Anonymously collecting the team’s attitudes on Direction, Communication, Health, Values and more has been vital to making the team feel heard. On a weekly basis, it has allowed us to get together as a team, discuss the results, and come up with initiatives to improve how we work as a team.

The pulse has become even more important now that all of us found ourselves suddenly working from home and usual communication methods were lost - almost overnight. 

Team Barometer has meant every member of our team feels heard and supported despite being at home. Crucially, it’s not one-directional. While each team member can raise their voice, it also gives everyone the insight on how everyone else is doing and how they can better support others. 

Given how fundamental Team Barometer has been for us over the last month, and hearing about the struggles of some of our clients as they switch to virtual working, we have decided to make the tool available to all teams around the world for free.

So how does it work? Team Barometer automatically sends a questionnaire focused on Working from Home to every team member each week over email. Team members fill in their responses anonymously, taking less than 1 minute. The team then gathers for your weekly Video Conference the following day to see the results (compared to previous weeks) and discuss openly the issues that have come up in that week.

For us, Team Barometer has been instrumental in helping us build our business and particularly so during these uncertain times. With the tool, we can quickly understand specifically where we are struggling, which means we can make changes within hours, not days or weeks. For example, 

• Feedback is an important part of our culture, and hence something we measure in our barometer. We’ve seen feedback scores drop consistently over a few weeks. We decided to do a team feedback training session with some role plays. In teams of 3 (one person giving the feedback, one person receiving, and one observer), everyone was given a specific situation where they had to give / receive / observe feedback applying techniques from the training. The week after, feedback scores went through the roof!
• Communication: same story, communication had been dropping, we decided to nominate an "investigator" to better understand the specific communication issues within the team. This allowed us to isolate 3 recurring topics, one of them being that different teams use our instant messaging app differently. For example, our tech team communicates widely through the app to share information, ask questions, and assign tasks. Our sales team, however, attending a lot of meetings, only check instant messages a few times a day, and when they do, the volume of messages can be quite overwhelming. This makes it difficult to know which ones to look at first. Emails and calls work better for the sales team. Once this issue was identified, the resolution was simple — for high-priority issues, our tech team now emails or calls the sales team.
• Innovation: It’s not always identifying bad news - Team Barometer also identifies what’s going well. In the first few weeks since working from home, Innovation scores have been very high, with many people saying “This week, I actively developed a new skill, concept, or product that will directly improve our company. 👨‍🔧”. This development can be laid at the feet of having more time. No more commuting and less “life admin” because of the ability to work in … let’s say slightly more casual attire than seen in even the most progressive startup offices. A modified version of this will definitely form a part of the Pirical New Normal.

Most importantly, what we love about Team Barometer, is that it keeps team morale high. We have a section at the end that asks “What are you grateful for this week?”. Some responses include:

A few law firms who are using Team Barometer are already seeing benefits. We are very happy to hear about the impact the tool is already driving and that it is becoming part of each team's rhythm.

As we have heard recently, in one team, one of the responses indicated that someone had been really struggling while working from home, to the point where their health was deteriorating. Nobody in the team had realised. In the following week, the team manager held a meeting to discuss things they can do differently.

In another example, one team expressed low scores in Communication, with 2 people indicating “This week, I understood what's going on but some things weren't communicated properly” and another indicating “This week, I felt lost or out of the loop with what's happening with the project”. Immediately during their team meeting, they agreed to several actions to improve team communications.