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Creating Positive Connections from Asynchronous Communication Tools: Slack & Microsoft Teams
Creating Positive Connections from Asynchronous Communication Tools: Slack & Microsoft Teams

There’s just no denying it. Positive connections in the workplace are paramount. They breed collaboration, spark innovation, and foster employee satisfaction. So how do smart organizations create positive connections in a workplace where colleagues are working from different locations and even different time zones? The secret lies in asynchronous communication. In answer, companies are increasingly adopting asynchronous tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. They provide a unique avenue for cultivating connections that transcend geographical boundaries and time zones. Asynchronous tools facilitate communication that doesn’t require an immediate response. In turn, this allows flexibility and convenience which, of course, is extremely important in our fast-paced work environments. While these tools are often associated with work-related interactions, their potential to foster positive interpersonal connections is immense. However, leveraging asynchronous communication tools to create positive connections can be challenging. How can we ensure meaningful interaction while dealing with delayed responses? How can we maintain camaraderie among team members who may never meet in person? This article aims to address these questions and more while offering actionable strategies for fostering positive connections using Slack and Microsoft Teams. Understanding Asynchronous Communication Asynchronous communication is a form of communication that doesn’t require all parties to interact concurrently. It’s like the digital equivalent of leaving a note on someone’s desk. This style of communication has become crucial in today’s most common work environments. Team members may be in a meeting or “heads down” working and the interruption of a phone call or a desk drop-by is not preferred.  Asynchronous communication tools offer numerous benefits, including increased productivity, flexibility, and inclusivity. Team members can:Manage their time efficiently Respond to messages when they prefer, when they are available, and when they're most productive Communicate with colleagues without worrying about disrupting others' schedulesHowever, asynchronous communication also poses some challenges. Ensuring everyone is on the same page when they’re not online simultaneously can be tough. It can also lead to feelings of isolation or disconnection among team members. Therefore, it's essential to be proactive in fostering positive connections using these tools. Asynchronous Communication Tools: Slack and Microsoft Teams Slack and Microsoft Teams are leading platforms in the realm of digital communication. Offering a range of features from direct messaging to file sharing, these tools facilitate seamless and efficient communication. But more than that, they provide opportunities to create and foster positive connections among team members. Slack operates with a focus on channels and direct messaging. This allows for streamlined conversations on a variety of topics. Microsoft Teams integrates with the broader Microsoft Suite. Which supports project collaboration in addition to communication. These features encourage:Work-related discussions Casual conversations Team bondingIt's important to note that both of these platforms offer features that allow for real-time communication as well. This flexibility caters to different communication styles and needs, making them powerful tools for creating positive workplace connections. Strategies for Creating Positive Connections through Asynchronous Tools Recognizing that these tools are playing an increasingly important role in digital-first workspaces, it is crucial for organizations to leverage them in a way that creates positive connections and more effective collaboration. The following suggestions can help your organization get the most out of asynchronous communication tools like Slack and Teams. Develop a Clear and Consistent Communication Protocol A well-defined communication protocol is the foundation for creating positive connections. Especially when it comes to asynchronous tools and remote workers. This protocol should cover all aspects of your team's communication, including:Which tools, channels, and threads to use for what purposes Expectations for response times What type of information should be shared in such a tool compared to email or a meeting Guidelines for respectful and productive communicationSimilarly, establishing 'quiet hours' during which direct messages are discouraged is a good best practice. This can help team members respect each other's time.  Clear communication guidelines help avoid confusion, create a sense of order and reliability, and demonstrate respect for each other's time and effort. This, in turn, fosters trust and positivity among team members. Encourage Regular Updates and Check-ins Yes, asynchronous communication allows team members to interact at their own convenience. However, it's essential to ensure that everyone stays in the loop. Send regular updates about ongoing projects, changes in policies, or team achievements. This practice can maintain a sense of unity and inclusivity. Additionally, periodic check-ins can help maintain connections. Whether individually or as a team. These check-ins don't have to be lengthy meetings either. They can simply be a daily or weekly message thread where challenges and current projects are shared. Not only does this practice keep everyone informed, but it also provides opportunities to offer assistance, advice, or encouragement. Balance Professional and Personal Asynchronous Communication The primary purpose of tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams is work-related communication. However, they can also be a platform for personal interaction. Casual conversation channels where team members can share personal news or interesting content can encourage camaraderie and make the virtual workspace feel more personal. These channels also provide an avenue for team members to express their personalities and engage on a more human level. This can strengthen relationships and create a more positive, enjoyable work environment. However, it's important to maintain a balance and ensure that these interactions remain respectful and inclusive. Promote and Facilitate Learning Learning is a powerful bonding tool. Encourage team members to share relevant articles, resources, or learning opportunities in dedicated channels. This not only promotes continuous professional development but also fosters a culture of sharing and collaboration. Furthermore, consider organizing regular learning sessions where team members can share their expertise or explore a new tool. These sessions can be a great way to facilitate knowledge sharing and build stronger connections between team members. Celebrate Wins and Acknowledge Efforts Acknowledging hard work and celebrating wins—no matter how big or small—can boost team morale and cultivate a positive feedback culture. It can be as simple as sending a congratulatory message to a team member who's done well or sharing team milestones in a common channel. These practices show team members that their efforts are seen and appreciated, fostering a sense of belonging and positivity. Embrace Bolt-on Technologies to Optimize Asynchronous Communication Whether in-office, hybrid, or remote, keeping your teams connected through technology is a must. Beyond using Slack, Teams, or other collaboration software, consider squeezing more from your investment in those tools by integrating a quick bolt-on that gives each team member the insights needed to establish stronger relationships with another. When drafting an email, chatting with a colleague, or joining a meeting, this add-on automatically surfaces useful, customized tips for more effective communication that ends up helping you improve your relationships at work. Consider the case of the one-on-one check-ins. We already know that one of the most powerful and simple steps a manager can take to help an employee feel more connected and productive is to check in with them regularly. Learning how to check-in effectively means inviting the conversations that really matter with the employee and providing the support and encouragement they need. Now, add in a layer of knowing how best to approach that employee based on their communication, collaboration, learning, and work styles, and your one-on-ones will be more productive than ever – and your employee will feel more seen and connected than ever.

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Changing Company Culture at Any Size
Changing Company Culture at Any Size

Ping pong tables, kegerators, and catered lunches, oh my! Is this what we think of when we think of start-up companies? Sadly, the answer is probably yes, but these employee perks don’t define or even contribute to the culture for which start-ups should be most known.  Rather, the open, often casual communication, transparency, and people-first focus is what sets start-up culture apart from its corporate counterpart. It’s true...the foosball tables and bring-your-dog-to-work days might help you attract more applicants for your roles. But what’s more important is a uniquely defined culture aligned to the company’s strategy -- and flip flops, ping pong, and the notion of having fun on tap all the time is not what keeps employees engaged and ultimately helps you grow. FYI...culture is also not employee engagement surveys. They only measure happiness/satisfaction and cannot tell you if you have a culture aligned to your strategy -- one that drives performances and fosters results.  In the newly released guide, Creating a Start-up Culture at Any Size,  those who’ve launched new businesses, lead start-ups, or have recruited for them share their unique insights on the importance of and how to build a start-up-like culture for a business of any size. When you download this best practice guide, you’ll find strategies and recommendations for building, re-building, or strengthening culture, what to address and pay attention to early on, how to address culture as you grow, and how technology fits into the equation. This guide focuses on:Defining your Culture before it Defines You Laying a Strong Foundation Evolving into a Unique Culture Optimizing Culture with Technology Sustaining Culture for the Long HaulAccording to Deloitte, culture drives strategy. When aligned with business strategy, organizational culture can drive results, without having to rely on command and control -- it’s how things get done in your organization. Similarly, for Juan Betancourt, Chief Executive Officer of Humantelligence -- a culture intelligence software start-up with 18 employees -- culture is your company’s B-M-W: the sustained patterns of (1) Behaviors over time that are supported by the shared experiences, (2) the values or Motivators, and beliefs of the organization, and (3) the way work happens or Work energizers of its people. Together, culture is what transforms individual employees into a collective, cohesive whole. It’s important to define your culture because by defining it, you -- and your employees -- can commit to better supporting the work itself, improving operations, and making valuable as well as impactful contributions to the market you serve. All too often, business leaders fail to realize that not defining their cultures will have a negative impact on the operational side of their businesses, while being able to define it from the start ensures less culture-related stress down the road. Before defining it, it's also important to note what culture is not. As Don Sull tells us in When It Comes to Culture, Does Your Company Walk the Talk?, it’s not the values you post on your website or the laminated one-pager you give to employees. He goes on to explain that company practices often conflict with corporate values -- with data demonstrating little to no correlation between official company values and actual culture as perceived and lived by employees. Closing that gap starts with communication and a plan to address culture at its core. In fact, Senior Human Resources Director Tiffany Davis-Ransom, who led recruiting for a SaaS start-up serving higher education, notes that when potential new hires are considering coming aboard, what they’ll really be looking at when it comes to culture is:The team’s work habits What and how the team is motivated How the team interacts or socializes Diversity or lack thereof Mentorship opportunities to build knowledge, skills, and abilities How the team collaborates and communicates Where and how new ideas are fostered How feedback is solicited, acknowledged, and implemented Company and team planning processes Recognition for work well done“That is...they’ll be looking at how work gets done, who makes the decisions and why, how people are rewarded, and opportunities to grow through leadership and mentorship -- all of the expectations, values, and norms associated with working at your company -- that is your culture defined.” In some aspects and unlike corporate cultures, a start-up culture -- because teams begin small -- typically and inevitably reflects the personalities of early team members and becomes an output of the people who work there. A company with a large sales team might have a more customer-centric and extroverted-style culture. If you have a team that hates conflict, the culture will probably be indecisive and passive aggressive. A company with more experienced people will draw on established best practices, where a company full of greener hires may tackle problems based on intuition and require more oversight. Matthew Bartel, who founded Digital Measures -- a faculty activity reporting software start-up -- in 1999 -- tells us that this should be a deliberate activity. “While it’s difficult to know where to start when it comes to creating a company's culture, a key exercise we did early on was to identify our rockstar teammates and then think about each of their positive attributes. It was a helpful exercise to define a short but specific list of traits we value in our teammates. Once a company has a set of values, you almost can't talk about them enough. We ensured our values were reinforced when hiring, conducting performance reviews, in monthly all-hands meetings, during team recognition ceremonies, and even in front of clients. It's important to consistently recognize and call out when team members exemplify your company's values because it reinforces and better defines these behaviors and encourages your full team to follow suit.”  All that to say, the composition of your team is important in how your culture plays out day to day. But ultimately, culture is set first by its leaders, starting with the founders or CEO. Alexander Nicolaus, Chief People Officer at Paysend and author of Startup Culture: Your Superpower for Sustainable Growth, recommends getting specific from the start: define your organization’s why, who you are, and who you want to be.  “You design the operating structure, organizational chart, and put together the team. You decide who, when, and how to reward and promote. You either welcome feedback and challenges or are threatened by such. Your behavior sets the example for the rest of the team, and the rest of the team ends up modeling it, which then builds culture from the bottom up.” He also reminds us that if you’ve missed the opportunity to align your culture to your business strategy, there’s still hope! When you download the eBook, you'll read what our contributors suggest starting, stopping, and changing today in order to get back on track. Once back on track, it’s time to figure out how to sustain your positive changes. While your core values and the why for which you exist shouldn’t change much, if at all, the way you do it, the way you achieve it, might have to change. Continue to communicate, engage, embed, and actively evaluate -- and keep these elements top of mind to preserve your strong company culture as your organization grows. A few tips from the experts on changing company culture: Monitor & Re-evaluate Often: Start-up cultures often value adaptability and are highly flexible, so change is not something to shy away from. The most important part is to clearly explain the why behind these changes to your team. Nicolaus recommends soliciting feedback at least quarterly or monthly -- annually is insufficient -- and to save time automate it and leverage technology -- because frequent and ongoing employee inputs are key. Reinforce Positive Behavior: Reinforce positive behaviors by recognizing and rewarding your culture champions. These are the individuals who continually live out your core values and go above and beyond both within and outside of their roles. Create and centralize team member spotlights about standout contributors (like a Slack channel) for peer-to-peer culture champ shout-outs. Walk the Talk: Culture is not something to set and forget, and start-up culture is particularly susceptible to change as the team grows. Reinforce value-based actions and a mission-driven culture by continually embodying the core values you set forth. Doing so encourages the same behavior from team members and builds trust between employees and leadership. Recruit and Replace Intentionally: Culture fit does not only mean hiring who you like but rather being open to hiring people unlike you or any others in your organization. For each role, region/geo, and industry, the needs will be different and there is no out-of-the-box formula. Avoid recruiting cookie-cutter replicas of your current employees and rather hire for culture adds and gap fillers -- those are candidates who will enhance your culture, as well as bring unique and valuable experiences and diversity of thought to the team. As your company grows and changes, as new faces join, and as roles and teams shift focus, remember so too does your culture. Use this guide as a reminder to regularly assess your culture and consider the changes you can make in communication and organizational structure, as well as how Culture-as-a-Service technology can help you foster improved collaboration and performance in order to sustain -- and more importantly -- scale your company for success. Culture building is an area of expertise in its own, not unlike being a solutions architect for an IT company. And like any other expertise comes with its own required set of know-hows and past experience. So if you are a founder, CEO, or business leader and not very good at this culture building thing yet, you just need practice.

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Productivity Abundance: Using HR Tech to Unlock its Power
Productivity Abundance: Using HR Tech to Unlock its Power

In a 2024 trends and outlook piece, Josh Bersin said that that C-suite leaders are being pressured to “hoard talent, invest in productivity, and redevelop people for growth.” Bersin called it The Productivity Advantage. This productivity abundance strategy entails improving pay equity, continuing hybrid work models, investing in human-centered leadership, and giving people opportunities for new careers inside the company. This is why talent marketplaces, skills-based development, and learning in the flow of work are so important. “If you can help your company move faster, you can reinvent faster than your competition.” Like many leaders in the business world, Bersin also predicts that leveraging AI for processes will be key to achieving productivity. Productivity Abundance for Teams In an era dominated by rapid technological advancements, adaptability and forward-thinking strategies are in demand. According to McKinsey, companies that are agile in this aspect are redefining operational excellence, maximizing returns from both talent and software investments while fostering innovation to drive growth. McKinsey researchers also point out that digital and AI transformations can more closely unite business operations while also enhancing workforce skills and empowering teams to innovate. This indicates that output doesn’t have to come at the cost of personal creativity or the human aspects of our work. Technology can facilitate positive results for both the business bottom line and the wellbeing of the workforce, say the report’s authors, leading to collective prosperity for the totality of the organization. From Productivity to Human Performance According to Deloitte, the once-straightforward correlation between individual tasks and tangible outcomes has become blurred in today’s complex, collaborative environment. Traditional metrics—like hours worked or widgets produced—are no longer sufficient in measuring success, especially with the rise of technology and AI automating routine tasks. Those forward-thinking businesses won’t only calculate success by conventional measures like revenues and profits, according to Deloitte’s findings, but also consider the job satisfaction of individuals and teams. Deloitte identifies this shift as embracing a new paradigm centered around human performance, one that emphasizes the value of factors like employee happiness, psychological safety, and growth and development. “New approaches can and should consider the worker as a human being, with a more nuanced perspective on how they contribute to the organization,” according to Deloitte. Even in fields like logistics and manufacturing, where productivity indicators seem most relevant, automation can free up the workforce for other objectives, such as developing “creativity, critical thinking and collaboration” skills, say the researchers. Analysts point to the following indicators that reframing productivity with a focus on human performance is right for your organization if:There’s a narrow focus on output rather than broader organizational outcomes. Leaders feel inundated by data and seek to measure what truly drives success. Despite technological investments, traditional productivity remains stagnant. Workers engage in “productivity theater” to appear busy, but they feel burnt out.If this sounds like your team or workplace, you aren’t alone. When Deloitte surveyed 14,000 business and HR leaders across many sectors in dozens of countries, only 8 percent said their organization is leading in the use of human performance metrics. As tools for capturing workforce data expand beyond traditional metrics like hours clocked, HR teams are discovering solutions that measure collaboration, satisfaction, engagement and more. Deloitte suggests that leveraging new data sources empowers leaders to transition from merely assessing employee productivity to evaluating overall human performance. Thanks to a rush of innovation driven by AI, a new class of HR tech tools offers exponential capacity for businesses to collect, measure and analyze data. Supported by machine learning and human judgment, Deloitte’s researchers say HR teams are in a unique position to convert the data into actionable suggestions. Productivity Abundance through Smarter Collaboration We’re at a stage where hybrid and remote working have moved from being an employee request, to an employee expectation. Business leaders need to embrace this change, making a concerted effort to create a working environment for talent that makes it easy for employees to work together–the key to team productivity and productivity abundance. Failure to do so will see businesses struggle to attract and retain their best talent and they will continue to be at a competitive disadvantage. A recent American study of 1,100 companies carried out by the Institute for Corporate Productivity and Babson College found those that promoted collaborative working were five times more likely to be high performing and producing. Just how much does collaboration increase productivity? The benefits of using AI-powered collaboration tools are real. Collaboration increases productivity abundance by 25% or more. A comprehensive workplace study by McKinsey looked specifically at the effect of improving collaboration through improved internal social tools, so it’s likely that the total effect of collaboration increases productivity by even more than 25%. Employees Value Workplace Collaboration & Productivity Abundance More Than You Think More than 50% of workers in the United States say their jobs are reliant on collaboration. 86% of employees in leadership positions blame lack of collaboration as the top reason for workplace failures. About 75% of employees rate teamwork and collaboration as being very important.   Employees are 17% more satisfied with their job when they engage in collaboration at work.Over the last 20 years, workplace collaboration has increased by at least 50%.Top-performing workers spend 45% of their time working collaboratively. Only 9% of surveyed employees in a Deloitte study reported that their place of employment had very effective sharing and collaboration tools.Collaborating on tasks and sharing ideas is valued at $1,660 per employee each year and that quality improvements made as a result of workplace collaboration are valued at $2,517 per employee each year. (Deloitte) And companies that promote collaboration at work have 5x better performance rates. At the end of the day, focusing on workplace collaboration in the context of the employee experience and a more human-centered collaboration strategy doesn’t just help your people; it also helps the company. An employee who feels connection to others is an employee who is most likely to engage. And an employee who can fully engage is an employee who feels compelled to stay. That means you stave off the risk of the lost productivity that can arise when turnover is rampant or a worker shortage hits. To learn how you can use leverage tools to increase team productivity, let's connect.

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What Smarter Collaboration Means in Microsoft Teams
What Smarter Collaboration Means in Microsoft Teams

In today’s global work environment, organizations and their employees must effectively communicate across different locations, time zones, and languages to drive their businesses forward. Microsoft Teams puts everything organizations need—chats, meetings, calling, and Office 365 apps—to make faster, more informed decisions in a single, intelligent hub. With Teams, every type of worker—from the frontline worker to the C-suite—is empowered to contribute their voice and take shared accountability for business outcomes. To quantify the benefits of Teams for organizations and employees, Forrester Consulting conducted a Total Economic Impact™ study of Microsoft Teams, commissioned by Microsoft. Forrester interviewed and surveyed over 260 customers using Teams in a wide range of industries, spanning financial services to education. All customers cited the following business objectives for implementing Teams:Increase employee productivity Improve collaboration across the organization Enable innovationKey Benefits: Implementing Microsoft Teams The study uncovered 11 benefits for companies to consider as they evaluate Teams as a primary communication and collaboration tool. The top four benefits are:Teams reduces the total number of meetings and their duration. Online meetings conducted over Teams are reliable and of very high audio-video quality. As a result, employees spend less time addressing setup and call quality issues, and more time interacting. The total time savings equal $6.9 million. Information workers save four hours per week from improved collaboration and information sharing. With Teams features like coauthoring, integrated file storage, and internal directory, information workers can effectively and efficiently collaborate in real-time. The potential savings equal more than $14.3 million. Information workers save more than one hour per week by not having to switch between applications. Access to third-party and line-of-business apps inside Teams from any device benefits all workers, especially remote workers. This creates better employee cohesion and a common corporate culture across locations. The total savings are nearly $4.8 million. Having resources available online in Teams reduces downtime by 14.6 percent. When resources are available in one cloud-based location, downtime is reduced and complexity is lowered, making security and compliance easier.Maximizing Value from Microsoft Teams In just the last few months, Microsft released Collaborative Notes. The new Teams’ meetings feature enables meeting attendees to work together taking notes, forming agendas, and creating action items. Meeting notes are not new to Teams, but this updated version automatically synchronizes edits to the notes across all attendee devices, offering a more efficient and seamless collaborative experience. Attendees are not restricted to a single app. Collaborative Notes will be instantly updated whether they are shared in Teams, Outlook, Loop, Word for web, or Whiteboard. How Smarter Collaborative Notes Work Attendees can add recurring agendas to all meetings while scheduling in Teams. To join a Teams meeting and collaborate on meeting notes, click the  click the “Meeting notes” pane, you can create agendas in real-time or review the agenda already provided. If you are assigned a task during a meeting, you will also be sent an email notification and the task will be automatically synchronized with your Planner and To Do. But real-time in-meeting communication means we don’t take into account the different personalities and work styles of our colleagues when we communicate. As a result, communication can often be misinterpreted, unclear, and not as meaningful and effective as it could be – which stunts productivity and connection. It also prevents the uninterrupted time that is necessary for team members to bring their full range of talents to their work, which is what makes them feel satisfied at the end of their work days.  Consider implementing a collaboration and coaching add-on to support more productive meetings and to maximize the value you get out of Collaborative Notes. A Smarter Way to Collaborate in Microsoft Teams This can begin as easily as putting personality insights at the fingertips of every employee, where they communicate most often --  think video meetings and chat. With this simple plug-in in Teams, you can give your staff the kind of information needed to better communicate and collaborate with one another, taking all of the guesswork out of it and allowing them to spend time on the work that matters. The plug-in automatically surfaces useful, customized tips for more effective communication with peers during meetings. Imagine being able to click on meeting participants and see real-time tips and recommendations for communicating, motivating, and influencing. Imagine seeing this same information in aggregate for your meeting group. Imagine knowing who best to tap on for pre- or post-meeting action items, for helping leading certain initiatives while identifying those better suited to document or support, and who might benefit from a heads up on particular messages — all of which take into account your team members’ behaviors, motivators, and work energizers in an easy-to-understand way.  As a team leader, you’re able to lay a strong foundation for more inclusive communication and belonging for team members, along with:Creating more balanced, diverse & agile teams Ensuring employees onboard or transition teams smoothly Optimizing team members’ impact by tapping into the unique behaviors, motivators & work energizers of each person. Experiencing the increased productivity that comes from improved team effectiveness. Squeezing every ounce of value out of your use of Microsoft TeamsAs a team member, you’re able to:Gain deeper understanding of one another, allowing better connection and ability to work through conflict Create deeper, more meaningful connection that translates into more effective collaborations and higher quality relationships at work Feel more engaged in your daily workIt’s important to give your employees the opportunity to thrive and do the job they were hired to do -- instead of requiring them to spend their valuable time figuring out how to work better with one another. The truth is, most people won’t take their time to figure out how to collaborate better, and as a result, connection wanes, relationships are reduced to transactions, and performance suffers. Don’t let team members go down this road when there are easier tech-enabled ways to do it. Doing so drives trust in your processes and leadership ability, and keeps employees engaged and performing at their highest levels.

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7 Ways to Improve Team Communication When Your Team Is Distributed
7 Ways to Improve Team Communication When Your Team Is Distributed

The Future of Work continues to evolve, and the number of people who work remotely at least once per week has grown by an astounding 400% since 2010. In Robert Half’s survey report of more than 2,800 senior managers, companies in cities most receptive to hybrid work -- including Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Pittsburgh -- have figured out that many employees are productive no matter where they’re sitting. The next challenge? How to improve team communication when each team member sits somewhere else. These companies have recognized the value of being an early adopter of long-term hybrid work, in the form of a more engaged and loyal workforce, and in a candidate-driven job market, offering hybrid work can be a powerful way to recruit, retain, and grow great teams. Still, managers in these companies cite the complexities of supporting a distributed workforce long-term and indicate their top challenge as “communicating effectively with team members” quickly followed by helping staff avoid burnout.  So as teams begin to settle into what looks like permanently remote or long-term hybrid work models, it’s clear that effective communication and collaboration can no longer remain dependent on in-person interactions. As a remote-first organization since its inception, we asked our Humantelligence Culture Success Coaches for their short but most impactful tips for better supporting remote employees and for how to improve team communication, collaboration, and performance. Here’s what they said. Top Tips for Improving Team Communication Demonstrate empathy any time the team member expresses a problem or frustration. Use The Empathy Formula to acknowledge the team member’s feelings based on facts. Here’s the formula: “It sounds like you’re (feeling) because/about (fact). “Here’s a real-life example: “It sounds like you’re feeling overwhelmed (feeling) because of the reduced number of people on the team (fact).” Establish a new one-on-one meeting routine. Have a scheduled meeting at least twice per week over video conference. If these meetings are currently less frequent, use the same amount of overall time divided up over more meetings. Always have your camera on and ask that the employee does the same -- it’s a way to build connection. Talk to your team members every single day. If a meeting is not scheduled, call them on the phone and talk to them. Sometimes just a quick check-in call is all it takes for some days. One of the most important elements of being an effective manager is keeping lines of communication open with your team members, especially when it has nothing to do with assignments or project statuses. Important Note: Talking to the team member in a team meeting doesn’t count, nor does exchanging texts or leaving voicemails. Demonstrate your availability. End your meetings with your team members by encouraging the team member to contact you by phone or to request an unscheduled meeting. Answer the call if at all possible. Establish line of sight and continue to reinforce it. Ensure work assignments, expectations, and deadlines are perfectly clear. Break down current goals into smaller chunks that are measured on a more frequent basis. Find opportunities during your one-on-ones to talk about how the specific work they do contributes to a specific team or company objective. This is not as obvious to them as it might be to you. Do not hold hybrid meetings. Level the meeting playing field so all team members can contribute equally. This is best practice in general, and particularly important for the struggling team member. If some of the team members are in the same location and some are remote, have the onsite team members split up and join from their own computers. It equals the playing field. Leverage the Humantelligence toolkit Use Humantelligence at least once a week. You need to deepen your understanding of the team member’s motivators and behavioral preferences to best know how to help them. Once you have a deeper understanding of his/her psychometric-based Talent Profile, use the one-on-one comparison tool to go over your and the team member’s similarities and differences, which will help the team member feel seen. Uncover how team members’ unique strengths shown on their Talent Profile can be better put to work for the benefit of the team, and then tell them. Also go over the team member’s Remote Work Tips, which offers personalized tips for wellness, productivity, and effective collaboration.  In the increasingly complex world of the future of work, we have to use technology and work harder as team leaders to build person-to-person connection, so that our teams feel trusted and empowered to perform.

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Rethinking Employee Onboarding: How to Create Better Human Connection
Rethinking Employee Onboarding: How to Create Better Human Connection

It's no secret...poor onboarding leads to new hires being twice as likely to seek another opportunity, with 43% of managers losing their new hire during the first month. During the current turbulent candidate market, and increased pressure on retaining talent, falling down at the last hiring hurdle isn’t an option when it comes to the employee onboarding experience. The key is creating lasting connections to help employees become passionate, productive team players. It essentially makes your onboarding process sticky. Why Improving Employee Onboarding is Important Only 17% of U.S. employees worked from home five days a week before COVID-19. At the onset of the pandemic, the percentage shot up to 44%. Very quickly, HR understood the the need to improve employee onboarding processes. We all know that onboarding and training plays a critical role in a new hire's success and happiness. And good onboarding is especially important for remote employees, since they don't have as many opportunities to integrate organically into the company culture. According to BCG, employee onboarding is among the most influential factors when it comes to employee experience. Companies that have effective onboarding processes in place achieve 2.5x more revenue growth and 1.9x the profit margin compared to organizations with poor onboarding strategies. Here, we explore some of the key building blocks -- and often forgotten components -- to improve employee onboarding for remote employees. Keeping these things in mind, you can ensure smooth onboarding even when employees are remote. As a result, you'll help increase the organization's rate of retention, engagement, and productivity of your new hires. Improving Human Connection During Onboarding Translates into Organizational Success Dale Carnegie was on to something when he said, “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” People are emotional. More than ever, they want a more personal, human work experience from their employers – and that happens when people connect and feel they belong. Organizations have to get more and more creative about how they can form multiple connections with new employees, or they risk feeling alienated and are more likely to leave. The digitization of the workplace can make people more isolated and lonely, so pre-boarding is a way to ensure inclusivity and connection-building happens before a person starts. In fact, connection is the backbone of an onboarding strategy that reduces new hire attrition, accelerates time-to-productivity, increases new hire productivity, fosters trust, drives engagement – and ultimately empowers the business to deliver better for customers. Coupled with a compelling employee experience strategy, such as assigning job-appropriate “ambassadors” and a “people-first” culture of compassion and caring, this personalized approach can continue through all an employee’s life stages Here are 10 ways to keep human connection front and center during employee onboarding and to help everyone settle into your organization with confidence — whether onsite or at home. 1. Put Video Conferencing at the Forefront No surprise, video conferencing apps gained immense popularity in spring 2020. Video conferencing platforms became a lifesaver for employers and employees, serving as a means to make face-to-face connections in the virtual work world. Instead of distributing training documentation and static, pre-recorded videos for remote employee training, employers could schedule a video onboarding training session that feels a lot like meeting in the company conference room. Plus, when onboarding, you have the chance to set expectations and make sure the employee knows that interactive, camera-on meetings will be the norm. With this approach, your employees can ask questions live and have them answered immediately among their co-workers. 2. Create Opportunities for Connection Amid COVID-19, many employees understandably experienced feelings of isolation. Create and foster pipelines for interaction, such as firing up virtual social groups, keeping those channels active, or encouraging a non-social media-centered buddy system where employees call, text or email one another. This reinforces a sense of belonging for remote employees. 3. Help Employees Manage Distractions Another facet telecommuting employees might not anticipate is the endless stream of distractions. Your virtual training tips might include strategies to help employees shut out distractions to give their work the necessary focus to get it done well and on time. At the least, encourage your employees to carve out an hour a day for remote training when they can give the material 100% of their attention. Some other tried and true tips to provide remote employees to reduce distractions:Create a schedule and stick to it Take a lunch hour and frequent breaks Get some outdoor time (if possible) Keep your workspace organized Turn off desktop and phone notifications Restrict time on your phone Establish ground rules with your family or roommates Set daily goals and objectivesFor more on helping employees remove distractions while working remotely, check out these tips. 4. Invite Open Discussions on Training Questions You’re not training employees in a vacuum, and they aren’t learning in one, so keep an open line of communication to see how everything is going. Use your company intranet or another channel to solicit feedback. You can quickly and clearly clarify matters for everyone, thanks to an open forum for lively Q&A. 5. Run Online Polls for Feedback to Improve Employee Onboarding & Training When you want to gather data about remote training, run an online poll. You can provide a space for comments, questions and feedback. If you’re looking for numbers to guide your training, a poll is a quick and efficient way to get what you need. Ask questions about whether employees find the information engaging, clear, and meaningful to their daily work. This way, you're giving remote employees a way to be heard. 6. Empower Remote Employees to Become Self-Guided Learners With today’s online education and training opportunities, you can put the power of learning in your team members’ hands. Let employees know what you need from them, then allow them to explore their options. That doesn’t mean you set them loose without any guidance. Offer guideposts, such as resources your organization would use, or free access to training programs. Since workers already spend a great deal of time working remotely, it isn’t a stretch to approach learning similarly. Plus when people own when and how they learn, they tend to retain it better!  7. Create and Use Breakout Rooms If you want to schedule a mass training session for everyone before turning matters over to department managers and their respective teams, use breakout rooms to create several smaller sessions. With the right platform, everyone can easily switch to enjoy seamless strands of training relevant to their needs. 8. Offer Strong Training Visuals as Reminders In your video meetings, provide employees with strong visuals to help them understand the material, such as spreadsheets, slideshow presentations, infographics and videos that drive home your training points. About two-thirds of people are visual learners, and studies suggest that four in ten people respond better to visuals and text compared to text alone. Other research shows using visuals can help improve retention and learning by up to 400 percent, so make sure to include compelling visuals to enhance learning. 9. Provide On-Demand Training Options Inherent in remote employment is flexibility. There are times when employees can’t join a live video meeting or audio conference call, so ensure that they can catch up when they have time with on-demand options. Provide absent team members with the recorded session and any supplemental documents, spreadsheets or information they need to stay up to speed for the times they can’t make a virtual meeting in-person. 10. Focus on People Not Process to Improve Employee Onboarding How your company communicates, enables meaningful collaboration, and supports relationship building for both onsite and remote employees usually ends up making or breaking your new hires’ remote onboarding experience. That's why it's critical to focus on people not process or paperwork during this process..    These critical elements are often overlooked during onboarding, but that's where you can employ certain technologies to help. For example, Humantelligence's Smarter Collaboration surfaces emotional intelligence insights and tips directly into the tools your employees use every single day – like Outlook email and calendar, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Zoom, Webex, and more. This simple plug-in takes the guesswork out of how to better understand and effectively communicate with others so your new employees can focus on what matters most – and that’s becoming an impactful member of the team. In addition, be sure to spend time helping your new remote hires integrate into their team. Understanding how they compare in working styles and tendencies to both those with whom they work and their managers will help your new hire understand how best to contribute to the team, smooth the transition, collaborate more effectively, and accelerate productivity. Resources to Improve Employee Onboarding We hope our remote onboarding and training ideas help you feel more confident about bringing new employees into the mix, even if they never or rarely step foot in your office. Today’s technology offers a bounty of options to welcome and engage new employees or help current employees cultivate a sense of belonging and connection with their new and existing colleagues.

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Unlocking the Power of Generative AI to Transform HR
Unlocking the Power of Generative AI to Transform HR

In an era marked by digital transformation and remote work, Human Resources (HR) professionals face an evolving landscape. The challenges of recruiting top talent, maintaining effective communication, and optimizing productivity have never been more critical for the employee experience. Fortunately, generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as a transformative force in HR, offering innovative solutions to address these issues. In this article, we'll explore the power of generative AI to transform HR by reshaping practices, improving recruitment processes, enhancing communication, and boosting productivity in distributed workforces. Revolutionizing Recruitment with Generative AI Recruitment has always been a cornerstone of HR, but the process can be time-consuming and fraught with biases. Generative AI, through its natural language processing and machine learning capabilities, is revolutionizing how organizations identify and attract top talent. Here are some key ways in which generative AI is reshaping recruitment: 1. Automated Candidate Screening Generative AI-powered tools can analyze thousands of resumes and job applications within seconds, ensuring that every candidate is evaluated fairly. These systems can identify relevant qualifications, skills, and experience, streamlining the initial screening process. According to a survey conducted by HR Dive, 72% of HR professionals reported that AI has improved their ability to find the right candidates more efficiently. 2. Eliminating Bias in Hiring One of the most significant challenges in HR is reducing unconscious bias during hiring. Generative AI algorithms are designed to make decisions based solely on data, reducing the risk of discrimination based on gender, race, or other factors. It promotes diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. 3. Personalized Candidate Experiences Generative AI can personalize candidate interactions, making potential employees feel valued from the beginning. Chatbots and AI-driven email responses can answer candidate queries promptly, enhancing the overall candidate experience. You can even make these responses sound more human than the traditional chatbot. Juan Betancourt, CEO of Humantelligence and well-known executive search recruiter notes, "Generative AI is a game changer for HR. The power of generative AI to transform HR will show itself in saved time and also an improvement in the quality of candidates screened. It will make the recruitment process is more efficient and inclusive than ever before." Generative AI to Transform HR in the Delivery of Communication Across Distributed Teams Effective communication is the glue that holds remote teams together. Generative AI is playing a pivotal role in bridging communication gaps and fostering collaboration. Here's how: 1. Virtual Assistants for HR Queries Generative AI-powered virtual assistants can handle routine HR inquiries from employees, such as leave requests, policy clarifications, and benefits queries. This not only frees up HR professionals from administrative tasks but also ensures quick and consistent responses. According to a study by Deloitte, companies that use virtual HR assistants have seen a 50% reduction in HR query resolution time. 2. Multilingual Support In a global workforce, language barriers might hinder effective communication and create inefficiencies. Generative AI can provide real-time translation services, allowing team members from different regions to collaborate seamlessly. 3. AI-Powered Chat and Collaboration Tools AI-driven chat and collaboration tools can analyze conversations and suggest relevant documents, resources, or experts, facilitating information exchange among team members. This enhances productivity and ensures that the right information is always at hand. This also works for email communication and communication in virtual meetings among colleagues. For example, HR can provide employees with an AI plug in to their email provider so that emails can be rewritten and optimized for how the recipient likes to receive information. One simply writes an email and then pushes a button. The email gets rewritten instantly using AI and then tells you why that person prefers this type of communication. "It's important for the employee experience to create a more supportive and engaging environment for people to develop and thrive. AI-driven insights that help people work together better have the power to reduce turnover and boost team productivity, while keeping team cultures/dynamics positioned for the future. It’s an investment that keeps paying dividends across the employee lifecycle,” said Betancourt.  In fact, a McKinsey report found that organizations that effectively leverage AI for internal communications and collaboration are 2.5 times more likely to be top performers. Boosting Productivity Through AI-Powered Insights Improving productivity is a constant goal for HR professionals. Generative AI is providing new insights and tools to help organizations streamline processes and maximize efficiency. 1. Predictive Analytics for Workforce Management Generative AI can analyze historical data and predict future workforce needs. This enables HR to plan for staffing levels, skill gaps, and training requirements, ensuring that the organization remains agile in responding to changing demands. IBM's Watson is a prime example of an AI system that offers predictive analytics for HR. 2. Automating Routine HR Tasks Administrative tasks, such as payroll processing and benefits enrollment, can be automated using generative AI. This not only reduces the risk of errors but also frees HR professionals to focus on strategic initiatives. 3. Employee Feedback and Sentiment Analysis Generative AI can analyze employee feedback, surveys, and sentiment data to gauge employee satisfaction and identify potential issues. This proactive approach enables HR to address concerns before they escalate. HR can now focus on strategic initiatives while the AI takes care of routine tasks.  Employees also appreciate the quick and accurate responses they receive. Challenges and Ethical Considerations Using Generative AI to Transform HR While generative AI offers numerous benefits, it's essential to acknowledge and address potential challenges and ethical concerns. These include data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the need for ongoing human oversight. HR professionals must ensure that AI is used responsibly and in line with legal and ethical standards. As technology continues to advance, HR departments that embrace generative AI will be better equipped to meet the demands of the modern workforce and drive their organizations toward success in an increasingly digital and remote world. For now, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the power of generative AI to transform HR. If leveraged right, it can enable organizations to recruit top talent, enhance communication, and boost productivity among distributed workforces. By automating tasks, reducing bias, and providing valuable insights, AI is transforming HR practices and helping companies thrive in a digital and remote world. However, it's crucial to address ethical considerations and ensure responsible AI use to maximize its benefits. As technology continues to evolve, HR professionals who embrace generative AI will be at the forefront of shaping the future of work. If you're interested in learning how Humantelligence's AI-powered psychometric tool can improve the employee experience, let's talk!

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How to Prioritize Inclusion & Belonging on Your Team
How to Prioritize Inclusion & Belonging on Your Team

If you're a people manager and find yourself asking how to prioritize inclusion & belonging on at work, we can help. At our organization, we firmly believe in the transformative power of diversity. We are committed to fostering an open, team-oriented, and positive environment that allows everyone to thrive, both personally and professionally. By embracing and aligning ourselves with practices that promote inclusion and belonging, we strengthen our culture. In fact, when teams learn how to prioritize inclusion & belonging at work, everyone wins. In this article, we share why it’s important to foster inclusion & belonging on your team and how you can do it. Why Inclusion & Belonging in the Workplace Matters It's not just a buzzword; it's a game-changer. When we talk about diversity, we're referring to various aspects, including workforce diversity, behavioral diversity, structural diversity, and business diversity. By encompassing these dimensions, we unlock a world of benefits for our teams and our business as a whole:Increased Adaptability & Better Problem Solving: Diverse teams bring a wealth of perspectives, experiences, and approaches to the table. This diversity of thought enables us to adapt more quickly to changes and solve problems with a wider range of innovative solutions. Improved Communication & Performance: Embracing diversity leads to better communication among team members. When people from different backgrounds collaborate, they learn to appreciate different viewpoints and communicate more effectively. This synergy ultimately drives improved performance across the board. Attracting and Retaining Talent: Candidates actively seek out diverse workplaces. In fact, studies show that 67% of job seekers consider diversity a crucial factor when evaluating job offers. By fostering a diverse and inclusive environment, we attract top talent and increase our ability to retain valuable employees. Increased Innovation: Innovation thrives in diverse environments. When employees feel included and empowered to share their unique perspectives, creativity soars. According to Deloitte, inclusive workplaces see an impressive 83% increase in innovation.The evidence supporting the benefits of diversity is substantial. Research shows that companies with an equal gender representation generate up to 41% higher revenue. Moreover, a study by McKinsey found that U.S. public companies with diverse executive boards enjoy a staggering 95% higher return on equity compared to homogeneous boards. Additionally, diverse teams experience a 60% improvement in decision-making, and when employees feel included, innovation skyrockets by 83%, as reported by Deloitte. By embracing diversity, inclusion, and belonging, we foster an environment where employees excel at adapting to differences and challenges. Working alongside colleagues of diverse backgrounds and perspectives opens our minds to new ideas and strengthens our interpersonal relationships. Moreover, it equips us to identify creative solutions and build stronger functional, cross-functional, and customer relationships, leading to improved business outcomes. And here are some proven ways for how to prioritize inclusion & belonging at work. How to Prioritize Inclusion & Belonging at WorkRemove Unconscious BiasUnconscious biases, or implicit biases, are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one’s tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing. For example, if you’re continuing to hire based on a feeling you get from a candidate, you’re likely hiring on the basis of unconscious bias. The best way to prevent yourself from succumbing to these unconscious biases is to become aware of them and take action to prevent them when recruiting, hiring and retaining employees — like leveraging unbiased data to make hiring and personnel decisions.  Tinna C. Neilsen, founder of Move the Elephant for Inclusiveness, said that “The core of inclusion is all about leveraging diversity of thought — a tough thing for a lot of people because sometimes they don’t know enough about group dynamics like group conformity. You can have as much diversity and as many different kinds of people in a team, but if you allow group conformity to dominate, then you’re not going to leverage any of it anyway.”  Regarding workplace diversity and inclusion, Nielsen advises designing interventions that motivate the unconscious mind as opposed to relying on rational thought alone. 2. Build Leadership Buy-in Some leaders might already be more bought-in to DEI. For those who are on the fence, you need to make things personal.  Start the conversation by asking your organization’s leaders specific questions like, ‘Why is DEI important to you personally…or maybe also why it’s not? How does it align with the business for you? How do you plan to hold yourself and our employees accountable?’ Having them understand why DEI is important to them and the business will create a good foundation — and reminder as to why we’re doing this. Creating that emotional connection with your leaders and making DEI personal can help you gain their long-term support. You can also actively engage your leadership in initiatives. Encourage them to be executive sponsors of an employee resource group (ERG)/ affinity group, participate in a DEI steering committee, attend regular DEI training sessions with employees, or just share updates and processes periodically at senior leadership or executive meetings. This helps everyone feel in the know and accountable for improving DEI. Keeping communication open with the C-suite can improve transparency and accountability by ensuring every area of the business feels buy-in for the success of DEI programs.  3. Actively Manage Diversity & Inclusion  The issues around a diverse workplace can be managed and mitigated if employers take active steps to ensure that their companies are recognized for tolerance and acceptance. Here are some tips for managing diversity in the workplace:Create written policies – Companies should create and include their diversity policy in their employee handbook. The policy should contain information about non-discrimination laws, the code of conduct, and the compensation and benefits policy. When it’s in writing, it’s hard to ignore. Provide sensitivity training – Employees should be provided with sensitivity training to create a better workplace culture. Sensitivity training can help employees value views that are different, understand how words and actions can cause offense, and what needs to be done if they’ve been offended. Create an accountability plan – Use regular surveys to check in on your progress, and have a plan in place for how you’re going to ensure staff uphold these policies. Address micro-aggressions – Micro-aggressions are thinly veiled, everyday instances of racism, homophobia, sexism (and more) that you see in the world.  They are defined as a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority. Examples might include commenting on how someone speaks or is dressed. Use trainings to help address and prevent mico-aggressions against others.4. Provide Resources Keep inclusion & belonging top of mind for your employees and encourage them to learn more about pressing societal and workplace issues by providing access to robust resources and self-serve opportunities to learn. Consider some of the following:Weekly or monthly newsletter digests with articles on trending DEI topics Start a #BeTheChange Slack or chat channel, where employees can share experiences, resources, and opportunities to engage in thoughtful conversations  Put a process in place to help employees form affinity or ERG groups — and have each group start and own their own Slack channels Share opportunities to donate to specific diversity-supporting organizations, with a potential company match Provide a forum for employees to present their experiences and learnings  Empower employees with emotional intelligence data so they can communicate and collaborate more effectively and inclusively with employees different from themselvesBy putting resource communication channels just a click away, employees begin talking about DEI more regularly — helping over time to reduce some of the discomfort people have around the topic and creating more organizational accountability. 5. Replace Antiquated Processes A lot of times, the processes, practices, and architecture businesses have in place are antiquated, and we don’t even realize it. Nothing is going to change unless those things change, and people don’t change just because you tell them to. They change when you enable that change. This means empowering choice around structure and architecture while putting tools and resources in front of somebody in order to enable them to do something totally different without them even realizing it.  One of the biggest and quickest levers in moving the  needle for your company culture is in processes for who you hire. Each individual you add or remove will play a part in your culture’s evolution. It’s human nature to hire people like ourselves, so it’s imperative to leverage a variety of networks and tools to support hiring based on diversity of backgrounds/ perspectives vs. simply hiring people to whom you gravitate, happen to already know, or who come recommended. This calls for reshaping antiquated hiring processes — by seeking and interviewing for culture fit/add rather than the traditional skill-based interview.  The Power of Inclusion & Belonging: Communication & Collaboration Leading companies recognize how to prioritize inclusion & belonging at work and that diversity goes beyond race, age, gender, and physical ability—it encompasses diversity of thought. By broadening our definition of diversity and embracing inclusive workplaces, we gain a deeper understanding of our employees and unlock additional solutions to challenges. To foster a culture built on diversity and inclusion, it is crucial to give every employee a voice, truly listen to them, and create an environment where everyone can participate. At our organization, we are committed to removing unconscious bias, hiring for diversity of thought, and supporting inclusive communication.  Inclusion and belonging are essential components of a positive work environment. Inclusion refers to the extent to which individuals feel valued, respected, and supported in the workplace regardless of their background or identity. Belonging refers to the sense of community and connection that individuals feel with their colleagues and the organization as a whole. When employees feel included and a sense of belonging at work, they are more likely to be motivated, engaged, and productive. Human connection in the workplace can improve inclusion and belonging in several ways. Firstly, when colleagues have positive relationships with each other, they are more likely to understand and appreciate each other’s unique perspectives and backgrounds. This can lead to increased empathy and respect for diversity, which is essential for creating an inclusive work environment. Secondly, having a sense of connection with colleagues can increase trust and psychological safety in the workplace. When individuals feel comfortable expressing themselves and sharing their ideas, they are more likely to contribute to the team’s success. A study conducted by Google found that teams with high levels of psychological safety had higher levels of productivity, innovation, and overall performance (Edmondson, 2012). Lastly, human connection in the workplace can promote a culture of collaboration and teamwork. When individuals feel connected to their colleagues, they are more likely to work together and support each other’s success. This can lead to increased creativity and problem solving, as well as a stronger sense of community within the organization. If you're interested in learning how to prioritize inclusion & belonging at work using technology, let's connect!

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6 Ways to Build a More Collaborative Team
6 Ways to Build a More Collaborative Team

Strengthening your organization’s capacity for collaboration requires a combination of long-term investments—in building relationships and trust, in developing a culture in which management and people leaders are role models of cooperation—and smart near-term decisions about the ways teams are formed, roles are defined, and challenges and tasks are articulated. Practices and structures that may have worked well with simple teams of people who were all in one location and knew one another are likely to lead to failure when teams grow more complex and become distributed, so the question becomes just how to build a more collaborative team. Reasons Team Collaboration May Suffer When tackling a major initiative like an acquisition or an overhaul of internal systems, companies rely on large, diverse teams of specialists to get the job done. These teams often are convened quickly to meet an urgent need and work together virtually, collaborating online and sometimes over long distances. Appointing such a team is frequently the only way to assemble the knowledge and breadth required to pull off many of the complex tasks businesses face today. When the BBC covers the World Cup or the Olympics, for instance, it gathers a large team of researchers, writers, producers, cameramen, and technicians, many of whom have not met before the project. These specialists work together under the high pressure of a “no retake” environment, with just one chance to record the action. Similarly, when the central IT team at Hilton Grand sets out to develop sophisticated systems to enhance guest experiences, it has to collaborate closely with independent hotel owners, customer-experience experts, global brand managers, and regional heads, each with his or her own agenda and needs. Consider this though. Although teams that are that large, virtual, diverse, and composed of highly skilled specialists are crucial to addressing challenging projects, those same four characteristics can make it hard for teams to get anything done. For example, members of complex teams are less likely to share knowledge freely, to learn from one another, to shift workloads flexibly to break up unexpected bottlenecks, to help one another complete jobs and meet deadlines, and to share resources—in other words, to collaborate.  As teams become more virtual or distributed, we also see collaboration decline, unless the company has taken measures to establish a collaborative culture. As for diversity, the challenging tasks facing businesses today almost always require the input and expertise of people with disparate views and backgrounds to create cross-fertilization that sparks insight and innovation. But diversity also creates problems.  Research shows that team members collaborate more easily and naturally if they perceive themselves as being alike. The differences that inhibit collaboration include not only nationality but also age, educational level, and even tenure. Greater diversity also often means that team members are working with people that they know only superficially or have never met before—colleagues drawn from other divisions of the company, perhaps, or even from outside it. As you might imagine, team members become less likely to share knowledge or exhibit other collaborative behaviors. So how can you strengthen your organization’s ability to perform complex collaborative tasks—to maximize the effectiveness of large, diverse teams, while minimizing the disadvantages posed by their structure and composition -- that is, how to build a more collaborative team? 1. Secure Top Level Support to Build a Collaborative Team How to build a collaborative team when you aren't supported? You can't! At the most basic level, a team’s success or failure at collaborating reflects the philosophy of top executives in the organization. Teams do well when executive management invests in supporting social relationships, demonstrates collaborative behavior, and creates positive interactions with employees and colleagues. The most collaborative companies have “signature” practices—practices that are memorable, difficult for others to replicate, and particularly well suited to their own business environment. For example, when Royal Bank of Scotland’s CEO, Fred Goodwin, invested £350 million to open a new headquarters building outside Edinburgh in 2005, one of his goals was to foster productive collaboration among employees. Built around an indoor atrium, the new structure allows more than 3,000 people from the firm to rub shoulders daily. The headquarters is designed to improve communication, increase the exchange of ideas, and create a sense of community among employees. Many of the offices have an open layout and look over the atrium—a vast transparent space. The campus is set up like a small town, with retail shops, restaurants, jogging tracks and cycling trails, spaces for picnics and barbecues—even a leisure club complete with swimming pool, gym, dance studios, tennis courts, and football pitches. The idea is that with a private “Main Street” running through the headquarters, employees will remain on the campus throughout the day—and be out of their offices mingling with colleagues for at least a portion of it. To ensure that non-headquarters staff members feel they are a part of the action, Goodwin also commissioned an adjoining business school, where employees from other locations meet and learn. The visitors are encouraged to spend time on the headquarters campus and at forums designed to give employees opportunities to build relationships. Modeling collaborative behavior. In companies with thousands of employees, relatively few have the opportunity to observe the behavior of the senior team on a day-to-day basis. Nonetheless, even perceived behavior of senior executives plays a significant role in determining how cooperative teams are prepared to be. While the behavior of the executive team is crucial to supporting a culture of collaboration, the challenge is to make that behavior visible.  One way to do this is to invest in travel again. This investment in face-to-face interaction creates many opportunities for people across the company to see the top executives in action. Internal communication should be frequent and open, because the senior team’s collaborative nature trickles down throughout the organization. Employees quickly learn that the best way to get things done is through informal networks. And the most productive, innovative teams are led by people who are both task- and relationship-oriented. What’s more, these leaders can change their style during the project. 2. Have Focused HR Practices for How to Build a More Collaborative Team So what about human resources? Is collaboration solely in the hands of the executive team? Studies have looked at the impact of a wide variety of HR practices, including selection, performance management, promotion, rewards, and training, as well as formally sponsored coaching and mentoring programs. Some studies, for example, show that the type of reward system—whether based on team or individual achievement, or tied explicitly to collaborative behavior or not—had no discernible effect on complex teams’ productivity and innovation. Although many formal HR programs may have limited impact, two practices did improve team performance: training in skills related to collaborative behavior, and support for informal community building. Where collaboration was strong, the HR team has typically made a significant investment in one or both of those practices—often in ways that uniquely represent the company’s culture and business strategy. In the research, PricewaterhouseCoopers emerges as having one of the strongest capabilities in productive collaboration. With responsibility for developing 140,000+ employees in nearly 150 countries, PwC’s training includes modules that address teamwork, emotional intelligence, networking, holding difficult conversations, coaching, corporate social responsibility, and communicating the firm’s strategy and shared values. PwC also teaches employees how to influence others effectively and build healthy partnerships. 3. Support Community Building While a communal spirit can develop spontaneously, HR can also play a critical role in cultivating it, by sponsoring group events and activities such as women’s networks, ERGs, or creating policies and practices that encourage them. For example, at ABN Amro, teams rated the company’s support for informal communities very positively. The firm makes the technology needed for long-distance collaboration readily available to groups of individuals with shared interests—for instance, in specific technologies or markets—who hold frequent web conferences and communicate actively online. The company also encourages employees that travel to a new location to arrange meetings with as many people as possible. As projects are completed, working groups disband but employees maintain networks of connections. These practices serve to build a strong community over time—one that sets the stage for success with future projects. 4. Foster Collaborative People Leaders How can you expect teams to be collaborative if their leaders aren't? So it’s no surprise that the most productive, innovative, and healthiest teams are typically led by people who are both task- and relationship-oriented. These leaders change their style during a project. Specifically, at the early stages they exhibit task-oriented leadership: They make the goal clear, engage in debates about commitments, and clarify the responsibilities of individual team members. However, at a certain point in the development of the project, they switch to a relationship orientation. This shift often takes place once team members have nailed down the goals and their accountabilities and when the initial tensions around sharing knowledge begin to emerge.  Producing team leaders that have both relationship and task skills should be a core goal of team-leadership development for companies. A company’s performance-review process should emphasize growth in both kinds of skills. As evidence of their relationship skills, managers are asked to describe their peer network and cite examples of specific ways that network helped them succeed. They also must provide examples of how they’ve used relationship building to get things done. The development plans that follow these conversations explicitly map out how the managers can improve specific elements of their social relationships and networks. Such a plan might include, for instance, having lunch regularly with people from a particular community of interest. To improve task leadership, have potential leaders participate in project-management certification programs, taking refresher courses to maintain their skills over time. Evidence of both kinds of capabilities becomes a significant criterion on which people are selected for key leadership roles at the company. 5. Clearly Define Roles How to build a collaborative team without clearly defined roles? Good luck! Collaboration improves when the roles of individual team members are clearly defined and well understood—when individuals feel that they can do a significant portion of their work independently. Without such clarity, team members are likely to waste too much energy negotiating roles or protecting turf, rather than focus on the task. In addition, team members are more likely to want to collaborate if the path to achieving the team’s goal is left somewhat ambiguous. If a team perceives the task as one that requires creativity, where the approach is not yet well known or predefined, its members are more likely to invest time and energy in collaboration. Let’s look at a study of the teams at the BBC, who were responsible for the radio and television broadcasts of the 2006 Proms (a two-month-long musical celebration), the team that televised the 2006 World Cup, and a team responsible for daytime television news. These teams were large—133 people worked on the Proms, 66 on the World Cup, and 72 on the news—and included members with a wide range of skills and from many disciplines. One would imagine, therefore, that there was a strong possibility of confusion among team members. To the contrary, researchers found that the BBC’s teams scored among the highest with regard to the clarity with which members viewed their own roles and the roles of others. Every team was composed of specialists who had deep expertise in their given function, and each person had a clearly defined role. There was little overlap between the responsibilities of the sound technician and the camera operator, and so on. Yet the tasks the BBC teams tackle are, by their very nature, uncertain, particularly when they involve breaking news. The trick the BBC has pulled off has been to clarify team members’ individual roles with so much precision that it keeps friction to a minimum. 6. How to Build a More Collaborative Team? Invest in Collaboration Technology To accelerate all of these practices and with pandemic-imposed changes to business models, you’ll need to build and empower teams with the right tools. As your company grows or pivots, it’s critical to invest in solutions that can power more effective cross-functional collaboration and increase employee productivity. In a recent study conducted by real estate property technology provider JLL Technologies, 55% of office-based employees are now in a hybrid working pattern. Still, companies on average have adopted only four out of 15 recommended technologies to address the hybrid work transformation.  For its “Technology and Innovation in the Hybrid Age” study, JLL created a list of what it calls “anchor technologies” that employers should consider providing employees. They include technology that addresses remote working, in-office collaboration, workplace experience, digital connectivity and more. It doesn’t have to be a large undertaking or expensive. A cost-effective way to think of this is to create a baseline KPI, such as profit per employee. As you invest in productivity tools, your profit per employee has the ability to increase. This assumes you are growing the business. If revenue is consistent, then you would be looking at productivity solutions that allow you to reduce costs and overhead. Either way, consider implementing a collaboration and coaching solution. It’s one of the most important technology tools in the healthy team toolkit. This can begin as easily as putting personality insights at the fingertips of every employee, where they communicate most often --  think video meetings, email, and chat. You’re probably already using communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, Outlooks and more! But you’re probably not optimizing your use of those tools for your team.  With a simple plug-in, you can give your staff the kind of information needed to better communicate and collaborate with one another, build trust more quickly, and take the guesswork out of ‘how to collaborate’ – allowing them to spend time on the work that matters. For example, imagine being able to click on meeting participants and see real-time tips and recommendations for communicating, motivating, and influencing. Imagine seeing this same information in aggregate for your meeting group. Imagine knowing who best to tap on for pre- or post-meeting action items, for helping leading certain initiatives while identifying those better suited to document or support, and who might benefit from a heads up on particular messages — all of which take into account your team members’ behaviors, motivators, and work energizers in an easy-to-understand way. It’s important to give team members the opportunity to thrive and do the job they were hired to do -- instead of requiring them to spend their valuable time figuring out how to work better with one another. The truth is, most people won’t take their time to figure out how to collaborate better, and as a result, connection wanes, relationships are reduced to transactions, and performance suffers. Don’t let team members go down this road when there are easier tech-enabled ways to do it. Doing so drives trust in your processes and leadership ability, and keeps employees engaged and performing at their highest levels. That's how to build a more collaborative team. At the end of the day, most of the factors that impede collaboration today would have impeded collaboration at any time in history. However, the teams of yesterday didn’t require the same amount of members, diversity, long-distance cooperation, or expertise that teams now need to solve today’s global, increasingly complex business challenges. So the models for teams should realign with the demands of the current business environment. Through careful attention to the factors described here is how to build a collaborative team, and in doing so, companies can ultimately experience better performance across the board.

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A Guide to Increasing Employee Engagement Among Distributed Teams
A Guide to Increasing Employee Engagement Among Distributed Teams

A fast employee churn rate can lead to higher training costs, low employee morale, and operational inefficiencies. Eventually, it can reduce your profits and negatively impact your bottom line. That’s why it’s important for businesses to learn how to prepare for it but, better yet, actually focus on slowing it by increasing employee engagement. Last year, Gallup reported that while the number of engaged workers held steady at 32% the number of actively disengaged employees rose to 18%. This is not good news when you consider that a disengaged employee is 2.3x more likely to be exploring other jobs! Employee engagement is a measure of employees’ commitment to helping their organization achieve its goals. It’s demonstrated by how employees think, feel, and act, as well as the emotional connection employees feel towards their organization, their work, and their teams.  Before the pandemic, engagement and well-being were rising globally for nearly a decade -- but now, they're stagnant, and most believe it’s because they don't find their work meaningful. Now is no time to take our eyes off the road when it comes to employees’ personal and professional well-being. Addressing the structural and cultural issues that create disengagement in your organization is the first step to laying the foundation for a new and better employee experience. Top Reasons for Employee Disengagement & Turnover Now more than ever, organizations are actively discussing the importance of employee engagement, but not everyone agrees on how to define and measure it. For our purposes, let’s define it as a state and behavior in which employees are enthralled by their work and devote their hearts and minds to it. Engagement like this requires true connection– connection to others, the team, and business goals. Engagement like this is founded on an organization’s and team member’s trust, integrity, two-way commitment, and communication. Here’s Why Increasing Employee Engagement Matters Employee engagement helps businesses succeed by improving organizational and individual performance, productivity, and well being. With the right employee engagement software, strategy, and leadership buy-in, an employee engagement strategy is:Quantifiable;  Can be cultivated and substantially increased; and conversely, Can be squandered and discarded.It’s no secret that companies with engaged workforces vastly outperform those without them. When people feel their work matters and that they’re valued, the sky is the limit. Employee engagement has a very real impact on organizational success. Companies with highly engaged workforces are 24% more profitable. (Gallup) Disengaged employees cost organizations an estimated $450-550 billion each year. (The Engagement Institute) 80% of employees said learning and development opportunities would help them feel more engaged on the job. (Udemy) Engaged employees are 44% more productive than workers who merely feel satisfied. (Bain & Company)The Best Ways to Increase Employee Engagement Employees can only perform at a high level when they’re set up for success, with the right tools, processes, and guardrails in place for optimal productivity. Creating an engaging, motivating, and supportive employee experience increases productivity and leads employees to being:15x more likely to recommend the company to friends and colleagues. 1.5x more willing to learn new skills and responsibilities. Almost 6x more likely to plan on staying for a full career.The good news…your employee engagement ideas don’t have to break the bank. They just need to be deliberate, thoughtful and work in unison. With these five keys, you’ll be well on your way to building a stronger internal brand, energizing employees, and promoting employee advocacy.Enable Mentorship, Learning & Initiatives   Actively Combat Burnout Recognize Employee Contributions Big or Small Make Time to Connect & Communicate Use Technology to Create a Work Environment Based on Connection & TrustAt the end of the day, employee engagement involves a person’s perception, feelings, and beliefs about the business, the people they work with, leadership, and the work itself. The drivers of employee engagement are highly personal, dependent on the company culture, and while they vary for each individual, these employee engagement ideas have proven to boost retention and coax the disengaged back into the game. Ensuring a positive and empowering working environment where all employees feel valued and connected doesn’t just help your company; it helps your people. An employee who feels connection to others is an employee who is more likely to find their work meaningful. An employee who finds their work meaningful is an employee likely to be engaged – demonstrating through their work a commitment to the overall success of the business.

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