You survived January and the month of planning. This month is all about your team and helping them to work better together. Use our culture calendar and weekly focus below to cement working relationships and break down silos between departments.
Week 1: Learning Together with Blinkist
1 - 7 February
Blinkist is a free perk - if this doesn't appear under your Free Perks, you can upgrade your Perks package to include Blinkist free for all employees. Please speak to your CSM. Alternatively, you can save up to 50% off Premium annual subscription on your current package.
Blinkist gives you access to thousands of non-fiction books and condenses it into 15 minutes snippets - designed to help you read something new speedily!
People's learning capacity and interest varies so it's great to bring those differences together into a Blinkist Book Club, creating a rich environment for team members to learn from each other and giving them an opportunity to learn something they may not be interested before. It also has the added benefit of bringing the team together (even for remote teams).
This club is great to run in small sessions or individual teams, or you may want to open it up to bring cross-department teams interacting more with each other. Read our blog on how to run a Blinkist Book Club.
Admin to-do list:
Send an invitation to the team for your Blinkist Book Club. You might want to set a few different sessions so everyone in the team can join.
Here's an email you can send to invite people to this awesome club. Poster to attach to this email: Blinkist
Hi everyone,
Let's learn together with Blinkist. Blinkist is one of your free perks from Perkbox - it's an app that takes thousands of nonfiction books and breaks them down 15 minutes 'blinks' or snippets.
Regardless of genre, reading is a great way to relax, reduce stress, broaden your insights and learn new things that will equip you with the knowledge you need in order to thrive in many environments. There is such a strong correlation between success in the business world and reading.
This month's Blinks is called The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni.
If you're interested to join, accept the calendar invite with Zoom details that's coming your way soon.
See you there!
<sender's name>
Week 2: Celebrating Culture & Diversity
8 - 14 February
There are a couple of big days this week - Lunar New Year on 12 Feb and Valentine's Day on 14 Feb.
Valentine's Day may traditionally be a love day between couples, however, it's also a great opportunity to celebrate teamwork.
Lunar New Year is a the biggest festival for many Asian-background employees. In China, this would be the festival they take long holidays for (not Christmas). It runs for 15 days and would be a great way to celebrate diversity in your organisation. This year we're celebrating the Year of the Ox. If you're interested, read more about it and your prospect for the Year of the Ox.
Admin to-do list:
Implement a Recognition Power Hour - set aside an hour (or however long you want) in the day and encourage everyone to jump on the platform and send words of appreciation to all their teammates to celebrate Valentine's Week. We recommend you do this once a month so people can dedicate time to do this.
Here's an email you can send to the team. LVLY poster to attach to the email. Video on Recognition.
Hi everyone,
Valentine's Day may traditionally be a love day between couples, however, it's also a great opportunity to celebrate teamwork.
To celebrate, it's tools down on Tue 7 Feb from 3-4pm. During this hour, we encourage you to stop work, jump on the Perkbox Recognition platform and spend that time writing thank you notes to your team mates. Here's a quick video on how to recognise someone: https://vimeo.com/364169434/9296df6aae
If you're also wanting to get some great discounts for Valentine's gift, check out LVLY from Perkbox and get 15% off.
Have fun!
Cheers,
<sender's name>
Organise a team lunch via Menulog, do a Lunar New Year based trivia and rally your employees who celebrate this to help you.
Traditionally, Lunar New Year is also the festival where older generations give children red pockets as a token of luck for the year ahead. You can reward your employees with $5 coffee credit from Hey You or $5 pizza from Domino's Pizza. Here's how to give a reward.
Week 3: Team building
15 - 21 February
This week is about bringing the team together to help them work better together.
Admin to-do list:
Pair up your team members to have coffee (even a virtual meet up!). Set aside a small budget and organise this via the Hey You coffee reward. Even better if they don't normally interact with each other. Don't be afraid to task People Leaders or Department Heads to help you with this. Here's an email to share with the team.
Hi everyone,
We want to break down silos and encourage better communication between you all.
To help with this, you're going to see a calendar invite for a coffee meet-up with one of your team mates. The idea is for you both to get to know each other a bit better.
We'll also be giving you a free coffee via Perkbox. On your app, go to Recognition > My Recognition (bottom left hand corner) > My Reward > Hey You Voucher
Chat away,
<sender's name>
Run a poll: Who is the most supportive team member? Who is selfless to a fault, always putting the team first and lifting everyone up? Here's a quick reminder on how to create a poll. For more ideas on polls, check out our 52 poll ideas.
Organise Friday Drinks to encourage interactions between all team members. If you're still working remotely, organise some Jimmy Bring's delivery from Perkbox and chat over Zoom.
Week 4: Breakout space
22 - 28 February
Admin to-do list:
Physical space can encourage or discourage collaboration. Take a look around the office and see if they're conducive for your team to work together. Adding breakout tables where people can gather and have impromptu catch-ups is a good start. Here's an article if you want to read more about collaborative space.
Run a poll: King / Queen of <company values>. Choose one of your company values and run this poll - this helps to bring your company values to life. Recognition is a habit loop - the more you recognise your team for those good behaviours you want them to demonstrate, the more they will do it because they crave that positive affirmation. Here's a quick reminder on how to create a poll and here's how to add a reward to the poll winner.