The Importance of Team Health Checks

14th June 2022

The Importance of Team Health Checks

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At Answer, we prioritise our employees' wellbeing and put it at the forefront of everything we do. It's a 'self- assessment tool for agile project teams who are looking to monitor and improve the way they work together to meet project outcomes. We are strong believers that employee engagement and organisational performance can be aided by good health and day to day checkups. It's typically the little things that make the biggest difference.

More than ever before, businesses are looking for innovative ways to assess and visualise how their teams are performing. According to Luisa Van Der End, Senior Agile Project Manager, Answer uses an agile approach to better understand the employees needs and the current state of wellbeing. Luisa stated that "Because everyone has a slightly different method of working, we typically undertake a team or self-assessment to determine team happiness and what works effectively for people - You'll need a clear, systematic methodology to uncover what is working well and where things aren't working properly.”

“Temperature checks of the team start a path of continuous improvement” says Luisa, “We plan small activities at the end of the week to assess how individuals are feeling; one such activity is a social gathering where we can all converse and socialise easily, with the goal of finding mutual concepts for greater improvement." This is an essential element of agile continuous improvement, it is the idea that the process is always being reviewed and changed to encourage further improvement and growth.

For Answer, Luisa clearly identified that whether the company develops a continuous improvement mindset depends on the individuals and interactions within the team. As a result, it's critical to keep track of your team's health. Answer’s regular team health checks are an excellent approach to do so!

“Before putting any approach to the test, it's vital that we familiarise ourselves with it, understand what it can and cannot tell us.” Luisa emphasised that at Answer they use a variety of different techniques to test and improve the working environment. For example, it can be really simple activities such as thumbs up, thumbs down or a 1-10 scale on how everyone is feeling. Other in depth methods include visual dashboards, temperature scales and emoji boards to clearly identify the moods and behaviour patterns within teams. Questionnaires and agiles tools like TeamRetro are also used to provide effective data for Luisa to track trends and identify frequent patterns, understand common pitfalls, and hence enhance team anatomy.

Is your team happy? A question that should always be raised in order to ensure a productive, efficient and healthy working environment for all. Conclusion; Be like Answer and take care of your employees!

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