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Team building in lockdown

In March 2019, I was one week into my new role as team lead for one of 3 core content teams, who are responsible for maintaining and developing key content on GOV.UK.

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The country went into Covid lockdown.

 

My challenge was both to get the trust of the team and to build the team, without the benefit of face-to-face meetings and relationship building.

 

What I did

It was essential to get this team working collaboratively - not least so that the new staff we hired during lockdown felt part of a team.

 

Some of the actions I took included:

  • Delegating work so that our senior content designers took on a more strategic role - for example, the task of prioritising department work requests.

  • Implementing a new stakeholder management model, to challenge and upskill all team members and get them working together on formal stakeholder relationship building.

  • Working with the other content leads and delivery managers to develop written content strategies, so that all staff were clear on what needed to be delivered.

  • Introducing regular team planning meetings, to help us collectively agree our priorities and deliverables.

  • Working with the delivery manager to offer monthly retros, to give the team a chance to air concerns, and for us - as the management team - to address them.

  • Working with the delivery manager to organise a virtual ‘away day’, which was a combination of social and work-related tasks.

  • Introducing bi-weekly virtual team meetings that focused on skill-sharing and continuous learning.

  • Setting up monitoring dashboards, to understand the throughput and the productivity levels of the team.

  • Prioritising team health - reinforcing the message that everyone's health was paramount and that if people struggled, they should take the time they needed to regroup and come back refreshed.

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The results

  • In my first 3 months, when I suggested changes to ways of working, I was routinely told that ‘this was not the way we do things’. After 3 months, the team were no longer saying this and the new format for team meetings, for example, was actively welcomed.

  • New members of the team, who joined in lockdown, reported that they felt supported and part of the team.

  • Productivity remained high.

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