Biography sharing, strengthening strengths and onboarding buddy
These three hacks focus heavily on the team and mutual support among colleagues:
Biography sharing – for team building it is helpful to know who the others actually are. With biography sharing, the team meets and everyone talks about 15 minutes per person: where they come from, who or what has particularly shaped them in their career, what they are proud of and what hurdles they have already overcome. As a bonus, you can add what your colleagues should know about you in order to work well together. Listening and mutual respect are particularly important in biography sharing.
Strengthening strengths – what you are good at and enjoy doing is almost always more fun than tasks that do not correspond to your own abilities. After consultation with the manager, the team can set up a joint board where everyone can enter tasks that do not suit them. Other team members can then take on these tasks on a voluntary basis. The concept is based on reciprocity and not only means that everyone has more fun with their tasks, but also promotes exchange between colleagues.
Onboarding Buddy – Onboarding Buddies are employees who have already been trained and who are available as contact persons for new colleagues in the first few weeks or months if they have any questions. Each company can decide for itself whether a buddy is assigned to a whole group of newcomers or whether the buddy program brings individuals together. The buddies not only help to get to know the company properly, but also with personal integration into the team.
Peer Feedback, Why Talk and Stand Ups
These three hacks are about job performance and purpose.
Peer feedback – for this exercise, employees invite two to five colleagues with whom they work a lot at regular intervals (e.g. every three months). At a joint meeting or several one-on-one meetings in a row, these two to five colleagues share their assessment of work performance. The peer feedback should be seen as a supplement to the annual feedback session with the manager.
Why Talk – this hack can be implemented alone or in a team and, like peer feedback, should be part of the agenda at regular intervals. It’s about actively taking the time to appreciate the reason and purpose of working in this company: Why do I work here, how did I get here? Will this job help me professionally? Do I contribute to society with my employment? Do I enjoy my work? The Why Talk makes sense because the meaningful aspect motivates the employees and thus not only improves the atmosphere in the office but also their work performance.
Stand-ups – Stand-ups are short meetings that are usually held standing up. All employees of a company are invited: The meeting serves to network with each other, but also to exchange information about the state of affairs in the office and can be used to make simple verbal agreements across teams. The stand-ups strengthen team spirit, save time and should be held regularly if possible.
Retro, timeboxing and focus time
These three hacks help to make processes more efficient and make better use of working time.
Retro – with the so-called retros, the team looks back together on the past week or the past month: What worked particularly well, what didn’t? The goal of retros isn’t to blame colleagues for things that weren’t so good. Instead, the attempt is made to uncover inefficient processes by looking back together and to reflect on how work in the team can be divided even more sensibly. There shouldn’t be a fixed agenda at the retros, so that all employees can raise their issues.
Timeboxing – Deadlines are not necessarily stressful, but can also really get things moving. This applies in particular to meetings: If it is clear before the meeting how much speaking time each participant will have for which topic, everyone prepares better and only says what is relevant for everyone. In this way, endless team meetings can be shortened to half an hour, for example, and valuable working time can be saved. If a specific task needs to be discussed in more detail in pairs, the team meeting is not the right time; a special meeting can be planned instead. If you don’t let deadlines stress you out too much when completing tasks, you can also introduce timeboxing here and thus optimize working hours.
Focus time – this hack works in almost every profession, executive, employee and self-employed. It’s about entering fixed time slots during which you will only be disturbed in extreme emergencies. That means putting your cell phone aside, not checking emails and not answering short questions from colleagues. This ensures that you are not constantly distracted and you can work much more efficiently and focused – this is particularly helpful for more complicated tasks.
Never Lunch Alone
The last hack is called “Never Lunch Alone” (English: “Never eat alone lunch”), and the name says it all. The concept: Instead of sitting alone on your cell phone during your lunch break, you should always eat in company and exchange ideas with colleagues, build up a personal network, make new contacts and develop joint ideas. This can also work from the home office via video conference.
While New Work Hacks certainly provide good impulses, as a manager you should always pay attention to what the employees actually need. Because not everything works for everyone and exercises such as the Why Talk do not work in every team.
Editorial office finanzen.net
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