How to use rituals to connect with work and retain colleagues
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
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