It’s not always easy to keep the sense of team while everyone is working from different locations. You may be used to ringing a bell, blowing a horn, or another fun way of celebrating successes within your office day-to-day. While those items are not necessarily possible in the same way with everyone in different locations, it does not mean that competition needs to stop. Your team may be used to competing against each other, or maybe they are used to competing together to accomplish a common goal.

Here are some ideas and resources that can help you and your teams maintain their competitive fire during this time of social distancing.

1. Make each day a game

Whether your team competes against each other or they work together to win each day, you can use the TodayApp to measure winning days. To figure out what a winning day is for your team, think about the three to five non-negotiable lead measure activities that are required to keep your agency in line with your current goals. You may have fifteen items you want to track on a daily basis, and that’s okay, but I would not suggest keeping a score of that many data points.

So what are your non-negotiable lead measure activities? Some examples include:

  • New Households Quoted
  • New P&C Premium Quoted 
  • Comfort Calls
  • ECRM Tasks Completed 
  • Referrals Collected 
  • Appointments Set (Virtual)

    The above activities are lead measures that help contribute to new business production and customer retention. Whatever activities you choose to measure with your team, make sure that each team member has measurable and attainable individual goals that will contribute to the daily victory.

    I suggest that you use each team member’s daily dashboard for them to track their own individual daily goals, and I highly recommend that you take advantage of our leaderboard feature during this time to track the daily win. You can use the leaderboard on any device with a web browser that is larger than a smartphone (ex. Computer, smart TV, tablet).

    If you need any assistance with setting up your team’s dashboards and leaderboard, please reach out to support by clicking the question mark on the bottom right-hand corner of your TodayApp screen, then click “Contact” towards the top right and submit a ticket to our support team. They are here and excited to assist you in setting up these features.

    Finally, when you have your daily team meeting in the morning, go over the daily victory report with your team. If you have won, take some time to celebrate, and you can even throw out various team incentives for winning streaks.

    2. Utilize “the Hawthorne Effect”

    The Hawthorne Effect, also known as the “observer effect”, was coined from a 1955 study of the workers at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in Cicero, Illinois. The main finding of this study was remarkable: when the lighting in the plant was increased workers were more productive. But, maybe even more interesting, workers were also more productive when the lights were dimmed. Making any change resulted in increased productivity. Why is that? Whenever a change was made, the workers believed that they were being watched more closely AND that their bosses were taking a greater interest in their work.

    How do we utilize the Hawthorne Effect with our teams? I believe it all comes down to one-on-one coaching. It can be easy for a team member to feel isolated if you are only going over data from a team perspective. But, I believe that having one-on-one coaching sessions each week with each team member will give you the scheduled time to show each team member that you are interested in their work.

    A coaching session does not necessarily have to be a long meeting (20-30 minutes), but I do highly recommend holding these meetings over video chat so you can see each other’s body language and other non-verbal communication.

    You can break down your coaching sessions into four parts. First, create a few minutes to allow the team member to share their biggest victory of the week. Then, ask them what they have done to develop themselves professionally or personally that week. It could be reading a few chapters in a book or exercising four days last week. It does not matter what it is, but it is important and you can show true interest in their growth. Third, use a TodayApp coaching report to go over various activity and production metrics that are helpful for a team member’s development. We have a few template reports for sales and service team members, so please contact support if you need help in setting these up. Lastly, establish goals for the team
    member for next week and allow them to ask you any questions they may have for you that they may not feel comfortable asking in a team setting.

    3. Have an ongoing team conversation throughout the day

    This replaces public celebrations whenever someone sells something or handles a problem customer with grace in the office. You can have a group Skype message going all day to create space for this. Celebrate wins together as a team. It’s incredibly important, and you do not have to stop because everyone is in a different location. You can also use emojis to effectively communicate enthusiasm.

    I hope that you find a few of these items to be helpful.

    As always, we here at the TodayApp are here to support you. If you have any questions or if there is any way we can help you at this time, please reach out to us at support@todayapp.com​