Hiring talented digital specialists isn’t all that’s required to create an amazing team. For people to work together efficiently, you should develop a system of tasks and rewards, foster proper delegating, organize training, and more.
So, if you have a team with exceptional resumes and work experience, but it isn’t working perfectly, it isn’t really a team. It’s just a set of talented individuals.
Thankfully, there are proven methods to encourage and recharge your digital employees to make them into a real super-team. And we’re here to share those methods with you.
1. Establish Clear Processes Within The Team
Simply throwing a bunch of people into a project and telling them to do their job won’t work. You need to establish clear protocols that describe everyone’s role within the project. Every team member should receive clear tasks with briefs that specify all the requirements.
Make sure the team has a step-by-step for every task: where they get it, a list of statuses for the assignments (In Progress, Done, Feedback, etc.), how much time they have, where they hand it in, etc.
Another great option to consider is proper goal-setting. When you have daily, weekly, and monthly goals, the workplace gets more productive. At the same time, it saves you from getting stuck on a particular task for too long and allows you to keep track of progress better.
Say you have one large goal – a new digital product for a client or a certain number of leads (if we’re talking about digital marketing).
How can you establish the right processes? Communicate with your team and create a system that caters to everyone. Or follow your industry’s best practices. If needed, hire a professional manager who has experience creating such systems.
2. Offer Digital Training To Improve Professionalism
Digital learning at all levels is crucial. Over 70% of companies believe that online learning puts them at a competitive advantage. Yet, many companies have problems with this aspect. There are still a lot of managers who don’t encourage learning, and there’s a lack of education culture and employee engagement in it.
By building this culture and investing in courses, you can dramatically improve your team’s professionalism. Besides, organizing team-learning activities gives your set of talented specialists an opportunity to bond. Furthermore, over 90% of employees say that they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning.
Here are some areas of expertise that are beneficial for every digital team, especially the marketing one:
- Data Analysis: All reporting and estimates are based on data, so being fluent with its analysis is crucial.
- SEO: Search engine optimization trends change regularly with the updates of Google’s algorithm. SEO brings online visibility, brand awareness, traffic, and leads, so the importance of this skill is undoubted.
- Content Marketing: Building and promoting a brand is impossible without knowledge of content marketing. It is crucial for establishing brand loyalty and communicating with a company’s audience.
- Design:Â An essential skill useful for anything from website banners to ads and infographics for your blog.
A great example of a company investing in employee training is SE Ranking, an online platform for managing a variety of SEO and marketing tasks. The company allocates funds to its employees to take one course per year on whatever platform they choose. There are in-house SEO and management courses and workshops for employees and separate funding for event and conference attendance.
3. Establish A Reward System
The Talent 2020 survey by Deloitte shows that leadership recognition is among the top three non-financial factors for employee retention. Additionally, employee recognition may improve productivity and performance by 14%.
Now, on to rewards. A financial or another reward for a job well done will benefit your company in two ways:
- People will become more productive.
- They will feel more motivated, which means higher engagement and better results.
Create competitions, offer pay raises, promotions, flexible hours, vouchers, days off, anything your employees would like.
A survey among the team or teams will help you decide what rewards to choose. Don’t be scared of financial investments – grateful, motivated employees may double your revenue by working with commitment.
You can create smaller rewards for individual tasks and a large one for the best productivity in a year. But make sure your employees and teams don’t get into rivalry or become exhausted trying to perform their best.
Everything has to be in balance.
Another recommendation is to avoid punishing employees if something goes wrong. The old tradition to punish never worked and never will. The best solution if something goes wrong is open communication: maybe the person is going through a crisis, needs more training, or has other factors. A calm discussion will uncover what happened and prevent the issue next time.
4. Encourage Team Collaboration
According to McKinsey, collaborative work processes may increase productivity by 20-30%. Just imagine a team where honesty, transparency, and trust are blooming. Imagine how many ideas it provides, how productive it is.
You can create such a team using the following practices:
- Maximum transparency. Transparent communication is the key to building trust. If you feel like an employee needs a little more time or another approach, talk to them. Your timely constructive feedback or offer to help may be the key to success, especially for newbies.
- Judgment-free culture. Cultivate a judgment-free environment. This will create space for brainstorming, idea-sharing, and improvement within the team. When feeling safe in the room, people will provide their most ridiculous and outrageous ideas, which may just become the next best thing for your business.
- Offer the right tech. Apps with shared access to documents, groups in chats, etc., will nourish collaboration and help people reach out to each other. Consider using Google Docs and Sheets, Flowdock, Slack, GoToMeeting, Redbooth, Bublup, and other applications for team collaboration.
You can also hold team-building events outside work. Brunches, cinema, picnics, anything you can think of will work. Again, create a survey to find out what your employees will appreciate.
The benefit? Having marketing and sales teams bonded and friendly with each other may facilitate idea sharing and improve coordination efforts while developing a marketing strategy. This, in turn, can bring you more customers and, consequently, more revenue.
5. Leverage Communication
The importance of communication with your digital employees is fundamental. It is the keystone to building relationships with them. The easiest thing to do is hold small non-boring meetings in the morning to inspire people.
One encouraging message can make the team’s day.
Honest communication about issues in the company, adjustments, etc., is also important. Like in any relationship, talking about what you like and don’t like and finding common ground is essential for a team and a business to work properly and achieve results.
Do it constantly. Talk to your employees and ask what they want communication-wise to feel safe and confident in the environment.
Also, think about the software you use for communication. Make sure the platform you choose is convenient for everyone. For example, Google has a lot of tools like Hangouts, Chat, and Meet that can help you keep in touch.
BUT! Don’t overload people with meetings, encouragement, chatting, and notifications. This can be distracting, excessively time-consuming, and even create a feeling of pressure for some people.
6. Ensure Freedom To Choose The Working Environment
In the modern world, lots of businesses are starting to understand the value of working comfort and remote work. Don’t be one of those bosses that keeps people at the office all the time, even if they’ve finished their work. You don’t pay them for the time they hang out in the building. You pay them for a job well done.
Allow the digital team to choose the days when all of them can meet at the office for a weekly brief, or offer them flexible working hours and places if applicable. Of course, you need a system here because total freedom for everyone may make it difficult, or even impossible, to manage projects.
Having various attractive, cozy, and comfortable areas in the building would also be nice.
Post-COVID, many companies caught on and introduced a 4-day workweek. There’s a non-profit organization called 4 Day Week Global that is encouraging more businesses to join. Some of the most prominent companies adopting the new standard are Kickstarter and Microsoft Japan. The latter has seen a 40% surge in productivity due to a reduced working week and meetings as short as 30 minutes.
The world is evolving. Catch up with it.
7. Delegate Properly
Choosing the right people for the right assignments creates a wonderful team and streamlines the process. An individual approach like this will improve the satisfaction rate among employees and productivity.
So, hire a great project manager who will learn about the skills of every team member and assign the right tasks to everyone.
Also, consider investing in the automation of tedious tasks. A monday.com survey shows that 54% of workers spend at least 5 hours a week on repetitive tasks. 16% spend as much as 10 hours. Such tasks require little to no creativity and may lower the morale and motivation of your digital team.
Summary
These ways to recharge and encourage your digital team may not be simple to implement. However, the experience of the world’s leading companies shows this approach pays for itself.
Ensure good relationships and a comfortable psychological climate for the team. Remember that you can achieve all of this simply by communicating with your employees.
Learn how to delegate properly and assign the right people to the job. Hiring talented, experienced managers may be one of the first steps to creating a perfect digital team. There should be a leader to recognize achievements.
Freedom is another important factor. Giving your workers enough freedom to choose remote working days and a proper environment to perform their duties is vital for their encouragement and mental health.
