Sharing results with your team is essential to succeeding with Officevibe. When you discuss results as a group, it helps people to understand their team better and feel more confident engaging.
In this article, we'll share 5 tips to help you guide these discussions and create a comfortable place to share.
These points are created for teams participating in their first Officevibe results discussion; however, revisiting these tips over time can help maintain a safe space!
Be respectful
It's important to be mindful of sensitive topics and respect your team's anonymity.
One of the core tenets of Officevibe is trust. We aim to provide a safe space where everyone can share their honest thoughts. That's why individual Pulse Survey answers are never exposed and why we leave it to users to anonymize their feedback (or not).
As a manager, you have a responsibility to respect your team's wishes to remain anonymous.
Do this:
Focus on the feedback itself, not on who wrote it.
Discuss general themes that come up in the feedback comments (ex., communication, teamwork, trust).
Don't do this:
Discuss specific situations that could be directly tied to a person.
Publicly expose sensitive feedback.
Think: People first
The conversation you share with your team is more important than the actual Officevibe results. And don't forget, the better the conversations, the better the results will be over time.
Focusing on the richness of the conversation with your team is key because that will allow you to understand the issues at hand truly. Talking about Officevibe results is valuable, but remember, it may still be too early to reach any conclusions with the data you've collected thus far.
Gaining insights, interpretations, and comments from your team are by far the most valuable steps to take at this point.
Do this:
Set the stage right at the beginning by asking your team for help. This paves the way for an open and honest conversation.
During the meeting, ask team members how they feel about the topic you're discussing and their thoughts — if any.
Consider sharing this initiative with your human resources department to enable transparency and alignment.
Don't do this:
Come into the meeting with a pre-made idea of solutions you want to implement.
Assume your employees know how Officevibe works... or that they already trust the platform.
Use open dialogue
There's no "I" in team. The goal of this meeting is to get input from your team on how you can improve together as a unified group.
Get input from each person in your team, so you can get to the heart of issues and work on solutions that address real problems.
Do this:
Focus on the discussion as opposed to the solution.
Ask for everyone's input. For example, you can organize a round table where everyone has their turn to share thoughts, questions, and ideas.
Focus on understanding the root causes of issues by asking open-ended questions. Here are some to try:
Why do you feel like that? How does that make you feel? What would you like us to do differently? Can you give me an example?
Don't do this:
Base solutions or actions on the opinion of a single person.
Point out specific comments (especially if they're anonymous) or situations. This may reveal someone's identity and make them uncomfortable, which can break trust immediately.
Practice patience
Remember, it takes time to build trust and to have an honest dialogue with your team. Since this is your very first meeting to discuss Officevibe results with your team, know that not everyone will be trusting, and not everyone will invest themselves in the conversation at first.
Repetition and consistency are key to building trust. As you discuss topics related to engagement more and more with your team, they will understand the purpose and value of these conversations.
Do this:
Show vulnerability. That's the number one key to building trust. When you're vulnerable, your team will be more likely to share honest thoughts. It's all about reciprocity.
Set expectations from the get-go on the recurrence of your meetings (ex., once per month). When your team members see that you're committed, they will be more likely to commit as well.
Don't do this:
Expect things to change right away. Several discussions are needed to see progress.
Get discouraged if it takes time for your team members to open up. Instead, ask them privately why they seem reluctant to participate, perhaps during a scheduled one-on-one meeting.
Show commitment
It's important to end your meeting with an action plan, otherwise, your discussion will be left up in the air and you won't see any noticeable change.
Commit to 1 action, as a team, before ending your meeting. Commitment to an action item and/or having an action plan helps build trust. Your team members will understand that you're focused on people and on the team's success.
Do this:
End the meeting with a commitment on what you want to achieve as a team.
Decide when you want to meet again as a team to discuss the action item and/or action plan.
Don't do this:
Decide for your team what needs to be done to improve. The action item and the steps to take action should be a group decision.