Some may argue that it’s invasive to take an active interest in the emotional wellness of your staff. Still, the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 81% of individuals in their 2022 Work and Well-being Survey are now looking for workplaces that support mental health and emotional stability.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to gauge employees’ sentiment, so you can’t easily address the problems that would make them happier. Think of it like a family relationship: On paper, a parent might be doing all the “right” things for the kids to be happy, but if the kids don’t feel comfortable talking about what they need, the parents can’t ever really make home a safe, happy place. While your team might not be your children, the idea is similar. This is why cultivating emotional intelligence, also called “emotional quotient”—think EQ, like IQ—in the workplace is so important. Ultimately, it leads to greater employee satisfaction, a happier, more productive workplace, and significantly more revenues.
At Seamm, we have a few tried-and-true ways to give everyone a voice and prove that we value honest feedback and constructive criticism.
How to nurture a company’s emotional culture
1. Work retrospectives
Conducting periodic calls incorporating specific departments allows us to see opportunities and problems we otherwise would not have because they involve individual employees. It’s also beneficial for seeing global problems that may not have been initially important or urgent but are affecting daily operations. During these conversations, everyone has the same chance to be heard; there are no “unimportant” opinions. For this, it’s equally important that leaders share their problems and experiences as well.
We open a virtual whiteboard and have everyone create stickers with answers to three questions:
- What makes you happy?
- What do you think has room for improvement?
- What are you unhappy about?
Once all the stickers are posted, we discuss each and work to find a solution to every problem. There are no identifiers attached to these stickers, which helps maintain anonymity. Also, with Miro, there is a feature that allows for entirely anonymous voting, which we use for important or sensitive issues. Once we have a solution, we give a team member responsibility for its implementation. This helps them feel involved in the process and lets everyone know we’re willing to act, not just talk.
2. Combine your efforts and get a higher return on your time
Furthering EQ is something more companies are getting on board with, especially since the pandemic shone a spotlight on how easy it is for team members to feel disconnected from each other. Because we have an international team, it was decided that Seamm would “combine the useful with the even more useful” by offering weekly conversational English classes for free.
Not only does this help improve language skills for anyone who wishes to participate, but it also serves as a way to connect with colleagues and team leads. In this low-stress environment, people can get to know others from different departments while also achieving a kind of catharsis by talking to people with similar struggles or triumphs.
Giving your employees the ability to gain a deeper understanding of each other, speak out about whatever they wish, and learn to communicate more effectively without the pressure of work is valuable and promotes a more emotionally mature workplace.
3. No work allowed: building personal connections
As a leader, having one-on-one conversations with team members is vital. Neglecting this can lead to minor problems (personal or professional) festering and becoming large, difficult-to-manage incidents in the future.
Maintain a regular schedule of individual calls to each employee. If possible, avoid work topics and focus on the individual. Listening to what’s happening in their lives, good or bad, can give you a lot of insight into their overall emotional state.
For example, we had a developer in Thailand who raised chickens in their backyard and would give us updates on them. We also had times when team members had loved ones who were sick or had passed away, so they shared this with us, too. Other times, we would discuss travel tips and talk about fun cultural differences. Essentially, it’s just a time to allow employees to become more “human” to the rest of the team.
It’s also understandable that some companies must combine work and personal discussions in one call. In these cases, set aside a block of time in the beginning to get the “burden” of work out of the way so that the personal portion of the call can be relaxed and meaningful.
Doing this offers tremendous insight into the mental health of your team and paints a more detailed picture of how your leadership can support them for a happier, healthier workplace.
4. Weekly and quarterly anonymous surveys
Getting employee feedback can feel like pulling teeth, even in the best of times. This is partly due to the difficulty of getting team members to take extra time to fill out surveys, but it’s also often because they don’t feel listened to. In 2021, Gallup found that only 20% of global employees are engaged at work, which means the other 80% are neutral at best or even actively disengaged, meaning they have no incentive to offer feedback.
To combat this, Seamm sends out weekly pulse surveys through the Slack Roots plugin. The responses are anonymous and grouped by department so we can gain a more specific understanding of what’s happening for each team.
Weekly surveys are rated on a scale of 1-5 and include questions about stress levels, overall mental state, satisfaction with the week’s work processes, team interactions, and management encounters.
We also send quarterly surveys with opportunities for short answers or numerical ratings to get a more in-depth picture of our employees’ mental and emotional well-being. Collecting this information enables us to identify problems and find solutions quickly. For example, if we see a marked mood drop in development, we can talk with the team to figure out why and do something meaningful about it.
Empower your employees with 360-degree feedback
It’s never too late to lay the foundation for a more emotionally intelligent corporate culture, and the benefits of doing so are numerous and impactful. Each step listed above is a great way to not only manage the emotional culture of the workplace but prepare your team for a 360-degree feedback system.
Workers are placing more value than ever on companies that prove they’re taking mental and emotional health seriously. Raising the overall EQ of your workplace means better motivation, healthier communication, deeper team connections and engagement, and an overall happier, more positive internal culture.