BusinessHow we used an Officevibe to increase productivity and happiness of Mobile Reality Team

A business starts with a decent idea. But how it will develop depends on many additional factors. The atmosphere in the team is crucial.

When the staff works as one well-coordinated team, striving for high common goals, the company progresses, grows stronger and thrives. If employees are irritable, hostile to each other, often in conflict, and do not want to invest efforts in achieving joint tasks, this inevitably affects the results and worsens the company's KPI. To prevent this, the manager is obliged to build and maintain a healthy internal atmosphere. We will tell you what to do and what measures to take and how we did it in our Mobile Reality Team.

First, you should find out what is happening in your team at the moment: what emotions, experiences and moods prevail, whether conflicts occur, whether there is an understanding of the overall goal of the company and the desire to implement it.

There are several ways to get information:

At general meetings;

• In the process of personal conversations with individual employees.

• With the help of an anonymous questionnaire.

It is advisable to perform the analysis regularly, since many factors can dramatically change the current situation. The working environment is affected by:

group compatibility. Employees operate with their own basic concepts and general ideas, performing a specific task. However, well-coordinated teamwork is based on emotional unity, sharing the company's values. If team members speak different languages, does not reach a compromise on simple issues, does not understand the main goals – the situation will not allow you to do the work effectively;

• the nature of the activity. Each position in the company is characterized by features – emotional saturation, monotony, increased responsibility, the presence of stress factors. All this affects the socio-psychological microclimate;

• the level of job satisfaction. Ideally, the work arouses interest, brings a sense of satisfaction, self-importance, and gives an opportunity for professional development. To maintain a favorable atmosphere, it is necessary to respond to the needs of the team in a timely manner: to introduce effective systems of material and non-material motivation, pay attention to training, encourage initiative, and strive for career growth. Otherwise, the enthusiasm in the team will quickly subside;

• working conditions. To get the maximum return, it is worth providing employees with a comfortable, specially equipped workplace. Poor-quality lighting, extraneous noise, stuffiness – a source of stress and irritability of employees. This is incompatible with the concept of a healthy atmosphere;

• leadership style. The formation of a normal microclimate is facilitated by a democratic management style, in which there is no imposition of decisions, friendly, trusting relationships prevail, and team members are equally valued. Conniving and authoritarian styles lead to low productivity, the appearance of hostility, envy, distrust;

• nuances of the global and local microenvironment. Additionally, the situation is influenced by the stability in the political and economic spheres of society, the social and psychological well-being of the team members. The structure of the organization plays a role, the ability to participate in planning and decision-making, the exclusion of functional and role contradictions.

With a normal internal microclimate, employees are satisfied with working conditions and the amount of material remuneration, are determined for results, share common goals, support and respect colleagues, notice growth prospects, build long-term plans. Problems on any of the points are a sign that it is time to take appropriate.

As I’ve written before one of the best option to get information about team members engagement is with the help of an anonymous questionnaire. We use a great tool for that called Officevibe. 

It helps us to evaluate the impact of the new professional and personal remote work realities on our teams’ employee engagement, stress levels and work-life balance.

In addition to the quantitative results, we collected a great amount of anonymous feedback in our employee engagement survey which allowed us to open the conversation and further engage with our remote workers on the subject. Officevibe platform allows our employees to share their feedback anonymously, ensuring a safe space to share whatever is on their minds so that important conversations don’t fall through the cracks.

Key sources of stress that surfaced:

• Performance, workload, loss of cohesion within teams. 

• Personal lives such as physical and mental health and work-life balance 

• Loss of sense of control and the inability to reach objectives

• Change and uncertainty, and the difficulty of planning and prioritizing during constant change.

As we settled into remote work and our home offices, apart from each other, it became essential to communicate even more than we used to on current initiatives. After a few weeks, we did a first analysis of the Custom Poll survey results and presented our high-level findings to all Mobile Reality Team members.

The scores of our Mobile Reality Team were calculated at an individual level to ensure everyone has the same weight in the calculation. Officevibe has sent different questions to different employees in order to cover continuously the 10 key metrics. They take answers given in the last 90 days to calculate your most up to date Team Engagement Score. 

First of all via Officevibe we measure MRTeam recognition. The Recognition Metric represents both the quality and the frequency of recognition employees receive. Then with the help of Officevibes metrics we see feedback, happiness and personal growth metrics. The represent the quality and the frequency of feedback that employees receive, as well as the consideration of their opinions and suggestions by the organization, the employees' level of happiness at work and their satisfaction with their work-life balance and the level of autonomy employees have, whether or not they’re improving their skills and if they believe in the bigger purpose of their role. The next metrics we measure with Officevibe are: satisfaction, wellness, ambassadorship, relationship with manager/peers and alignment. The Satisfaction Metric represents how satisfied employees are with their compensation and benefits, their role inside the organization, as well as their overall work environment. Wellness and ambassadorship metrics show the level of stress employees feel at work and how they perceive the organization's efforts towards promoting healthy life habits and the level of pride employees have towards the organization and if they would recommend their place of work to other people. Relationships metrics help to understand the level of trust, communication, and collaboration between employees and their direct manager / peers. And the last metric - alignment represents how employees align themselves within the organization’s vision, mission, and values, as well as what they think about the organization’s commitment towards Ethics & Social Responsibility.

You can see that with a few months time most of these metrics growth and feedback from our MRTeam members became better. It is very important to control the Officevibe metrics statistics data and improve cooperation in a your work team. We used some of the Officevibe tips for our remote work as ”work ritual” to improve feedback and happiness of our team. Try it too:  

The main thing in a remote work is communication. And here is what you can do to make a communication better and easier on a remote work:

share more information than you usually do 

• Use Slack statuses to let your team know what to expect. For example: available = unavailable = and others as determined by your team. 

• Regularly share your priorities and the progress of your projects in a rhythm that works for your team. 

• Be clear in the intent and urgency of your requests. e.g. “I need your comments by 2pm tomorrow so that I can move forward with the project”. 

• Use emojis, images, and giphy in your Slack messages – emotions are harder to convey in writing. 

• All decisions that would ordinarily be made face-to-face should be made over video- conference, ensuring that the right people are present.

Also on a remote work we have more than ever before online meetings and here are some tips that can help you with non-stop online meetings:

Make use of video conferencing tools and turn on the camera (Teams, Zoom)

• All participants should use headphones with a microphone to ensure they are heard properly. 

• Provide a clear agenda in the meeting invitation

• Designate clear roles: a facilitator (who facilitates and ensures that everyone has the right to speak) and a secretary (who takes notes and shares them at the end of the meeting)

• The facilitator should pause on a regular basis to invite questions and collaboration from all participants

• Take a moment at the end of the meeting to determine and assign clear ‘action items’ with timelines

• Document meeting notes in a designated area accessible to all.

Working remotely is not as easy as it seams at a first sight and that’s why mental health is more important that ever before. Here are some tips for you to relieve stress and increase your productivity: 

Maintain a healthy routine: don’t start working as soon as you wake up, and log off at night (create clear boundaries between work and not work)

• Maintain your regular work schedule as much as possible. Take frequent breaks: get up, go for a walk, take time for lunch! 

• Take time to connect on a human level with your colleagues (have a virtual coffee date or lunch using Teams or Zoom)

• Don’t hesitate to express your frustrations, feelings of isolation, or other challenges that you may be having while working remotely

• Try to create a space dedicated to work (even if it’s just a corner where you can store your work materials at the end of the day)

A favorable atmosphere in the team is a multidimensional concept. Some prefer to keep their distance, communicating on exclusively business topics, while others are more comfortable in a friendly, trusting atmosphere. 

The main task of the manager is to find the "golden mean", to harmonize relations between colleagues, to be able to direct efforts to a common, priority result for the company. Many experts say that a healthy, work-friendly atmosphere is more important than the level of income and career opportunities.

Want to join our #MRTeam? Don’t hesitate to APPLY!

Used sources:

https://www.insales.ru/blogs/university/zdorovaya-atmosfera-v-kollektive

https://officevibe.com/blog/employee-engagement-important

Officevibe remote work collaboration guide

https://help.officevibe.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028827631-How-are-Engagement-Scores-Calculated-