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Welcome to episode 8 of Claire Shares. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m going to be sharing with you high energy, bite size videos, about all things talent attraction, talent acquisition and talent retention. Today’s talent retention topic is getting started with team management and team culture. I wish I had gotten some of these tips when I was a new manager, so I’m excited to share them with you! Make sure you’re subscribed to Claire Shares wherever you get your podcasts. We have several great conversations around internal communication best practices, which tie in closely to this episode.
Before we get started with today’s topic, I want to share with you my recommendation of the week!
Recommendation of the week
Check out the book HR Like a Boss: Your Guide to Amazingly Awesome HR, written by my friend John Bernatovicz based in Ohio. HR Like a Boss combines real-life stories of HR professionals who embody the characteristics of a “boss”—meaning a skilled business leader—with practical insights for making an impact on their people, organization, and community. You can purchase the book on the SHRM store or Amazon. John also has the HR like a boss podcast and online community. I love to curate resources and share recommendations, so please reach out to me if there’s something you’re looking for! Let’s get into our talent retention topic of the day, getting started with team management and team culture.
The why for a strong team culture
What is team culture? Peptalk, an employee experience and wellbeing platform describes team culture as the shared values, beliefs, behaviors, habits, connection, and sense of belonging that define a group of individuals working together towards a common goal. It’s the fuel that powers teams to drive forward and achieve success together. I love that definition.
Especially as a new manager, driving team culture and learning to manage a team are critical to your success, the organization’s success and for retaining your top talent. We’ve built such a great team culture here at Lighthouse Technology Services, that going forward we know exactly who we need to hire too, which makes talent attraction and hiring so much easier. We hire people who fit our vision, have the skills we need and will be a strong team player. More on talent attraction in future episodes though!
If you’re going to manage people, or have managers in your organization, providing training in manager fundamentals is a worthwhile investment. In a webinar I recently attended hosted by Fairygodboss, the speaker talked about how trust between an employee and a manager is a huge factor when it comes to employee and engagement and retention. They shared, employees don’t have to trust HR or the CEO, (I mean of course they should and we want them to) but as long as they trust their manager, they will stay and do good work. Your company benefits, work environment, and other aspects could be top notch, but without good managers, you’ll have issues retaining top talent.
There are so many benefits of having a strong team culture. Most notably, if employees are happy and engaged, they’ll be more bought in to the organization’s work, and will therefore take better care of your clients or customers. I love helping new managers with tips and tricks to be successful, make their lives easier, and make their teams happier. So how do you get started with team management and culture? I’m excited to share my experience with you. Let’s dive in.
Building team culture through time together
Creating a team culture should be about capturing the purpose behind the work. Our mission here at Lighthouse is to connect people with the right technology and talent, at the right time. And our vision is to be the most inspiring business partner in the communities we serve. This mission and vision drive all of us and is the purpose of our work. We keep this at the forefront of what we do and how we do it. As a team manager, an important role you play is to instill the company values and help carry out the mission and vision through your team. Of course every team will be different based on what they do and how work gets done, but we should all be guided by the purpose of the work.
Let’s get into building team cohesion. It’s a good idea to incorporate different types of team events into your calendar throughout the year. One type of event is team building. This could be a game or activity. Last year at Lighthouse Technology Services, we did an internal team Olympics, where we broke up into teams of 3 and challenged each other to different games throughout the office. Bubble hockey, Pacman, Yahtzee, connect four and more. It was fun to use each other’s strengths and experience in certain games, show our competitive side, and talk to each other about completing a goal that wasn’t work related. At Lighthouse as part of our Managed Talent Services offering, we love helping small and medium sized businesses build team cohesion and plan fun activities for their teams. Definitely reach out to me if you need help with executing an intentional and creative idea!
Another type of team building event could be a community event, such as guest speaker or fundraiser for a cause. In a previous episode on caring for your employees and the community, I provided tons of ideas on ways you can get your team together to connect to each other and help the community. Team culture isn’t built from free snacks in the company kitchen area. This may be something that supports an aspect of your culture, or is a great way to surprise or delight your employees, but doing these types of one off perks doesn’t really help to build your team culture. Having team members spend as much time together as possible is a good thing – that makes sense for your business as well as the time it takes for folks to do their individual roles.
Expanding on that further, I want to share some ways we build team culture and cohesion at Lighthouse by spending time together. One of our department teams meets every Tuesday and Thursday. We review our work and open items for our clients, but it’s also an opportunity to talk about bottle necks, any issues, create process changes if needed, brainstorm new ideas, continuously learn about our industry, share insights, or watch a motivational or informational YouTube video together. Time together as a team is good. We are continually in the loop on what each team member does and can understand each other better on a personal level. The more your team understands each other’s roles and the importance they play, the more likely they are to want to help and cover when someone is out, rather that complain about it. At Lighthouse, if one of our team members is taking a vacation, or is unexpectedly out for whatever reason, the rest of the team is willing to pitch in and cover the work because we have a high level of trust and care for each other, which has been built through our team interactions and time together.
On the flip side, more time together allows for us to call each other out and hold each other accountable. If one of us dropped the ball on completing a task or isn’t keeping a system updated like we were supposed to, we say something. When these things happen, it impacts other members of the team. Someone may have wasted time or have had to redo work. This is not okay, and as a manager you must set the example, say something, and hold the team to a set of values.
Focus on learning and development
Another important aspect of team culture is keeping a focus on learning and development for the team. Encourage team members to seek out events and articles and report back to the team. Showcase team members who complete certifications. Our team loves to teach each other things and hear what others have learned. This keeps us open to new ideas, as well as recognizing that the success of others does not diminish our own success. As a manager, be open to your team’s feedback and new ideas. You won’t be able to implement everything, but team members feel valued if their ideas are heard and considered even if they aren’t feasible. Personally, I love working for a manager that harnesses and takes advantage of my energy and ideas. Sometimes I like to be involved with everything, and my manager has to remind me to say no and be focused, but other times when it makes sense, they encourage me to go for it and pursue implementing one of my ideas. As a previous team manager myself, I would always rather welcome that energy and ideas from my team than not get anything from them at all. You may have to redirect those ideas and energy into something else, but at least you’re getting it, and that’s a huge indicator of engaged team members. And, get this. Managers and companies that develop their teams internally get longer retention. According to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report, companies that excel at internal mobility retain employees for an average of 5.4 years! That’s nearly twice as long as companies that struggle with internal development.
Clearly defined roles
Another important aspect of team management and culture is ensuring roles on the team are clearly defined and people know what pieces of the department tasks and goals they are responsible for. For example, when a new position opens with one of our clients here at Lighthouse, each person on the team knows their role in getting the new position communicated to the rest of the team, then another team member is responsible for publishing the position on our job board, then another team member is responsible for doing the job posting on LinkedIn. Each person knows their role and the importance it plays. Once roles on the team are defined, then cross train the team and ensure you have 1 back up for each important process or task. This has helped us a lot so that our team members can truly unplug if they want to when they take a vacation. Team members want to cover for each other and give their teammates their much-deserved time off, because they know they will be treated the same way when they take a vacation. Having expectations set for how we do our work, use technology and systems, and the processes we follow to get work done, provides a great experience for our clients, candidates, and each other. People like to know what to expect and not unnecessarily step on each other’s toes. I know I personally didn’t operate well in an environment where when there was a new task to be done, I wasn’t sure if it was something I should grab and start working on it, or if someone else would. And what that lead to was all of us waiting to see what would happen. Having defined roles and processes helps your team be efficient and productive.
I’ve probably mentioned this in every episode so far, but communication is so important. We have channels within Microsoft Teams for various departments and teams within our company. This helps ensure the right groups of folks are getting the real time updates and feedback they need to keep their work going on a day-to-day basis. Especially if you have a team where certain folks’ tasks depend on someone else on the team completing their task first, timely communication and notification mechanisms are critical to keep things flowing smoothly and avoid team frustration and missed deadlines.
Understanding pay and rewards as a manager
Something else to consider as a manager is understanding how your organization pays, incentivizes and rewards employees. Especially when it comes to commission and bonuses, be sure it’s clear to your team how those items work. If people are confused about how their pay and benefits is calculated, or feel shorted compared to someone else, that really dampers the team spirit and leads folks to feel disgruntled, which they should! By understanding how these items work at your company, you can make sure you are carrying out how to incentivize and reward fairly. Making team goals clear helps us all know what we are rowing towards, and we want to help each other to make that happen. Reaching our team goals, like servicing X number of clients and candidates, means we are taking care of our clients AND each other. If our business reaches its goals, then we are well taken care of as employees when it comes to compensation and benefits.
Wrap-up
I know we covered a lot today. But remember, these are just some things to think about to get you started. This week, I encourage you to think about your role as a manager and how you are building team culture. Even if you are an experienced manager, there could be a fun new way to build team camaraderie that you could try. And trial and error is okay. It’s better to do something and to continually work on and improve your culture, than take no steps forward at all. Thank you for being here with me and joining me for these bite size videos all about all things talent attraction, talent acquisition and talent retention. These areas of HR and People Ops are my favorite and specialty, and I’m so excited to dive in with you. This work is what I do, if you need help with the tools, technology and process around how you attract, acquire and retain talent, reach out to me and let’s talk!
Claire is Coaching 