As an MSP in today’s candidate driven market, it is more important than ever to create corporate culture that invests in the members of your team.  We all understand that a positive workplace culture is an integral part of a successful business, but where do you start?

A lot of ideas are thrown around about what you should do to engage your team. From foosball tables to standing desks, it can easily become overwhelming to look at all the different options and understand what is effective and what isn’t.

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

KNOW WHAT YOUR TEAM FINDS VALUE IN

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, it won’t do much to promote workplace culture if no one likes beer.  Get your team together and ask them what they feel is missing in their workplace environment and base your plan around combating this as a group.

An anonymous survey is a great option to get honest feedback from your team.  This can be easily executed using sites like Survey Hero or Survey Monkey.

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.

GIVE YOUR TEAM A COLLECTIVE GOAL TO WORK TOWARDS

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.

At IT By Design, we created a Mission, Vision, and Values statement which incorporates our core values, vision, and mission for the coming year.

We display this throughout our offices, and have it saved as a screen saver for all company computers.  As a result, all team members have a full understanding of what we are trying to achieve and how they can contribute to that goal.

IDENTIFY HOW YOUR TEAM COMMUNICATES

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, it’s how you say it.  It’s how you and your team communicate both internally and externally.

This an another document that your team should be able to access easily and see daily.  This will serve as a consistent reminder of how to speak to each other and clients.

CONSISTENTLY REWARD AND RECOGNIZE

Rewarding and recognizing your team is a crucial step in creating a positive culture.  Often times we struggle with making sure it gets done.

In order to hold 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.   Our team goes so far as to send out Outlook calendar invites! Putting the dates in the calendar as soon as you can allows you to drive accountability by setting a time bound goal to consistently shoot for.

BUILD A PLAN THAT WILL EVOLVE AS YOU DO

Following some of these steps results in defining and understanding what your own personal brand of workplace culture is.  Every organization is different.  You need to define what is right for your team then take actionable steps to put the right plan in place.  Keep in mind as your organization evolves, so too will the ambitions and values of your team.

Make your plan nimble and adaptable.

Be open to feedback from your team so you can build upon your plan as your grow.

Consistently survey your team to gauge their satisfaction rate.

Mostly importantly, don’t forget to hold one person accountable for executing and growing your plan.  This can be you, your HR lead, or an office admin.