(Time to read: 3 minutes)
Given all the events that have taken place in the last ~year, I decided to find out the best and worst ways teams found to deal with the challenges we have all faced. I’ll let you read through and then provide a roll up at the end. I think you’ll find there are some interesting patterns that emerge.
What is the most important thing your team did this year to help cope with everything that has transpired?
(This could be anything from a single event to a process change. What made you happier and more effective?)
- “Allowing for flexible schedules and time off.“
- “What was most helpful were efforts to keep some semblance of a normal routine. Continuing our weekly all-staff mtgs — virtual now instead of in-person — was essential to helping people feel connected and part of something outside their isolated home office.“
- “establish proper governance for the use of collaborative tech. its not just the availability of the tech its best practice on how to use it“
- “Having robust safety protocols for being able to work in the office when required. The quality of in person work and the camaraderie of seeing coworkers in person has been invaluable. This is critical in developing hardware.“
- “1/Every 3rd Friday is a vacation day 2/Adjusting priorities“
What is something that had a negative impact on your team and you would warn others against doing?
(This could be anything from a single event to a process change. What made your team unhappy and less effective?)
- “Keeping notifications on 24/7“
- “I’d advise against using the same internal information channels for keeping the workforce informed as the ones used pre-Covid. Employees’ information needs have changed and dramatically increased, because informal info channels (meeting at the water cooler, chatting in the break room, bumping into a colleague in the corridor) are no longer in play. Systems need to recognize this and expand existing ways to share information.“
- “be realistic as to the impact on your business given circumstances. resist impulse to always put on a happy face. we held back on setting realistic output and that ended up hurting moral“
- “People not using Jira effectively to track issues. Robust documentation with people being remote is critical. This could be broadly be characterized as “undercommunication”.”
- “A new project was started, which is across 3 timezones(India, Romania, US). This introduced lots of early morning meetings, which was not great for morale / sleep“
What is something that you wish you had done and that you are still thinking of/hoping to do in order to help your team cope?
- “More non-work related 1:1’s“
- “I hope to find more creative ways to accommodate more personal communication without putting anyone at risk of infection. The novelty of Zoom, Teams and Skype video has long worn off.“
- “try to do more to build relationship and culture through active communication“
- “Encouraging folks to take more time off.“
- “We sent out care packages to everyone. Would be great to be able to do this again, but it is $$$“
Any last thoughts? What did I forget to ask?
- “WFH perks are nice”
- “maybe how best to talk about recent events this week within a workplace setting”
- “It has also been harder to have those casual conversations to uncover new opportunities. Getting coffee to chat just isn’t the same on Zoom.”
(There is a lot there so I’ll do my best to distill out of the responses what I think are the most salient points. I’ll try to keep it brief as I know this article is stretching out and pardon any interpretive license you may note.)
First off, it is interesting to see that the humanistic elements were listed as the most empowering:
- Good, solid communication
- Personal interaction
- Rest
- A sense of security
This tracks with what I have long argued is perhaps the most important consideration in an operational model – people. Tools and process are all well and good but your most significant impact you can have is on the human side of things. How healthy is your team? How are they doing? Do you have enough of the proper roles? Are they burnt out and ready to quit? Or, are they energized and ready for the next challenge?
Next, good solid communication is clearly critical. The right amount of effective, quality communication is essential but not too much of it and not only via personal interactions. Tools and Processes need to be utilized to diversify the communication methods. This might be a good time to introduce the rule we followed at the UN which was to not send emails or messages after 5pm and none on the weekend. That, and the methods I outline in the link above.
This leads us to the next point which is that people need a break. They need to disconnect, recharge and completely forget about work for a while. Even the threat of a last minute request being squeezed in, the need to work on Sunday night, etc, serves to drain an individual’s reserves and keep them in a hyper-vigilant state which can be very damaging.
Lastly, human interaction even if is not in person. While we cannot all afford to be in the same place at the same time, simple human actions such as sending a gift basket can have a big impact. Reach out, be human.
What stands out to me most is that the human elements were most critical when it came to coping with the chaos we’ve encountered this past year regardless of role or organization. Process change was certainly noted and ‘cope’ infers a certain focus but, overall, the sentiment hewed in the direction of less technical and more existential. I realize that these are responses to an unprecedented series of events but I am hopeful that organizations continue to embrace such changes even when things have started to return to some semblance of normalcy.