The Holiday season can take a toll on your team.
Even if there’s no rush to complete goals before year-end, personal factors such as financial strain can result in increased stress leading up to the new year.
Because of the stress of the Holiday season, 41% of workers report a decrease in productivity.
As Q4 comes to an end, leaders should consider how to make sure their teams are set up for success in the new year.
Below are several tips for re-engaging and refreshing your teams in the new year.
Why is Engagement Important?
Engagement plays a significant role in team productivity. Disengaged employees tend to:
- Be lethargic or low energy in meetings.
- Miss deadlines or scramble at the last minute.
- Complain without offering potential solutions.
- Resist change.
An engaged team, on the other hand, demonstrates the following behaviors:
- High energy, with a propensity toward discussion and asking questions in meetings.
- Focused, submitting work on time, if not ahead of schedule.
- Solutions-oriented, pursuing improvement over perfection.
- Adaptable with an appreciation for change.
When employees are disengaged, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re incapable or poor performers. Gallup estimates that managers are directly responsible for approximately 70% of the variance in employee engagement.
Engagement requires deliberate and consistent action from leaders, and there’s no better time to start than now.
5 Ways to Re-Engage and Refresh Your Team
1. Cultivate Open Conversation
Open and honest communication is a key component of psychological safety.
However, not every team member will feel comfortable engaging in open conversation.
According to Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson, there are three steps leaders should take to cultivate candor and psychological safety:
- Reframe mistakes: Cultivate an environment where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities, encouraging experimentation and innovation.
- Be intentional about inviting participation: Continuously be on the alert for unspoken concerns and be intentional about soliciting ideas.
- Respond appropriately: Make speaking up a positive experience for employees, regardless of whether you agree with them or not.
These steps can empower your team to share their ideas while demonstrating that it’s a safe space to share and critique.
As you enter the new year, this also gives your team members a chance to express any areas of struggle or learnings that they uncovered in the past year.
2. Solicit Feedback From Your Team
The beginning of the year is often a time when leaders are finalizing key objectives for their teams. Invite them into the discussion.
Rather than telling them what the annual goals are, get their feedback on what they should be.
Have teams been feeling burnt out? Perhaps the goals set for the previous year weren’t realistically achievable. Perhaps there are more resources the team needs in order to execute their responsibilities effectively.
Take the opportunity to listen, and then consider that feedback when developing the upcoming year’s plan. This will not only foster inclusion but also get the team energized for the year ahead.
3. Get Deliberate with Recognition.
Taking the opportunity to recognize your team for their success is a key component of engagement.
Recognition can be in the form of monetary awards, corporate gifts, or even extra time off—or it can be a simple shout-out.
The key component in recognition is getting specific—let the individual or team know how important their work is, and the impact it had on the organization in the past year.
This will not only serve as motivation to continue to produce great work, but more importantly, connect their work to the organization’s broader purpose.
4. Debrief the Year
The end of the year is an excellent time to reflect on your team’s accomplishments and areas for improvement.
Research shows that rigorous debriefs can improve your team’s performance by as much as 25%.
This shouldn’t be an opportunity to cast blame or punish those who have underperformed, but instead to encourage ownership and truly seek out opportunities for improvement.
5. Create Opportunities for Your Team to Connect
After the stress of Q4, it’s important to allow your team to refresh and reconnect with one another.
Your teams need to start the new year with trust and a strong sense of inclusion.
Teamraderie’s live, virtual experiences can help your team get off to a great start. Approximately 90% of participants agree the experience helped strengthen connection on their teams.
They also serve to re-engage your teams, with teams seeing a 22% increase in engagement following the experience.
Click here to learn more about how Teamraderie can help your team connect and increase engagement in the new year.
