Wrenches were thrown in every plan, playbooks were thrown out and rewritten, and team leaders had to do whatever it took to keep it all together.
When it comes to workplace culture, 2021 was a lesson in resilience.
Lately, we’re seeing companies finally embracing their “new normal” and getting proactive about building a strong team culture. Team culture isn’t built in a day (or a single blog article), but these 4 tips can help you start planning a smart, intentional approach to team building.
Reset as a team
After what is hopefully a restful holiday break, Q1 is when most teams want to “hit the ground running.” Rather than jumping right back into the hustle and bustle at the beginning of the year, capitalize on this opportunity to reset mentally as a team.
Maybe it’s time to revisit your company’s mission and vision, introduce OKRs, or get together for anin-person strategy planning session. Use that new-year-new-me energy to refocus on what matters for your team -- make goals abundantly clear, define how each person will contribute, and set the tone for an amazing year ahead.
Tune up your wellness perks
Speaking of new-year-new-me...your teammates are probably thinking about their own wellness goals for the new year. Help them make good on their new year’s resolutions with some free team wellness perks. Weekly meditation sessions, guided team workouts, or a team running club are fun ways to support their goals, and create some new friendships along the way.
Send a quick survey to your team to see what programming they’re most excited about, then build your own customized wellness program! Anything that contributes to the mental health of your teammates, also contributes to the wellbeing and performance of your team.
Make recognition a habit
In a recent survey, recognition of individuals’ team contributions was shown to increase employee engagement by 171%! Kickoff the new year with a fresh commitment to spotlighting the awesome work your team is doing.
Include shoutouts in your weekly standups, reward great work with a gift that shows your appreciation, or start a Slack channel dedicated to peer-to-peer recognition. Or feel free to borrow our own BoomPop tradition: The Unicorn!
Every week, one person in our company is named Unicorn, complete with a name change on Slack and a truly ridiculous unicorn-themed avatar. Unicorns are people who are doing incredible work, thinking way outside the box to solve problems, giving a masterclass in our company’s values, or all of the above. At the end of each week, that week’s unicorn has the honor of naming the next week’s unicorn!
Whatever you do, focus on highlighting the values that you want to see more of.
Foster real human connection
Flexible work policies—like work-from-anywhere, the ability to make your own hours, or a 4-day workweek—are powerful recruiting and retention tools. But they won’t work without trust, empathy, and authentic connection.
Leadership, excellent communication, smart policies, and clear goals are table stakes for building this kind of culture. The rest of it comes in the interactions that people have everyday, big and small. Take stock of your team’s level of connection.
How well do they know each other? Do they ever interact outside the bounds of their day-to-day tasks? Have newer employees been able to find a sense of belonging? Start creating experiences for your team where they can connect as people, not just employees. Rather than planning one event at a time, look at your plan holistically.
We’ve seen that the most successful teams plan their engagement calendar at least a quarter in advance and offer lots of different ways for people to get involved, whether it’s a company offsite, in-office happy hour, volunteer opportunity, or team celebration.
Start planning in 2 minutes or less
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