How Happy Are Your Team?
In this blog I’m talking about a team from a company perspective. It’s applicable to any type of team though so is hopefully of use to most people in some way.
No matter how you look at it, a business is a team, it’s a group of people who work together. No matter what you do with branding and marketing. Your business is still just a group of people, who hopefully have a shared vision of why your business exists, and what it’s there to do. Take away the people, and all you have is just a name and a logo.
So that’s why your team are your companies biggest asset, without which you wouldn’t have a business. If your company relies on a machine to make widgets, you look after that machine. You make sure it’s well maintained, serviced regularly, and generally kept in good shape. Without that machine, you couldn’t be able to make widgets, so wouldn’t have any to sell, and you’d soon wouldn’t have a business.
It’s exactly the same with the people who make up your business. You rely on these people to do their job well, and achieve their objectives. So you also need to make sure they’re well maintained and looked after. When it comes to people being good at their job, I truly believe that someone who’s happier and excited about their work, is much better at it.
So how do you keep on top of this and make sure that your team are happy in their work? Historically a lot of companies haven’t been great at this kind of thing, simply seeing people as job titles and roles within a company. Often, their employee “maintenance” consisted of a simple annual review. If someone is hacked off about something in February, they’re probably not going to remember in their review many months later. If it’s a biggie, they’ll have probably got more hacked off, and left the business well before that comes around. The issue could have probably been dealt with at the time, and got that person back on track and happy again.
Regular communication is key here. By knowing of any potential issues early, you can discuss, and deal with them faster. That way you hopefully never get to the stage where someone is really unhappy.
I’ll outline the system I’ve introduced in my own business over the past few months, to try and address this, and to try and have a happier team.
At the end of each month I do what I call a “1 minute review” with every member of our team. This is done using an online form with just 5 questions that is sent with peoples wage slips. The 5 questions are as follows:
- How happy are you at the moment (rated 1–5)?
- What has been the highlight of your month?
- What has been your biggest issue this month?
- Is there anything you need or anything I can help you with?
- Any other comments?
I think they’re all self explanatory but I’ll go through them in turn to explain my reasoning behind them.
How happy are you at the moment (rated 1–5)?
This simple scale gives me an immediate answer to how happy people are feeling. Sometimes this could be lower than hoped, but that can just be a blip down to a specific circumstance. But other times people can slowly head a certain direction, and this really helps highlight that.
What has been the highlight of your month?
Knowing what each person feels is a highlight, helps me understand the kind of work and tasks they like. That means that in future I can try and give them the kind of work they prefer. It’s also really good for people to remind themselves of the good times :)
What has been your biggest issue this month?
If I know what people have seen as issues, I can then try and deal with them straight away, or put things in place to try and avoid the same issue in future.
Is there anything you need or anything I can help you with?
Linked to but not quite the same as the question above. Sometimes I’ll get valuable feedback on an issue and their proposed solution. Other times it can be something as simple as they need new equipment. Asking this question allows people to ask for things, that they may have felt uncomfortable bringing up at other times.
Any other comments?
This one’s there to cover all bases! I often get some great feedback in here about particular projects, or just general comments about how someone is feeling about something.
Obviously, asking these questions is great, but you need to act on the answers for it be effective! What these questions do is open up a dialogue, and lead to further questions. As I said above, communication is key when it comes to keeping a team happy.
Do you know how happy your team are? When was the last time you asked them?
Richard
