Onboarding excellence: How a customer set the benchmark for successfully launching Teamgage

Discover how a leading Fortune 500 company was able to set the benchmark for rolling out Teamgage.

3 simple phases for launch

After a thorough selection process, this company had chosen Teamgage and their key stakeholders were excited to get going. For that to happen, we needed a robust plan.

What happened next was a perfect example of launching Teamgage using our recommended 3 phases – Alignment, Implementation and Enablement.

“One thing we made clear to Teamgage right at the start was that we're busy. We can’t be dedicating lots of time and personnel to setting this up for the next 30 weeks. But for the next 30 days, tell us who you need and what you need, and we’ll make it happen.”

Here at Teamgage, we believe this simple commitment was one of the key reasons this company set themselves up for success. It set the tone to us and all key stakeholders that this was important and that a set amount of time would be dedicated to getting the foundations right.

It's worth noting that those key stakeholders included the Senior Leadership team, who continued to push the strategic importance of Teamgage to the business throughout onboarding. This even came down to ensuring that Teamgage results were included as part of team leader performance reviews, so team feedback was actioned.

Phase 1 of 3 - Alignment

This is where Teamgage made sure we really understood the goals and business priorities of this company.

Goals

Very early on, this company was able to come to an agreement on:

• Why they were using Teamgage, cementing the conversations that had taken place during the selection process
• What outcomes they were looking to achieve in the short and long term
• What specific key KPIs they expected Teamgage to impact

“Gaining clarity here early allowed us to create alignment within our Senior Leadership team, a desire to regularly discuss the Teamgage results and to monitor and share the impact made to our KPIs.”

Metrics

These are the questions that people are asked when they make their Teamgage submission and what each team would then discuss and improve over time, so everyone knew it was important to take the time to get these right.

Using the information learned during the previous phase allowed the Teamgage team to provide a list of recommended metrics based on Teamgage best practice.

This company then worked with us to:

• Rewrite each question in their own tone of voice (no cookie cutter questions here!)
• Make each question relevant and actionable by their own teams
• Ensure each question would help team’s achieve their goals and KPIs
• Refine with input from a small number of senior stakeholders

“A few months after we launched Teamgage, we found that one of our metrics wasn’t quite hitting the mark. We were able to go in and update the wording so it was more specific to what we wanted to achieve.”

Remember if a metric isn’t delivering value or is no longer a priority, it can be easily updated to ensure teams maintain their engagement. 

Phase 2 of 3 - Implementation

Using everything we had learned in phase 1, allowed us to then help this company configure Teamgage to meet their goals!

Dedicated personnel within the company were asked to be:

• A comms lead
• An IT lead
• Teamgage administrators

With these dedicated personnel available, we were able to check off:

• The task of uploading their user data with the correct team configuration and hierarchy
• Confirmation that teams would submit into Teamgage on a fortnightly basis and a commitment to share results with team members
• All platform setup and training

“Having an internal point of contact to get the right HR data to Teamgage was critical. Teamgage then analysed what we had, supplied us with options and a recommended approach unique to us, based on our data and internal processes.”  

Phase 3 of 3 - Enablement

This was the exciting part right before launch, where we made sure everyone was clear about all things Teamgage, with clear guidance and expectations set before launch!

The primary way this was achieved was through an internal comms strategy created by the company, which was developed with Teamgage recommendations and resources:

• An Executive/Stakeholder briefing was held to confirm again what the expectations and outcomes were for Teamgage
• Leader briefing sessions were held to let leaders know more about Teamgage
• A fantastic CEO video message was sent to all staff letting them know about Teamgage and why their insights and involvement was so important

“Our teams using Teamgage were located across various time zones. This meant it wasn’t feasible for our CEO to introduce this to everyone at the same time. Although HR could have stepped in to present this locally, we felt that Teamgage was of such a strategic importance that our CEO had to be involved. This is why a CEO video message was sent instead. This allowed her to clearly outline not only the expectations, but the benefits of this process too.”

It was at the team leader level where most communication was deployed by this company, as leaders needed to understand why team results would be shared with team members.

At first this was an uncomfortable idea and some resistance and nervousness was detected. This was allayed through:

• Writing bespoke team leader prompts, which displayed within the team’s Teamgage results and helped leaders have the right kind of conversations with their teams
• The promotion of the weekly drop-in Teamgage leader training, which is always open to all leaders to join online
• Reassurance that trust and engagement builds in Teamgage over time with some truly beneficial results

For example, in our own Teamgage analysis across thousands of teams, those that talk about and improve team results as a team gain 73% higher feedback participation; 24.2% lower staff turnover; 15.2% more positive comments; 12.6% more positive employee sentiment; 13x more improvement actions and 4.7x higher improvement!

These stats show why it's so important to launch Teamgage well, so everyone not only understands their role, but the huge benefits to the process too.

And remember! Our amazing Customer Support team are always here to help.