Today’s Tips and Tricks are about personal communication and how to improve interaction among your team when at work.
Our world has changed in immeasurable ways in the past two years.
International flights were cancelled, Christmas parties were suspended, and business-wise there was no certainty for many industries. Even though the business world kept rolling there were reductions in turnovers, demand, expansion, and certainly in the building of productive teams for many industries.
Now that the majority of companies are back to operating how they were pre-pandemic and the staff have returned to the office/premises, new challenges have arisen.
Team interaction has definitely changed and some teams are not as close anymore.
Some industries have been facing staff shortages causing the increase of hiring trainees and rotating existing team members.
Communication lags have increased.
Stress and anxiety are impacting performance more than ever.
In some cases, the team is not so passionate about the company and they play their own game.
What should we do then?
Stimulating interaction and personal communication between team members will make a huge difference!
Here are some tips from our Performia team:
1. Introducing new team members properly will make them feel welcome and more likely to be set up for success. Your onboarding process will be very important to start with!
2. Having casual team meetings/catch-ups will open spaces to connect and will promote interaction.
This is easier to organise when the team is together in the office, but it is still possible when working from home. You can use technology such as Zoom and Google Meet to set up team meetings focused on specific things. Make sure to celebrate highlights and recognise positive contributions.
You can even organise for your team to be logged on at the same time, videos turned on and be able to collaborate by muting/unmuting themselves even if they are working on their own projects!
3. Celebrating birthdays is a perfect way to bring the team together and involve everyone; even if they are not in the same office!
So often, companies don’t acknowledge people on their birthdays. It is a very simple thing that can make a big difference to someone’s day. Organise a birthday card and get messages from the team to place in the card. You can have an e-card or physical card! It’s the thought that counts. We just celebrated our director’s birthday recently! Here is Gareth!
4. Promote team acknowledgment, this is something that should become part of your culture and done by every team member in the company! It does not need to be a senior-junior relationship!
5. Implement gamification and set team goals as a strategy.
Have you noticed how everything is more fun and gets done to a higher level; whether it is speed or quality, when it is a game? See how you can bring this into the day-to-day of your business!
We hope you have found this helpful, and will look at how you can create, promote or rebuild personal interactions in your business to boost morale and bring the team together to support a common goal!