Performance ratings- the quality check of your yearly or half-yearly performance at workplace, might be a measure of your efforts but it is always the work environment which plays the ace in your performance. Yes, the scenario in every IT company is more or less the same – your performance rating band remains in the hands of your manager. Mostly, every day interactions between an employee and his manager are somehow restricted to the deliverables’ mails.
The productivity of a team is highly dependent upon the managing skills and of course on how well the team members are coordinated with one another. While performance ratings should be meant for providing your employees a boost to work harder, making sure of flexibility in your work plans leads to spikes in productivity.
Bigger teams Vs smaller teams
Surveys say that bigger teams despite being chaotic to some extent are encouraging and fruitful for the newcomers. The senior members of the team will always come up with a first hand for every critical issue. No matter how much hectic your workload may appear to be in the morning, the little chitchats with your cubicle mates will never let you feel the pressure of those long hours in office.
Being a part of a bigger team always gets you the privilege of learning every moment- in the case, you are stuck with a code or script, someone or the other will always be there to your rescue. Also, on the days, when you do not have much work, maintaining the stipulated work hours is easier when you have a big team to sit with. Smaller teams, that is, the ones with a handful of members come with a set of privileges as well. It becomes easier to steal the limelight when you are a part of a smaller team. The queue for on-site ‘visas’ is comparably shorter in these teams.
Regardless of your team size, regular interactions between team members are mandatory for a work environment that keeps them glued to the workplace.
Few interesting stress- releasers
A team that shares the work deliverables is obviously required but what spikes up the productivity are the little stress-busters. Weekly fun activities that take up a couple of minutes from your work but makes a good interactive session for the entire team can effectively release the stress and tension brewing in the team. Remember your school days? The way there used to be houses competing for sports day?
We know that ‘sports day’ is not a feasible option but dividing the team members into small groups and maintaining an informative column to be filled by each group can be a fun-learning process as well. Not a detailed research is required, instead the critical issues faced while working on the deliverable every day or some sub-option under a tab of your tool that is seldom used rather seldom required in your work, will do as the information. Short fitness sessions like the ones in which you discuss the sitting habits and how to cope with shoulder and back pain are being promoted in several workplaces these days.
Huge workload at times leads to heated up environments at your workplace. Lack of interaction among the team members and managers also lead to inappropriate work plans. Speak-up sessions not only with the HR associates but also within the entire team and managers are mandatory in order to maintain a more or less transparent work environment. Maintaining transparency, keeping the discretion undisturbed can certainly make way for a healthy and encouraging work environment and in turn a highly productive year.
