Blue Monday? Give the power to your people for a happy workplace

Everything at AND Digital is about “building together”. Whether it is brainstorming sessions, using post its or using magic boards we are frequently being asked to discuss how we could improve the way we do things, or how we could innovate to do something differently, which improves happiness and engagement.

A couple of months ago we were all invited during a “Club Day” to provide ideas and discuss what makes a great company, and what we could do to ensure we were named ‘a best place to work for’. A few weeks later, we were asked by our “Chief Happiness Officer” during a “digital detox” day, how we could improve our ANDi’s happiness, during their entire working life with us, from their first steps in the company to the moment they become an alumni. By giving the power to the people both of these idea generation sessions led to excellent engagement and innovation, plus many of the ideas were put in place soon after.

Something I have been directly involved in is that we have been developing a new structured and detailed competency model, performance review and progression processes for the Squads. The entire company has been involved in several working sessions, and we’ve used different techniques to ensure we included everyone, such as open forums, small working groups with volunteers, one to ones, paper walls and post-its left in the open space, slack channels and more.

A final example is how ANDis are invited to participate in creating new trainings’ content, through crowd sourcing their ideas in organised sessions. This Monday we had a “lunch and learn” session to help building a dedicated training programme for aspiring leaders. As well as brainstorming about the trainings content, we are invited to propose new trainings topics. For example, several non-technical ANDis have requested a training to learn “how to code in a day”. It will be run next week as a the result of this initiative.

This strong participative and collaborative culture is really in AND Digital’s DNA, not only because it is still a relatively small company, so involving the wider business is easier than in 500+ groups, but because ANDi’s happiness is at the centre of all decisions and giving the power to the people definitely ensures that. This is something that I have not seen anywhere else.

Written by Sandra Falque, a Professionalising Digital Consultant at AND Digital

www.and.digital