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How to Transform Your Good Team into a Great Team

These days, it is ever-more important for managers and business leaders to have a clear understanding of the teams and team members they oversee (in-office or remotely). For this reason, surveys are an excellent way to collect feedback from employees about their experiences and difficulties.

Surveys allow managers to identify strengths, weaknesses and areas for potential development within their teams. As always, knowledge is power: information underpins improvement. Further, surveying employees allows them to feel like they’re being heard and valued as members of the organisation which can lead to increased motivation.

There are other benefits too, and you can access them if you roll out your surveys appropriately. So read on … this article will take a look at how you can use team surveys in your enterprise.

The Purpose and Benefits of Team Surveys

Anywhere there are teams of staff that must work together — be that private enterprise, government sector and even in not-for-profits — there is a place for team surveys. They are widely considered to be one of the most effective tools for measuring team engagement, as well as gaining feedback on areas that are critical for the current and future performance of the team. Some of these areas include:

• Current job-satisfaction levels
• Leadership and advocacy
• Rewards and recognition
• How team member motivations, goals and values align with those of the organisation
• Work:life balance
• Career, training and developmental opportunities
• General feedback on what is and isn’t working.

Years ago, collecting and collating this sort of information could be a considerable undertaking; however, as with so many things, the internet has made it so much simpler. Today, online surveys are an easy way to get this feedback from your team members, and, if delivered correctly, these surveys can even promote more openness in your organisation. And that’s just one of the benefits. Others can include:

1. Increased team morale due to team members feeling considered and acknowledged. A sense of inclusion has been found to have a profound effect on individuals. The benefits range across increased commitment levels, to better self-esteem, improved well-being and stronger team connectedness. (2016 NeuroLeadership Journal: “The Science of Inclusion: How We Can Leverage the Brain to Build Smarter Teams”.)
2. Gaining useful, honest and varied insight from your whole team, which can be difficult to gather in other ways.
3. Help your leadership decision making through increased awareness of opportunities and issues.
4. Identify specific actions that will improve your team engagement to help boost performance, client service and business outcomes overall.

Now, all of that may sound excellent, but you may be wondering how to successfully undertake your team surveys And, once you’re moving forward with them, what the pitfalls are. Let’s look at these issues now.

A Practical Approach to Team Surveys

Like many activities that are intended to engage your team, it is important to consider the process. A poorly implemented survey can end up reducing team morale and engagement, especially if they’re seen as a “tick and flick” process. Or, even worse, as a channel to “spy” on staff.

Transparent communication and a clear goal will help eliminate those risks.

It’s important that team members have faith in the confidentiality of the process and believe their input will be heard and acted on.

Therefore, a team survey process needs to incorporate:

• Measures to ensure confidentiality, these may include:
  • Grouping data as a whole if the sample is small, rather than by demographics or other identifying characteristics
  • Bringing in a third party to conduct the survey
• Communication should include an overview of the process, incorporating:
  • A stated purpose for the survey
  • Assurance of confidentiality, and an outline of how this will be achieved
  • How the results will be used and communicated to team members
  • Follow-up communications on actions that have been undertaken based on the employee’s feedback
• A strategy to identify and implement recommendations and actions based on the survey’s findings.

How Team Surveys Can Help You

When conducted effectively, a powerful team survey will give your organisation valuable feedback to aid in decision making and also deliver a boost in the wellbeing and engagement of your team members.

If you’re curious about helping your business reach its potential by transforming your good team into a great team, then take action! The team at Balanced Scoreboard have tried and tested methods to help businesses with a structured framework for enhanced team engagement, performance and job satisfaction.

For further information, go to www.balanced scorecard.com.au. Once you’re there, you can view or book a demonstration of the Balanced Scoreboard: an effective team-performance HR tool with purpose. It’s not a gimmick, something that just looks good on paper: no — this really works!

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