Erika is Team Engagement Manager and Health & Wellbeing Champion at a global pharmaceutical company. As such, her main focus is to support the health and wellbeing and continuous development of her teams. In her own words, she is “passionate about ensuring [her] colleagues have the tools needed to look after themselves and their teams”. A colleague recommended TeamMood and after seeing the ease of use, Erika’s manager agreed to implement the tool, and they never looked back.
Fostering honest feedback
Before using TeamMood, the team’s resilience was measured by a twice monthly call lasting 30 minutes. During this call, each team member was asked to answer the question “How are you today” with a grade between 1 (bad) and 5 (excellent) and hints were shared and/or actions agreed until the next call. Erika highlighted a gap to her manager as she felt more needed to be done to manage the team’s wellbeing and giving people space to raise personal issues or concerns they do not wish to raise in front of their colleagues.
“We needed to do more, to gauge people’s feelings more frequently while ensuring they feel safe to share their mood and feedback. With TeamMood, “people have the opportunity to anonymously share comments and raise concerns without needing to worry about saying how they feel.”
The team continued to use the tool for 18 months. Erika moved into a new role with a much larger team (approximately 200 people) in Nov-20 where the tool was also utilised to measure resilience and wellbeing and help drive one-to-one discussions. In both teams, the tool was used across regions and not just for our UK teams.
TeamMood in practice
According to Erika, TeamMood helps team members to have conversations about their physical and mental wellbeing. It offers them a secure space to share their worries, concerns about workload or personal problems they want to make their team aware of. This in turn, leads to better one-to-one discussions as well as team discussions as discussions can be more focused and teams can be more caring towards their colleagues. Trends and comments are shared and reviewed on a weekly basis at team and leadership meetings with actions agreed.
Practical examples: a) where workload was flagged by a team member or members, it resulted in managers checking in with individuals during their one-to-ones and talk specifically around workload and how they were managing, with actions agreed where needed. b) Meeting agendas have been altered to include reviewing overall Teammood analysis (moods and comments) and share health and wellbeing tips on things the teams can do to look after themselves, like ‘how to separate work from home life’, ‘how to sleep better’, ‘how to setup your desk working from home’ and much more. “With TeamMood, people feel they have a voice. It’s all the more important with the majority of the team living under UK lockdown rules….it doesn’t replace the quality time spent with colleagues around a cup of tea, but it offers a way for team members to share their struggles….and they really appreciate it.”
TeamMood’s main advantages
Erika shared that TeamMood’s advantage was the ease of use and therefore considered a great tool for measuring resilience. “I am amazed at how easy it is to set it up, use it, and get the results…. It took 24 hours only to have it up and running with a weekly email issued automatically to the team (by TeamMood) asking them if they are ok. It only takes the click of a button to tell if I’m feeling good, bad, anxious… and share an anonymous comment. It’s an amazing tool.”
Mood results, trends, comments and reports are accessible at different granularities: team unit, larger teams, or department level for a holistic view. TeamMood is intuitive and whenever she has a question, she appreciates the quick service by TeamMood’s teams.
Erika is so enthusiastic that she advertises us to everyone who could benefit from the tool: “Whenever I get the opportunity, I recommend TeamMood.”
Last words
“I don’t know what I would do without TeamMood as, as a Health and wellbeing champion, it gives me the opportunity to make sure my colleagues are ok. Thank you the TeamMood team for developing this great tool to help people have a say and help leaders to lead better and to know how people are doing without reading a 40-page file. It’s a fabulous tool.”
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Disclaimer: This is Erika’s personal story about her experience using the tool and does not relate to her employer or their view.
Header picture by Artur Rutkowski on Unsplash