Discover the transformative power of rituals in fostering workplace connections and retaining colleagues. Unearth the potential of these structured routines to create a sense of belonging, enhance productivity, and cultivate a thriving work environment.
Erica Keswin, a workplace strategist and executive coach, has investigated how companies use rituals and found that they can significantly boost collaboration and productivity.
A related consideration is how companies and teams can use rituals to raise morale and engagement, especially at a moment like now when retention and recruiting is more challenging.
- What is a ritual, and what are examples of rituals that are really effective for companies?
- There’s three parts to the definition of a ritual: a ritual is something to which we assign a certain amount of meaning and intention; it is something that typically has a regular cadence, repetition; it could be something we do every week, or once a month, or even once a year; it goes beyond its practical purpose.
Given the shift to hybrid work, how do you design a day in the office when you’re bringing your team together?
What is the goal
- Figure out what the goal is so that you can design what success looks like
- Not everything should be around drinking and happy hour
- Workplaces are where people encounter some of the greatest diversity in their lives
- If we’re not intentional about how we connect with other people, we might find ourselves back with the same kind of people
When do people feel most Allbirds-ish?
Every day at four o’clock
- You feel that sense of connection, belonging, and inclusion even if you’re not doing pushups
- People would volunteer to do pushups for the pandemic
- It was important to keep people feeling connected and remembering why they liked their colleagues
One-on-ones are critical
They’re a time suck, but they are so critical.
How do we figure out these rituals?
If you can be intentional around your rituals, around your meetings-around beginnings and endings, what I call in the book prime rituals real estate, like setting the tone in the beginning, how you end the meeting-it is possible to maintain some of that magic, even when people are remote.
- Some companies are making work flexible, or asynchronous-which means that you might not be working the exact same hours as your team. Will it be a big challenge for rituals if people are not only not in the same place but not necessarily working the same hours?
How are you really, really doing
If a manager says, ‘how are you doing?’ and you’re like, ‘does the person really care?’ you’re just often doing a box check. But say, “I’m fine.” It shifts the conversation.
Quality Relationships
Nine out of 10 people leave because of their managers
- You have to make sure that this is something that’s important starting at the top, and valued as a piece of their work
- Even the people above the managers need to realize that when you look at a pie chart, that piece of it needs to be valued and compensated
Tactical: build time for one-on-ones to check in with employees
Rituals can help with this
- One ritual is to have everyone go around the room and share one word that describes how they are showing up today
- This gives direct color commentary to the manager
- Another CEO does a similar check in where people say whether they are red light, green light, yellow light
