At IT By Design,  we started by building an engagement plan in an effort to promote community among our team of  350+ members across our multiple locations. We wanted to have a plan in place with action items assigned to members of our team to ensure our efforts were consistently and effectively executed.   

STEP ONE 

At the very foundation of your plan is understanding what your team members find value in.  While it sounds great to have beer on tap in your office, it won't do much to promote workplace culture if none of your team members like beer.   Get your team together and ask them what they feel is missing in their current workplace environment and base your plan around combating this as a group.

If your team does not feel comfortable vocalizing their opinions, an alternative  is an anonymous survey.  If  your team is less than 100 people, you can do this for free using Survey Monkey or Survey Hero.  Be forewarned, you may not like the results but this is an essential step in truly understanding what you need to do as an organization to make your team happy, motivated, and productive.  

STEP TWO 

After identifying what motivates your team,  the next step is to create a unified mission statement that shows your team how you intend to move toward  your goals.  This promotes the idea of One Team,  One Goal.   Below is an example of the Mission, Vision, and Value statement that we created for our team to drive home our goal for the year.  This incorporates our core values and our company vision statement along with our mission for 2018.  We have this displayed throughout our offices and have it saved as the screen saver for all of our computers to make sure every team member is on the same page.  

STEP THREE 

Along with your Mission, Vision, and Value statement is your tone of voice.  Your tone of voice is your organization's personality.  It's not just what you say but how you say it.  It's how you and your team communicate both internally with each other and externally with your clients.  Below is an example of the Tone of Voice document we use at IT By Design.  This is also prominently displayed so our team is consistently reminded of how they should speak to their team members and to our clients.  

 STEP FOUR 

We all know that doing group activities, and rewarding and recognizing your team members for their hard work are important steps in creating a positive culture.  The issue is making sure it gets done.  In order to hold both yourself and your team accountable, create a calendar of events months in advance, and hold your team and yourself to those dates.  Make sure this calendar is shared whether it's posted in your office, put on a shared drive, or included in any internal communication.  At IT By Design, we go so far as to send out calendar invites to our staff.   Put the dates in the calendar as soon as you can to drive accountability by giving yourself a time bound goal to consistently shoot for.  

These four simple steps will help you launch your engagement plan by defining and understanding what your own personal brand of workplace culture is.  Every organization will be different but you need to define what is right for your team and then take actionable steps to put the right plan in place.  It's important to keep in mind that as your organization evolves, so too will the ambitions and values of your team.   Make your plan nimble and adaptable,  and be open to feedback from your team so you can build upon your plan as you grow.  Consistently survey your team to gauge their satisfaction rate,  and hold a specific team member responsible for executing and growing your plan.  

If you're looking for additional ideas or activities to engage your team,  subscribe below or email community@itbd.net  and we'll send you a list of the internal activities we do for our team that have been successful.   While every team is different, we're happy to provide you with some inspiration to get the ball moving!