Inspiring ideas for “Great Project to Work”
Tuesday 9th of June, the annual conference Great Place to Work® took place in Paris with companies on the palmares for France. Companies from different sectors, size, inventing and experimenting new practices to develop the well being of their employees for -by the way- achieving higher results.
So which interesting and great idea would worth to adapt to your context of project ?
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A “real” (electronic confidential) “How are you today ?” can be more powerful than a automated public “how are you today ?”
All have experienced this “automatic question”, and this is not always a chance to give a “true answer”, especially in a corridor, or when you do not see your manager very often because you are located at a different place.
To make sure that all their consultants had a chance to truly see how they are despite located at different places, Davidson inserted as a mandatory field this question in a monthly report; The role of the manager is to give a call and discuss the situation. Interestingly 50% of problems are just solved with the call.
Why not inserting this kind of metric on a project, on a team ?
This idea behind is to solve problems when they arise rather than putting them under the carpet until it explodes … sometimes virtual team management brings learning for physical team management …
2. Involving team members and/or stakeholders in recruitment to check the fit to the team,
While traditionally, recruitment involves N+1, HR , N+2; Google and Kiabi for instance involve a wider group through a panel or involving team members, stakeholders …
They thus make sure that values are shared by asking whether if the candidate fits into the team, this is pragmatic operational feedback.
3. “Dream” collectively to define the vision
Defining a vision is part of best practice according to PMI program management best practice; it is one key element in team motivation.
However collective dream is much stronger than the dream of a few people.
For instance Kiabi, by involving all their employees to develop the vision changed their slogan from “Fashion at low price “ to “ Sell to the world Happiness to wear”; this change opened significantly creativity on a day to day job across the whole company.
4. Create a great, efficient and open working environment, outlining identity and values
Last trends in work place design for the next 5 years show the followings emergent characteristics : people work from home, from the office, from third place locations with external members.
- Work from home : despite legal framework is not always in place, reality is that around 17% of employees work from home
- Office work : currently a office place of work costs around 16 500 euros/year while the occupation rate is around 50%; predictions used to design new office consider different kinds of working place per kind of activity : place to work together, creativity spaces, silence places; optimized numbers to create communities are seen as 8-12 people for people working together and 30-40 people for people interacting together in the workplace in informal spaces.
- Third location places : well customized and central located places are available out of offices places to enable teamwork with suppliers, partners, universities, at central strategic locations (e.g airport, train stations, city center).
Most of project managers who travel intensively already use this kind of logic, why not redesigning the space offices within teams to create different spaces per activity ?
A great place to work drives higher results
Great Place to Work® companies lead to a 30% higher productivity and -23% absenteeism. As a consequence, about 80% employees go to work with pleasure and are wiling to stay there as long as possible. This is moreover sustainable.
Finally, find ways to inspire each other to experiment new ways and expand management practice
Several companies mentioned that they suggest their employee to read some books and organize exchange about it to get news ideas and expand their team charta.
Thanks to Great Place to Work® to inspire us as well for projects ![/vc_column_text]