Building a high performance team is one of the top goals for any manager. The rationale is simple. Teams that perform like a well-oiled machine ensure high productivity and efficiency, directly impacting the organizational bottom line. High performance teams are generally those which have a shared vision with a clear path to achieve the same which everyone aligns with. Such teams are built on communication, trust, transparency which ensures that they deliver results not only once, but consistently. High performing teams don’t deliver a one-off chance win, but constantly outperform themselves and set higher standards. Invariably, such a team is a manager’s paradise. 

A Leader’s Route to Creating a High Performance Team

Contrary to popular belief, building a high performance team is not limited to bringing together top performers to work collaboratively. Unless the wavelength of all team members is aligned and there is a positive culture, creating a high performance team is a difficult task. Fortunately, forward looking leaders have been able to formulate a roadmap for others to follow:          

1. Hire and retain the right people

Building a high performance team begins with hiring the right people and making efforts to retain them. To be clear, the term right people doesn't translate to those with the highest qualifications or skills. Hiring the right people is about bringing together those who have the competencies, along with the right attitude, passion, and drive for the role. As a first step, managers who are onboarding members to create a high performance team must get a holistic view of their profile and go beyond technical questions to assess their personality as a whole. Once the right talent is on board, recognition, appreciation, engagement, motivation, etc. become integral to retaining them. Put simply, if employee turnover is high, the performance of the team will always be weak. 

2. Align on the goals and vision

The next step to building a high performance team is about establishing a shared vision and goals that everyone aligns with. The idea is not only to have a vision that everyone agrees to, but actually aligns with and sees it as a part of their personal and professional vision. Here, collective brainstorming and ideation, guided by the spirit of inclusion of all voices will play an important role. Vision building exercises can help, which can be followed by collectively creating a roadmap to achieve the vision. A shared vision ensures connectedness in the group. Research shows that “teams that rank in the top 20% for connectedness see 41% less absenteeism, 59% less employee turnover, and a 66% increase in employee wellness”.  This clearly illustrates how alignment on vision leads to a connected team which is high performing. 

3. Have an effective conflict resolution mechanism

No matter how like-minded people are on the team, conflict and disagreements are bound to happen. Some managers believe that their word is the last one and the right way to resolve a conflict. However, while this might work in some cases, more often than not, a comprehensive conflict resolution mechanism is needed. Leaders can have an unwritten rule of sorts on how a conflict within the team would be handled. Ideally, all members of the team must be given a chance to voice their concern and resolution should focus on a mutually agreed solution which benefits the team and the organization. 

4. Focus on emotional intelligence and trust

Building a team only on technical aspects without a human and emotional connect will rarely ensure high performance. On the one hand, leaders need to be empathetic and go out of their way to promote holistic wellbeing for their team members. On the other hand, a culture of trust is crucial to top performance. Team members who trust that their managers and leaders have their best interest in mind at work are likely to outperform those with a lack of trust. According to a research, “45% percent of people said lack of trust in leadership was the biggest issue impacting their work performance”. The point here is that team members need to be high on emotional intelligence and must trust each other to give in their 100%.

5. Facilitate open communication and collaboration

Finally, one of the most important strings to building a high performance team is open communication and collaboration. Teams that communicate effectively and frequently are always on the same page and report lower instances of conflict. At the same time, according to Salesforce, “86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures”. Therefore, managers and leaders need to up their game when it comes to facilitating team communication with active and empathetic listening, feedback, etc. 

Preparing Managers to Build High Performance Teams

To cut a long story short, there are multiple strategies that managers and leaders can adopt to build high performing teams. The objective is also to prepare and equip managers with the right skills and competencies to execute these strategies. Here, platforms like SuperBeings can play a crucial role with state of the art manager development programs that focus on behavioural nudges to help managers build their dream team!

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Like what you read? Now see it in action in your team, book a free demo with our experts today!

New managers or first time managers are those professionals who have recently transitioned into leadership roles. They are no longer only responsible for the work that they do and the tasks that they accomplish but also for the overall performance, productivity and credibility of their entire team. However, for numerous managers, transitioning into such a role can be very difficult. According to a study, 44% first time managers claimed they were unprepared for the new role. At the same time, 87% reported that they did not receive any training for a new managerial position. The objective of this blog is to help first time managers identify some of the top practices that are likely to set them up for success.

Why new managers need these tips is simply because this is the first time that they are responsible for individuals beyond themselves. Therefore, they need to adopt and hone new competencies to leave a mark. One of the most common pitfalls that first time managers come across in their journey is being over ambitious and changing everything just because they are now in charge. On the other extreme, are those managers who in an attempt to get  everyone to like them refrain from taking a strong stand. Invariably, either of these practices do not spell success for new managers and, thus, they need to make a sincere effort to create a legacy for themselves.

Succeeding as a First-Time Manager: Top 5 Tips

It is quite evident that first time managers need to take a few extra steps to spell out success. Here are some tips for new managers to accelerate their professional journey and make an impact.

1. Change your Mindset towards Team Growth

As a manager you do not have the option to focus on what you do and turn away from what your team members are up to. For most professionals, till they reach a specific position on the leadership ladder, they only have to focus on outperforming themselves. However, as a manager one must change their outlook towards their team and its collective growth. The objective now is not to treat everybody else like competition in a race. Rather, it is important to see everyone as a part of a relay where performance of one contributes to the team performance. Therefore, first time managers must adopt a growth mindset to help their team members develop as professionals.

How to achieve this: Focus on the strengths that everyone brings to the table and make effort to leverage the same. For instance, build a team with complementary rather than similar skills.

2. Build a Rapport to take Everyone Along

Next in line, it is very important for first time managers to build a rapport with everyone around. While as a part of a team you may or may not get along with everyone. However, as a manager you need to have healthy relationships with everyone in your team, as well as those above you and below you. Here, it is vital that first time managers pay heed to the opinions and perspectives of everyone around. On the one hand, this will help you create an image that they take everybody along. On the other hand, building a rapport, will facilitate collaboration which is crucial to success for any manager. 

How to achieve this: One of the easiest ways to achieve this would be to make an effort to get to know your team members and others beyond work. Try to learn about their personal life (with their consent), learn about what they wish to do beyond work, etc.

3. Motivate, Mentor, Guide and Support Development

For a first time manager it is not only about getting things done but also to ensure that your team grows and develops in the process. Therefore, one of the most important tips for new managers is that they must motivate, mentor, guide and support their team. Motivation and mentoring can take many forms. For instance, helping the team members align their professional goals with the vision of the organisation. The objective is to ensure that each team member is able to reach the pinnacle of success and stretch beyond their comfort zone. As a first time manager, it is your responsibility to create appropriate conditions to promote the personal and professional development of your team members.

How to achieve this: Set up formal mentoring and coaching programs for your team. It can be with internal leaders or external ones. Learn their aspirations and make a conscious effort to give them assignments that can aid in their professional success.

4. Nurture your Emotional Intelligence & Communication Skills

One of the common misconceptions amongst first time managers is that they have to hone more technical skills. However, if you look closely, a managerial position is more about developing soft skills rather than focusing on technical competencies. Therefore, new managers must focus on developing emotional intelligence and communication skills. Emotional intelligence is likely to help new managers look at things from the perspective of the team members and others and ensure that they become empathetic leaders. 

At the same time, it is crucial to develop communication skills especially focused on active listening. This suggests that first time managers must listen to what their team members have to say and ensure that their opinions and perspectives are taken into consideration while making any important decisions. Additionally they must be able to communicate with clarity talking about any rules, responsibilities or goals to ensure that there is no confusion or doubt about the expectations from the team members.

How to achieve this: Invest in tools that offer regular behavioral nudges for development. Emotional intelligence and communication skills cannot be developed over night and, thus, a constant monitoring system can be effective to achieve them.

5. Empower your Team

Another important tip for first time managers is to ensure that they empower their team. In an attempt to make sure that their team performs exceptionally well and all targets are met, new managers tend to micromanage and get into every detail. This not only chokes their bandwidth preventing them from allocating their time to value intensive activities, it also creates an environment where team members feel that the manager does not trust or has faith in them. As a new manager, you should provide your team with the right resources and tools and guide them to get things done, rather than getting into the details of every task. This will help you create a team which is efficient and responsible enough to take care of the operational work. Empowering your team will leave you enough room to focus on high order tasks and decision making to attain scalability and success.

How to achieve this: Understand what your team needs and give them those resources. For instance, if your team is working remotely, invest in collaboration and communication tools like Slack, video conferencing tools like zoom, etc. 

A Collective Effort: Role of the Organization

The onus of setting up first time managers for success does not only lie with the managers themselves. The organization that employs these managers is equally responsible for ensuring that they have the right technical and soft skills as well as managerial competencies for a wide ranging impact. 

There are several ways in which organizations enable their new managers to make a difference. Firstly, there are many manager development programs that organizations can explore and enroll their managers in. Secondly, many organisations are now experimenting with manager development tools and platforms holistic training and development using behavioral nudges to create sustainable and long term impact. Such forward-looking organizations often collaborate with platforms like SuperBeings to invest in the development of their managers. These platforms have programs which offer continuous behavioral nudges to facilitate manager development. Thirdly it is very important organizations the pitfalls which prevent their manager development programs from succeeding and take into confidence experts who are able to guide the way. 

Additionally, organizations must make mentoring and coaching a part of development programs for any new managers. On the one hand, the program will help the first time managers seamlessly transition into their new roles without any hiccups. This suggests that not only will they be able to perform their new responsibilities properly but also lead a team that respects them, believes in them and looks up to them. On the other hand, this will also create a culture of mentoring and coaching where those who have been mentored will further mentor their peers and subordinates, creating a ripple effect. 

Organizations that help their first time managers develop the right competencies and skills have an edge over others when it comes to succession planning. They already have a process in place when a new leader is instated. This seamlessly allows transition into leadership roles without any road block. The bottom line is that success for first time managers is the responsibility of both the managers as well as their organizations working together towards excellence.

SUPER TIP: Here is a guide to help you in building an organizational culture that fits and benefits your organization the most!

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A manager’s handbook to employee learning and development

How to measure manager effectiveness: 11 key metrics

Like what you read? Now see it in action in your team, book a free demo with our experts today!

The need for employee engagement practices is well established across most forward looking organizations. Those who consider their human resources an asset and invest in them believe employee engagement is an important tool to achieving organizational development. There are several aspects one needs to focus on to make employee engagement a success. While there are the ideation and actually implementation of these practices, measurement and tracking are equally important. The objective is to monitor whether the practices undertaken are actually moving the needle or are they a mere tick in the box.

Measuring and tracking employee engagement practices

A constant question that most business leaders have for their people practices is “Are they really making a dent”? Unless there are specific metrics or indicators to track the efficacy of employee engagement practices, saying if they are really working stands on a slippery foundation. Here are a few practices that organizations can measure to comprehend the effectiveness:

1. Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)‍

Whether it is from the customer or the employee, net promoter score says a lot about an organization. If your employee engagement practices are actually working, employees should feel that this is a great place to work leading to a high eNPS. Put simply, eNPS comes from the score or the rating employees render when asked, “How likely are you to recommend a friend to work at your company”. The higher the score, the better employees feel about their organization. Generally on a scale of 0-10, those who rate between 0 and 10 are detractors while the remaining are promoters. Subtracting the number of promoters from the detractors and dividing it by the total number of respondents gives the eNPS. While a negative eNPS refers to a low level of engagement, the higher the score is on the positive ladder, the better is the effectiveness of the employee engagement practices.

2. Combination of Surveys‍

Most organizations rely on a particular type of survey to gauge the effectiveness of their employee engagement practices. While some leverage annual surveys, others use pulse surveys. However, an optimal approach is to focus on continuous measurement. It would help cover the recency bias and data lags of annual assessment as well as bridge the non comprehensive nature of pulse surveys which may not cover all that is needed. They are the perfect sweet spot to identify larger trends and give a bigger picture and gauge opinion at shorter intervals which is overall comprehensive. It is best to have a combination of open and closed ended questions as well as quantitative and qualitative nature. Finally, the surveys must be organization wide and not just limited to a sample population.

3. Continuous Active Listening‍

Finally, it is very important to keep a track of employee sentiments on a regular basis. What may not come out during surveys and other activities, comes out subtly during conversations. For instance, candid conversations with employees not directly on how engaged they feel, but around their wellness and happiness. Additionally, keeping a track of their absenteeism makes sense. It’s not simply important to determine how often an employee takes off, but what is genuinely the reason behind it, which comes from active listening. Therefore, it is extremely important to encourage a two-way communication to gauge if your employee engagement practices are actually working. 

4. Leadership plays an important role

Most leaders believe that augmenting the effectiveness of the employee engagement practices is a responsibility of the HR in the team. However, the senior leadership and managers play an equally important role. Unless they build a strong relationship with their team members, active listening and surveys will not come out to be authentic. Managers need to lay the foundation where employees can authentically share their opinions and views about engagement without the worry of job losses or delayed appraisals. Additionally, organizations must experiment with online tools like SuperBeings that can facilitate constant engagement and practices to measure its effectiveness. 

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Like what you read? Now see it in action in your team, book a free demo with our experts today!

It comes as no surprise that leadership style and effectiveness spells a great part of organizational success. As a team expands, it is imperative for managers to adapt their leadership style to the changing circumstances to ensure efficiency in working and management. Micromanagement and trying to retain control over everything might not be the best idea for managers seeking to lead expanding teams. It is not only that managers have more team members to direct and oversee, the entire nature of their role changes and, thus, requires a reinvention in the leadership style.

Leadership Style for a Growing Team

Managers and leaders must focus on reinventing the way they lead, when adding new members to their team. Leadership styles need to adapt to the changing nature of the team. Here are a few starting points for managers to lead an expanding team.

1. Direct to Indirect‍

When a team is small or close knit, managers and leaders tend to have a 1-o-1 relationship with every member. There is a direct connect and employees generally report immediately to the manager. However, as a team expands, such a close knit relationship undergoes a change and there are several levels of leadership in the team. Invariably, adapting to the new leadership style involves managers to adopt an indirect approach to management. This refers to stepping away from micromanagement and personally discussing every situation with every employee. The change in leadership style requires involving oneself in high value add conversations, while being there for employees at every step, without indulging in every little management practice. 

2. Charisma vs Authority‍

As a team expands, there invariably is the addition of a set of employees who are intimidated by their manager. While in a small team, employees feel confident and comfortable in sharing their opinions with the manager, as the team expands, this comfort starts to decline. Managers need to nurture their leadership style in a manner which is able to command them the respect and compliance of their expanding teams. But, at the same time, there needs to be enough room for employees to share their opinions without any fear. Statements like, “In my opinion this should be the course of action, what do you think?” In other words those which invite the perspectives of others must be encouraged. The idea is to find a balance between authority to ensure respect as well as charisma to illustrate collaboration and participation.  

3. Choose Wisely‍

As a manager of an expanding team, leaders are bound to come across multiple fires to fight and battles to win. However, if you pick every fight that comes along the way, you will reach the stage of burn out by the time you reach the final battle. Therefore, reinventing the leadership style requires weighing situations and prioritizing. While some tasks need to be reserved for you to perform on your own, others need to be delegated, and this choice should be wise and thought through. Any work that does not require particularly your skills or expertise, must be passed on to the team, because that’s the reason for the expansion. Managers must wisely reserve those activities for themselves that add a unique advantage to the organizational value chain. 

4. People Skills‍

Finally, the one definite thing about team expansion for managers is to deal with more and more people and therefore, refining and investing in one’s people skills is a must. As you might have observed, as individuals move up the leadership ladder, their role becomes less and less technical or wrapped around a particular niche. A manager’s role no longer is to perform the technical task at hand, but rather, manage, mentor, and guide the expanding team and help them navigate the way to perform those tasks. Therefore, people skills of boosting morale and motivation, promoting engagement and collaboration, etc. take precedence. Adapting to manage an expanding team requires a leadership style that is well versed with people centric skills and practices. 

Leadership effectiveness starts with the right style

Adapting to a new leadership style to manage an expanding team is no rocket science. It simply requires subtle behavioral nudges to act in ways that enable managers to look at a bigger picture. Undoubtedly, different HR tools and platforms can be an effective way to unlock the needed leadership style. Such tools help organizations personalize the nudges and learnings for their managers to adapt to a new leadership style. Invariably, reinventing leadership style is the first step towards nurturing effective leaders that are an asset to the organization and the industry as a whole.   

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Like what you read? Now see it in action in your team, book a free demo with our experts today!

COVID-19 or Corona virus as we call it is the invisible enemy attacking lives on every continent; and in every age group, race, and economic strata, disrupting the status quo of life as we know it.

To ensure the safety of employees keeping the norms of social distancing in mind amidst this pandemic, many organizations have asked their team to work remotely.

More remote work implies more challenges because of the sudden shift faced by organizations that have no prior experience of working remotely. But, the most common challenge is in establishing clear policies and keeping the employees engaged so that productivity is not hampered. Clarity on remote working policies and sustained engagement in these times will be helpful in the long run, since it may become a norm in the near future.

To help you establish a more work-from-home friendly environment for your organization, we hereby suggest 8 activities or ways in which you can ensure your employee engagement remains intact and so does your organization’s productivity amidst these hard times.

1. Keep the routine going:

When employees suddenly start working away from their conventional setting, they are bound to feel a little lost and demotivated. The working style of a regular 9 to 5 employee is quite different than someone who has always worked remotely. This sudden transition may hamper the productivity of the employees. Thus, it is necessary to maintain a discipline where employees have set hours of work so that they are under a familiar work environment.

2. Set meaningful goals:

While the employees are relieved from the stress of a daily commute, it can be a nightmare for managers to manage this situation. But, it doesn’t have to be this stressful. Discipline is a prime factor to make work-from-home effective. To avoid the constant distractions at home and work with full concentration, discipline is necessary. 

The key to managing remote teams successfully is meaningful goal-setting by setting clear deliverables. The idea is not to set vast goals but to set short and achievable ones which keep the productivity going and give the team small wins to celebrate frequently

3. Virtual Lunch/Coffee breaks:

The reason why lunch or coffee breaks are important is that it lets your employees spend some time with their colleagues and relax. Allowing such breaks is very important as it helps lighten up the mood and keep up the productivity.

However, when your employees are working from home or remotely they hardly get this chance to interact and form a connection beyond work. Hence, you can allow your employees to have some time off from their work or meetings to come together for a virtual coffee break and get involved in ice-breaking sessions and off-work networking. 

4. Keep the TGIF / townhall tradition alive:

It is very important to ensure robust communication between the management of the organization as well as the employees, even with the onset of the pandemic. Thus, the tradition of TGIF meetings should not be neglected where online meetings are held every Friday with the CEO to discuss the new developments and upcoming projects and then have an engaging informal session thereafter.

5. Engage for fun:

As important as it is to have a constant framework for professional communication, it is equally important to have an informal structure as well. To make sure that you engage with your employees to build a connection, you can organize group movie screenings or online games with the team on off days to sustain a sense of belongingness among them.  Also, in each report that needs to be done, you can add elements of fun through gamification to make work more enjoyable.

6. Set up Team Health Challenges:

With the pandemic forcing employees to isolate themselves ensuring that your employees stay motivated at work depends a lot on their physical and mental wellbeing. 

To promote their physical wellbeing, it can be a great time to incorporate a wellness application and share it with your employees. A mobile wellness application will enable employees to take part in various health tasks that can be easily done while staying indoors. Similarly, for the mental wellbeing, you can suggest online apps that deal with calming the brain or regulating the sleep cycle, to ensure that the employees spend their quarantine time more peacefully.

7. Share knowledge and resources:

Educate and equip your workforce with the right information on COVID-19, safety tips, nutrition information, and so on. Communicate measures taken by your company during this situation. Similarly, you can also share relevant research papers or news articles that you find about the field of work of your organization and share it with the rest of the team so that they also stay in the same loop. 

8. Encourage online learning and upskilling:

It's a great time for employees to learn what they have always wanted to and a great time for managers to facilitate that. Therefore, you can invest in e-learning platforms from where employees will be able to learn new skills and upskill their existing skills in the extra hours that they are getting every day due to the current situation of working from home.

Adopting work-from-home practices is the most responsible way to deal with the current crisis. It is the only way of sustaining your business in a time of global crisis like this one. It is not only the role of the Top management, HR, the leaders, or managers but rather everyone’s responsibility to make sure they create a safe and efficient work-from-home environment with the optimum use of technology.

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For more information on the use of technology to ensure a more engaged workforce, contact us for a free demo.

The business case for diversity and inclusion is well established for organizations all across the globe. Going by the figures, according to a BCG report, diverse management teams result in 19% higher revenue due to innovation. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Closing the gender gap has the potential to add $28 Trillion to the global economy, accounting for a 26% increase by 2025. While the rationale for diversity is well ingrained in most organizations today and a diverse representation is on the rise, the inclusion of the diverse views is still a little ways down the line. Therefore, it is important for organizations to not only boost their diversity quotient, but also augment the sense of belongingness and inclusivity of this diversity via adoption of different practices. 

Diversity and Inclusion via Active Listening

Diversity hiring, training and sensitization, mentoring, coaching are a few of the several ways for organizations to boost their diversity and inclusion statistics. However, active listening and paying heed to different opinions is one of the most effective measures to make a dent on the bottom line. Active listening is all about being attentive to different opinions and points of view, making a conscious effort to weigh them across different options and in turn acting upon them. Diversity and inclusion doesn’t end with having diverse representation on your organization’s payroll. Rather, effectiveness lies in giving weight to diverse thoughts which are breeding grounds for innovation and growth. 

Boosting active listening 

With the ground fertile for promoting diversity and inclusion via active listening, it is important for organizations to have a roadmap to achieve the latter:

1. Forming ERGs‍

Employee resource groups or ERGs are primary instruments to promote active listening. Assuming that active listening as a means to diversity and inclusion will work in a large setting may be an over ambitious goal to begin with. Rather, organizations can experiment with smaller settings that promote interests of some diverse groups bringing together group members as well as their allies. The objective here is to promote active listening in a safe space and act upon the concerns and suggestions of the minorities by populating the idea across the organization with the help of ally networks. 

2. Real time anonymous surveys‍

While ERGs work in a small group setting, surveys are effective for bigger audiences, especially where creating groups is difficult. While some might argue that survey is not exactly listening, however, active listening is as much about acting on the opinions and perspectives shared as hearing them. Here, surveys, especially when anonymous, can be instrumental to gauge an organization wide pulse. They can offer robust data points for leaders to map strategic policies converting opinion into action, thereby promoting diversity and inclusion via active listening. 

3. Feedback from employees‍

On an individual or personal level, feedback from employees is an important part of active listening. This allows managers and leaders to get a personalized understanding of each employee’s personality, expectations and opinions. Often seen as reverse feedback, this allows managers to gauge if their approach to management and mentoring is working or not. 

Diversity and Inclusion: Start with Active Listening

Undoubtedly, there are several strands to promote diversity and inclusion in an organization. Active listening is an important parameter for the same as it enables organizations to promote a sense of belongingness in the pre-existing diversity in the organization, thereby promoting greater diversity and inclusion in the future. It is worthwhile for organizations to invest in tools and platforms like SuperBeings, that can act as behavioral change agents and nudge subtle actions that promote active listening and coach senior stakeholders on the same, along the way.

Suggested reading:

Decoding Employee Engagement with Inclusion and Diversity

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Like what you read? Now see it in action in your team, book a free demo with our experts today!

With the new year around the corner, as a CHRO, you must be working out your organizational priorities for 2022. This is the perfect time for you to reflect on the year that has been and create a plan for the next 12 months. Based on our experience of working with the people managers and CXOs of fast growing companies, we know that having specific objectives for each month is ideal to ensure maximum effectiveness. It not only gives you a roadmap to follow through, but also makes retrospective reviews much easier at the end of the year.

SUPER TIP: You can also now check out our OKRs software feature to streamline your organisation's OKR process.

Here is a detailed guide for each month of 2022 that CHROs like you can leverage to translate your strategy to results.

1. January: Introduce OKRs

Start your year by introducing OKRs to your team. Setting OKRs can help you set the tune and priorities for the entire year. However, before you implement them, ensure that all your team members are on the same page about the what, why and how of OKRs. A few top practices to undertake in the first month of the year are:

a. Set the context on what are OKRs and offer a few examples to strengthen the understanding. Put simply, help your team members comprehend what are objectives i.e. where do we want to go and key results, i.e. how do we ensure that we are on the right path? Avoid the common mistakes while setting your quarterly OKRs.

b. Create a business case for setting OKRs. You must focus on highlighting the importance and need for OKRs to facilitate employee buy-in. Some of the top benefits for OKRs include:

• Creating accountability
• Aligning individual and organizational goals
• Facilitating communication
• Driving a high performance culture 
  

c. Create a plan of how you will set, implement, monitor and revise your OKRs. Focus on identifying the right OKR tools to help facilitate the process and achieve maximum results. You can also leverage a few OKR templates to familiarize your team members with what successful OKRs look like. 

2. February: Implement OKRs

Once your team understands the importance and broad context of OKRs, focus on the second month to implement the OKRs. Furthermore, provide your managers with the right tools, competencies and resources to facilitate smooth implementation. The following practices can help you accelerate your growth journey with OKRs:

• Implement OKRs collectively to ensure that everyone has clear visibility into what the OKRs are as well as a clarity on their responsibility and ownership in the entire process.
  

• Advocate regular check-ins and build effective templates for the same. You may want to use tools that conduct pulse surveys to gauge employee sentiment and progress on OKRs on a daily/ regular basis. These regular check-ins based on expert templates can help you remove operational blocks and improve performance. 
  

• Finally, invest in augmenting the effectiveness of your line managers who are ultimately the custodians of ensuring OKR progress. Equip them with AI driven 1:1 recommendations and templates to check-in with team members on OKRs and drive performance and feedback. 

3. March: Grade OKRs

As a natural course of action, you must follow implementation with grading and measuring. In March, you should focus on the approach to OKR grading to ensure that you are able to evaluate the progress made on all objectives as a factor of achievement of key results. 

A few practices to grade OKRs include:

• Identify the metrics and scale on which you will grade or measure your OKR. Generally, OKRs are measured on a scale of 0.0-1.0. Here, you may want to measure the progress on each key result and average out the grade to evaluate the achievement of your objective.
  

• Grade your OKRs as a preliminary exercise and set a cadence to undertake the same and monitor progress on a regular basis. The pace of progress from 0.0-1.0 can help you identify roadblocks and trends, which can further become the basis for revising your OKRs. 
  

• While grading OKRs, it is important to remember that OKRs are not the same as KPIs. However, you can make your OKRs work with KPIs for the maximum results.
  
  

On a close look, it is clear that you should spend the first quarter of the year focusing on setting, implementing and monitoring OKRs. This will help you align everyone on the organizational vision and specific priorities for the year along with the intended outcome. 

4. April: Focus on 1:1 conversations

You can use the second quarter of the year to facilitate better communication practices as the priorities for the year have already been set. In April, you should help your line managers set cadence for 1:1 performance and engagement conversations with their team members. Help the managers by:

a. Sharing best practices on how to conduct effective 1:1 meetings, including:

• Setting a clear agenda
• Having a regular cadence and blocking calendars in advance
• Including everyone on the team
  

b. Highlighting the top 1:1 meeting questions to make the most out of meeting, revolving around

• Engagement and satisfaction
• Productivity and performance
• Goals and objectives
• Team and manager improvement
  

c. Providing tools to facilitate AI driven 1:1 recommendations and templates to drive performance & retention

5. May: Promote continuous feedback

Powered by 1:1 conversations, you also need to promote continuous feedback in your organization. May will be a good time to kickstart the same. With continuous feedback, you can predict any potential barriers to your goals and objectives before they become severe risks. To facilitate continuous feedback, you can:

• Implement pulse surveys using SuperBeings’ research driven framework, customized for your organizational need to collect feedback regularly
  

• Analyze the responses and employee pulse in real time to unblock teams and eliminate risks right as they surface
  

• Take action based on insights to drive OKRs, engagement and performance improvement with guided 1:1 conversations and templates

6. June: Recognize and reward

As you reach the middle of the year, it is important to make your team members feel that you value their contribution and hard work. Again, to a major extent, the onus of recognition lies on your line managers and as the CHRO, you need to prepare them for those meaningful 1:1 conversations for recognition. To create a culture of recognition, you can:

a. Share the need for recognizing a job well done, including:

• Increased motivation and productivity
• Reduced voluntary turnover
• Greater levels of engagement and employee satisfaction
• Better customer service
  

b. Ideate and implement creative ways to recognize your employees, which don’t necessarily need big budgets, like:

• Give a shout out or put in words of appreciation on your intranet
• Offer small rewards like gift cards
• Give an extra day off
• Have special awards for different purposes, like going an extra mile, completing targets before deadline
  

c. Focus on 360 feedback for holistic recognition. Take reviews and feedback from everyone your team members have worked with and recognize efforts that may not directly link to their KRAs, but have been instrumental in organizational growth. For instance, if someone has gone beyond their role to help a new joinee get comfortable in the organization, recognize their effort.

7. July: Undertake mid year OKR check-in

With half of the year over, it is an ideal time to take a stock of where you have reached in your OKR journey. A mid-year check-in can help you gauge how your performance has been with respect to each objective and also give you a chance to realign in case of any change in the priorities. Having an OKR tool can be beneficial to map all the OKRs at one place and make any necessary changes. For an effective check-in, you can:

• Measure the OKR progress on your identified scale or metrics. Gauge the headway for each key result and identify any roadblocks.
  

• Relook at all the OKRs and confirm whether or not they are still relevant. In the uncertain and dynamic market conditions today, business priorities are constantly changing. This change must be adapted in the OKRs as well.
  

• Stay away from treating OKR check-in as a platform for performance review. Instead of using it for employee appraisal, see it as a means to improve overall progress on the key results.

8. August: Facilitate manager effectiveness

Once you have realigned your OKRs, it is time to focus entirely on manager effectiveness. As the main point of contact between organizational leadership and the employees, the level of effectiveness that your managers display has a direct impact on your growth and success. Effective managers are able to motivate employees to perform better, facilitate greater retention and positively impact the bottom line. Here are a few ways you can promote manager effectiveness:

• Focus on emotional intelligence coaching and help your managers nurture empathy,
  

• Promote a culture of communication and encourage your managers to conduct 1:1 conversations and meetings with their team members,
  

• Encourage your managers to coach and mentor their team members and become their advocates and sponsors within and outside the organization to promote their growth and development.

9. September: Understand the drivers of engagement 

As you move towards the end of the year, it is time to shift your focus towards engagement to gauge whether or not your efforts so far have been able to create the experience you seek or not. However, before you roll out the survey, you need to:

• Understand the engagement priorities and drivers that you seek to measure. There are several attributes of a workplace that come together to foster a sense of engagement, including motivation, satisfaction, belongingness, etc. Gauge which parameters you would like to measure. Preferably choose the ones which will have a business impact. Here’s a list of 11 employee engagement metrics for you to choose from?
  

• Identify the key questions for each of the drivers to ensure that you get a comprehensive understanding of the level of engagement. 
  

• Use this as an opportunity to understand what engagement means to your organization and what exactly you see as an outcome of the survey. You need to have clear outcomes and objectives for the survey

10. October: Roll out the engagement survey

Once you are aligned on exactly what the survey should result in, you are ready to roll out the survey. The last quarter is ideal for the annual employee engagement survey roll out. Some of the best practices for a successful roll out and to facilitate maximum participation include:

• Clearly communicating the context and need for survey participation. Share with your team members how their responses will bring in the changes they need and can help address any concerns they may have. Don’t just send out the survey, rather encourage your line managers to set the tone and rationale to create a sense of importance.
  

• Sharing timelines and giving employees free time to participate. If you leave the survey open for an indefinite time, you will not receive many responses. Have a deadline to create a sense of urgency. Furthermore, don’t expect employees to complete the survey during a regular workday. Encourage your managers to help their employees set some time aside from work to fill the survey, else it will just be another added burden. 
  

• Providing incentives to those who complete the survey within or before the deadline. This will encourage others to do the same, thereby, increasing the number of respondents. 

11. November: Analyze the responses 

With responses from your team members in place, you need to analyze the survey results and get ready to take action. Always thank your team members for participation and share with them the next steps and timelines for action. To use results effectively to drive change and impact, you should: 

• Evaluate favorability to understand how strongly your employees agree or disagree on various engagement trends you sought to measure with your survey. Furthermore, ensure that you study the trends for various employee segments as well, like women, millennials, etc. 
  

• Communicate the key findings with team members. Highlight the progress since the last survey. Furthermore, share the areas of concerns or challenges as identified by the responses and invite ideas to address the same. Facilitate collective brainstorming. 
  

• Create a plan and decision points to address the identified challenges. Have structured metrics to define what success will look like for each point and communicate the same across the organization. 

12. December - Annual performance reviews

Reserve the last month of the year for annual performance reviews for each employee. Encourage your managers to take this opportunity to have 1:1 conversations with each team member to not only evaluate their performance, but also gauge their strengths and weaknesses as well as goals and aspirations. For effective reviews, you should encourage the managers to:

• Be prepared beforehand with a list of points that may be discussed. Instead of a completely vague conversation, your managers can focus on a guided discussion with some intended outcomes from the same. 
  

• Facilitate a dialogue. Instead of simply sharing the review with the team member, give them a chance to share their side of the story as well. Seek feedback from them on their performance as well as for the organization as a whole. 
  

• Create concrete next steps at the end of the review. Share direct examples of what worked well and what needs improvement with focus on how to improve. Review and track the progress on each of the action items. 
  

It is clear that the last two months of the year are oriented towards making decisions and taking action for organizational growth. The survey results and performance reviews can help you and your managers to reflect on the year gone by and prepare for the year to come. Based on the employee pulse, you can set priorities for the new year with clear goals and action items and steps to achieve those goals. 

Use this time to facilitate collective decision making on OKRs, continuous performance management, employee engagement, and manager development to drive business performance. If you want to integrate and streamline your efforts into one single place, using tools like SuperBeings can help you achieve unparalleled growth with the power of aligned teams, effective managers and a motivated workforce.

Suggested reading:

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Take your organisation to new heights with our customizable business management module. Book a free demo today!"

Talent Acquisition is only half the battle for HR professionals and recruiters in today’s hiring landscape. Retaining employees has become an increasingly difficult challenge in recent years. According to Career Arc's EMBARC Pulse Survey, 43% of HR professionals report more difficulty retaining talent in 2019, compared to 2018. 

What are the factors that are impacting an employee’s willingness to leave a company? Job characteristics, work environment, career development, and work-life balance are four themes that are trending up in having an influence over an employee’s voluntary departure. These are areas that have a direct impact on overall employee satisfaction and engagement, and these areas can be controlled and improved by any employer.

The ever-present obstacles of high turnover and low retention can be tackled by keeping your employees actively engaged—not only in their daily tasks but with your company as a whole. Take a look at these 13 employee engagement ideas to get your employee engagement strategy kick-started. 

1. Build a People-First Culture

Quarterly, hold open house discussions with all stakeholders to develop a culture of interaction. Furthermore, present the most important issues in your company and the actions made to address those issues. Involve your team in planning ahead, assessing opportunities, and coming up with improvement ideas for your business strategy.

By promoting transparency and offering them a strategic insight into how the company is being managed, you’ll foster loyalty and you’ll also have a prepared leadership.

Thus, it is naturally important to periodically keep track of your work environment and measure how engaged employees are in their workspace.

2. Have a Strong Hiring strategy

The first step of ensuring an engaged employee is to have a motivated set of people on board who are ready to work. Also, it is important to analyze a person to be a fit not only based on his/her skills but also on the traits and values of the hire. For example, a person who has a need for job variety would not be fit for a monotonous role, and vice versa. This where the role of hiring strategy becomes so important because it ensures that only the people whose requirements align with the job profile are hired. So, our task remains to make the engagement of such employees in the workplace everlasting. 

3. Encourage employees to pursue side projects

Side projects might probably be thought of as a waste of the company's time, effort, and money.

But what if we said that most of the cutting-edge companies (think Twitter, Instagram) started as being a side project?

Apple took a reformatory step in the history of company culture by introducing Project Sky in 2012.  This Project gives a small group of employees 2 weeks or ‘a limited amount of time’ to work on a project outside of their normal responsibilities in the company.  

So to start off with, one of the many benefits of side projects is that it forces the employees to think outside the box, to get their creative minds flowing, and to effectively manage their time. 

Thus, employees will be more excited to come to work and hence be more engaged as they will be free from the monotonicity.

4. Social Recognition- Employee of the Month

Research says that the primary cause of employees leaving their jobs is because of the lack of appreciation.

Recognizing hard work and achievement in the workplace increases employee motivation to work, encourages healthy competition, and creates a positive atmosphere.

With higher motivation comes better engagement, happiness, and ultimately retention.

Hence, "Employee of the month" programs are a great way to show your best employees that you see their hard work and appreciate the efforts they are putting in and thus one of the best employee engagement activities that you can invest in.

5. Constant Feedback Mechanism

According to the Harvard Business Review, a more significant number (57%) preferred corrective feedback over praise/recognition (only 43%).

Thus, Employees should feel comfortable sharing their thoughts outside of designated survey periods too. There should be an equal amount of attention given to annual and weekly/monthly appraisals. Keep employees engaged in problem-solving by encouraging them to speak their minds. Create a digital, safe space where employees can submit feedback anonymously. Using technology like pulse surveys, anonymous feedback tools, etc. to provide them a safe space where they can share their point of view with the surety of being heard.‍

6. Organizing Social Gatherings: Potlucks Lunch

"With food, we can share and communicate our emotions. It's that mindset of sharing that is really what you're eating." –Jeong Kwan

A potluck is essentially a food-party where each guest contributes a different (often homemade) dish of food to share. 

Hosting a potluck is less about what food to bring and more about sharing the act of breaking bread with your fellow human beings.

Also, as far as employee engagement activities go, a potluck requires no hassle.

Organizing a potluck is a cost-effective activity which brings a feeling of shared culture, and increases the happiness and bonding quotient overall. Moreover, it serves as a means to help employees balance their work and personal life.

Also, when teams eat together, the team dynamics improve which leads to an increase in productivity.

7. Embrace personal milestones

Your employees will be less likely to be engaged if they feel that their workplace does not value or appreciate their achievements.

Your team does remarkable things and contributes great ideas all the time. Make sure to recognize and celebrate these achievements with the entire organization.

It is important to inculcate a collective sense of motive in the team which can be inculcated only if you learn to appreciate the personal milestones‍

8. Mentorship program / Buddy Program

Predictably, every new employee is bound to feel lost and unsure. Thus a mentorship program becomes exceptionally vital.

A mentor is a more experienced person who guides and advises a new employee through the first few weeks of the work to settle him/her in the new role.

A mentorship program is beneficial to both the mentor and the mentee. The mentee gets someone to guide him/her, and the mentor gains experience and pertinent leadership qualities in the entire process. A mentor showing you the ropes is bound to be more useful than a long and dull orientation lecture. The new employee will learn his way around the company faster if a mentor is there to guide them.

9. Team outings

Office trips are fun, engaging, and a great way to bond. An annual office trip can be established as a sort of office tradition and will be a good thing to look forward to by the entire team too. It will also be a great stress buster for the entire team, henceforth increasing their productivity.

10. Peer-to-peer recognition

Peer to peer employee recognition is 35.7% more likely to have a positive impact on financial results than manager-only recognition.

-Source(SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey)

Peer-to-peer recognition is one of the most underrated while significant employee engagement activities.

Namely, recognition boils down in appreciating a job well done. And peer-to-peer recognition happens to be the most powerful motivator in and outside the workplace. All in all, having peer-to-peer recognition is an excellent way to build an environment of gratitude and appreciation, where colleagues praise others for their accomplishments. 

11. Trivia Days for team building

Trivia Days is one of my new "go-to" employee engagement ideas. It is easy, short, super fun, and also throws in some knowledge in the mixture.

Divide the employees into teams. Each team will earn a point if they are the first one to answer the question correctly. Eliminate each group as the round progresses.

Not only trivia days can facilitate long lost internal communication, but it also forces people to actually work together as teams serving dual purposes of both engagement and team building.

SUPER TIP: Letting employees take a break from the usual work and indulge in an activity with their teams and peers gives them the time-out they deserve. ‍

12. Periodic Professional Sabbaticals

The purpose of a sabbatical is to give an employee a chance to step back from their role at work and focus on personal enrichment and professional development. 

Whether the sabbatical is a few weeks or a year, the goal is to return to work with more focus and energy.‍

13. Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace

Recognize and embrace diversity in your workplace, by celebrating it occasionally through something like a Diversity Day. With this in mind, celebrating Diversity Day in your company would mean a lot to the people who face a cultural block. Furthermore, it would also help to educate your employees to respect the various cultures, people, and traditions leading to better ideas and innovations keeping in mind the vibrant diversity.

We know that engaging your employees may seem like a gigantic task that you can never accomplish. But try to incorporate these 13 employee engagement ideas, and we are sure that you will have a more productive, engaged, and happier workforce at hand.

Suggested reading:

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Book a free demo today to take your employee engagement to new heights.

If you need more information and assistance over employee engagement, contact us.

Top performers in an organization are capable of 400% greater productivity than the average employee.

Engaging top performers seems to be an oxymoron for most managers as they wonder, “Do top performers also need motivation and engagement”? Simplistically, yes! And, if you go by the statistics, it is very important to engage top performers. According to a study by Personnel Psychology, top performers in an organization are capable of 400% greater productivity than the average employee. The economic costs of losing top performers are quite high. Firstly, since they bring in a sizable chunk of revenue, losing them would adversely impact the top line. Secondly, most of the top performers that leave an organization tend to join a competitor. Finally, the cost of recruiting and onboarding replacements is significantly high and not all replacements are able to deliver the same performance. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to invest time and effort in engaging top performers. 

Why does the top talent leave?

Undoubtedly, there are multiple reasons that top performers leave an organization and disengagement, due to a variety of factors, is one of the top. One of the major causes of disengagement is the needs and fitment mismatch. Often organizations either under utilize the skills and competencies of their top performers or give them roles they are not suited for. This leads to mounting frustration due to the inability to satisfy the needs of self-actualization and self-esteem among the top performers. Invariably, there is a reduction in engagement and motivation to work. At the same time, too much interference or micromanagement can lead to a less than pleasant experience for top performers. Therefore, engaging top performers is the first step to retaining the best talent and creating a positive dent on the top line.

Engaging top performers: Where to start

The rationale for engaging top performers is now quite evident. The next line of thought definitely points towards how organizations should start their journey of engaging top performers:

1. Needs-Fitment Match

There needs to be a needs-fitment match. This means that instead of a blanket distribution of tasks without assessing the competencies and skills, organizations should make an attempt to meet the needs and expectations of the top performing employees. Since most of the top talent strives towards self actualization of unlocking one’s best potential, they need tasks which challenge them and make them work harder, instead of mundane tasks common to all. 

2. Acknowledge and recognize

Next in line is the fact that engaging top performers requires putting an end to the equalizer effect. This means that organizations should not acknowledge and reward all employees on a similar level. There needs to be significant differences to acknowledge the effort of top performers who go an extra mile. This also comes from the self esteem needs of top performers where they seek recognition and praise.

3. Say in decisions that matter

Following from acknowledgement and recognition, another way towards engaging top performers is by literally engaging them in important decisions. Organizations should attempt to include high performing talent in some major decisions, especially the ones around their area of work. Since they add the most value, it is only fair to give them a voice. Participation in decision making can be a great engagement strategy. This also adds to their self esteem needs and they feel more engaged and motivated. 

4. Competitive compensation

When the compensation is similar, you cannot expect employees to perform on different levels. While recognition and praise sparks engagement, competitive compensation can breed greater heat by acknowledging that the top performers are putting in more effort and thus, deserve greater monetary rewards and incentives. Organizations seeking to engage top performers must have variable compensation structures. At the same time, top performers are driven by the need to outperform others and create a halo for themselves. Thus, competitive compensation can help in routing this competition towards engagement.

5. Professional growth and mentoring

Finally, motivated by the need for achievement, engaging top performers must include a path of professional growth and mentoring. Organizations must personalize learning for top performers. Secondly, constructive feedback and 1-o-1 mentoring which can help with their professional growth can be an exceptional tool for engagement. Finally, organizations can facilitate on the job training for their top performers by ensuring that each new task brings along a new learning for them and dictating the same in advance. 

These are but a few ways in which organizations can commence their efforts towards engaging the top performers. The bottom line would be to recognize their contribution and extra efforts and motivate them with opportunities to further add competencies and tread the path of excellence.  

Word of caution

With the knowledge of these practices, most organizations find themselves in a comfortable position to engage top performers. However, they need to be extremely cautious about their efforts. While greater efforts towards engaging top performers can be a good thing, on the flip side, it comes with the danger of differentiation and discrimination. This might lead to the lowering of morale of average performers, dropping their performance to below average. Thus, efforts to engage top performers should be a subtle pat on the back, which is visible to all, but not in the face. A simple example could be offering similar basic compensation to all and providing top performers with higher variables or incentives based on their performance.

To cut a long story short, engaging top performers by going an extra mile is the responsibility of an organization. Since they are putting in efforts that go beyond their contractual obligations, they deserve recognition, incentives and development a notch above everyone else. Only when organizations ensure engaging top performers effective can they guarantee state of the art employee experience, satisfaction and wellbeing.

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