce, a “human resource”…
What can we do?
Building Trust
Building trust takes time while losing it can happen in an instant. If you have a new team that has not yet built a strong trust base, it can be important to communicate often and in different circles.
If you are a team-lead, try to arrange for regular short personal reviews with your team members. Ask them how they feel about their workload and tasks, whether their current focus is on things they like doing and see if you can give them tasks that they can perform well in.
Assuming that your company is working under the agile mindset, try to break down tasks in a way that creates manageable overhead but that are small enough that people feel like they’ve accomplished something. Use reviews and retrospective meetings to find a good velocity and task size for your team members and adjust following refinement and sprint planning meetings so that people are able to succeed in their workload for the following sprint.
Repeat this over a longer period and let your team members assign points to tasks themselves, only that way they can get a better understanding of what they are capable of and improve in the planning phase of upcoming tasks.
Culture of Failure: Fail Fast, Fail Often
Some companies try to advocate a “culture of failure”. While not everyone manages to bring the core issue of this idea across, accepting and even telling people to fail IS a good idea in my opinion. Let your — especially non-senior — team members know that failure is acceptable as long as they are upright about it and communicate it early. I prefer a junior who tells me a task was too difficult for them or that they hit a wall over one who spends 2 weeks desperately trying to succeed and runs out of time.
Trust and confidence go hand in hand so try to build confidence in your people. That way it will be easier to trust their abilities.
Communicate Value
It’s very easy to say thank you, it costs you nothing and yet, so many people fail to mention it on a regular basis.
If a colleague takes some time for you to answer a question or help you with an issue, tell them thanks for their valuable time. If someone finishes an epic task that took the team a long time, tell them all that they did well. Maybe even do so in your next internal company mail.
“This quarter, we finished building the new B2B infrastructure for our main customer, well in time and budget. Many thanks to the B2B Team for a job well done. We even received praise from the customer CEO in our last review call.”
Don’t forget to point out individuals as well. When you are a team lead, you might be well aware of your team but your boss might not be? It does not hurt to mention here and there when a trainee or student did a good or even outstanding job on a project. Don’t wait for the next annual evaluation and spread some praise and thanks regularly. It creates a positive atmosphere and boosts peoples’ ego and motivation.
Again, if you are working the agile way (and even if not), use team-building measures to boost morale and create perceived value. We’re using a technique I know as “campfire” or “fishbowl” where the team comes together and one randomly chosen member turns off their camera (yeah, covid measures, we usually sat together in a room but that’s simply the way we do it right now) and the whole team starts taking turns in talking positively about the lucky individual. Tell them what makes you glad/happy to have them in your team, which accomplishments recently stood out and other things that you might like about them
Some bad employers do not do these things to keep people low on self-esteem so they have an easier time negotiating underwhelming salaries… Please, don’t be a bad employer!
Show Empathy
If a colleague has a bad day, it can mean a lot if your superior or even a colleague tells you to take things easy, report back a day later and maybe even take the afternoon off. Good and bad things happen that might make you want to take some time off, maybe shift a bit of your workload to another day and so on. Having a team and team-lead that accepts that and maybe even offers some help or guidance will go a long way.
No one expects you to solve their issues but acknowledging them as real and finding ways to navigate them will strengthen your bond with them and create loyalty. If people know that you have an open door for them when they need you, they will also be more likely to go the extra mile for a few days when push comes to shove and deadlines are looming.
Wrapping Up
If you take one thing with you from this article, then let it be the following.
Employees are human beings. Treat them with respect, be thankful and build them up. Empower people to grow and reach new heights.
If you want to do more than that, maybe try utilizing agile methods (that might not directly increase immediate productivity) to create a positive climate and a work environment that is as uplifting as it can be. Make sure that everyone knows their worth (in a good way) and is working towards a shared goal. Form strong teams of people meeting at eye level despite their seniority and background.
Be inclusive, be positive and be human, for what it’s worth. You might be amazed by the results if you keep this up for a while. We sure were.
About Das Büro am Draht
Das Büro am Draht is a Berlin-based consultancy helping our clients to build resilient and adaptable digital platforms to support today’s business requirements and even launch tomorrow’s business models we might not yet foresee. Hence, we work closely together at every stage of the digital transformation process — from digital strategy to solution design & development to operational support. Our agile approach to developing versatile and scalable solutions ensures that our clients consistently deliver engaging and personalized customer experiences. To learn more about how we help companies across industries, follow us on LinkedIn.
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Sources:
(follow the links in these articles for more statistics, polls and science stuff hidden behind their pretty rhetorics)
