Help! People stay in my team too long
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Stability in a team is a fantastic thing, but there have probably been times where you’ve wanted a little less stability! After all, having people in the same role doing the same things for a long time can lead to the workplace feeling stale and humdrum, which can hinder performance. And for some managers the immediate temptation is to try and replace those team members.
Ultimately it may be necessary to switch some of the team around – but there are other things you might want to do with them first.
Chances are, these team members have long service and have shown great loyalty to the organisation. And that means they deserve support and motivation to help them maintain and even increase performance levels.
So rather than thinking about shaking things up, what could you do to help them?
- Keep them flexible and fit for change. Their role will be in danger if they become resistant to change or don’t meet the organisation’s ever increasing performance standards and targets. People who haven’t learned anything new for 10 years are likely to get all their change in one lump – and it could be called redundancy. So while they may not want lots of development, and prefer to keep to their routine, it is vital to keep drip-feeding change to them and encouraging them to do small things differently. This will keep them supple and prepared for inevitable developments within the organisation. A great way to do this is setting a team objective that everyone has to do at least one new thing every week. Or perhaps you can ask everyone to spend half a day working on another person’s normal tasks.
- Keep development informal. Obvious formal development may well be off-putting to some of your team members. For example, they may resist going on training programmes. Instead focus your efforts to develop them on workplace learning. Try to give them small stretch activities, get them to train each other, or – if you’re feeling brave – let them shadow you for a day! Put a standard item on the end of all of your meetings – Learning Opportunities – and ask “What have we discussed today that could provide a learning opportunity for someone in the team?”
- Keep things fun. If you consider why low-ambition people are still there in your team, it’s often because they just want to earn enough money to survive or, even more importantly, just to enjoy the fun and camaraderie of work. Encourage that! Happiness at work impacts performance, so give them some targets with informal prizes and encourage the team to organise work socials – perhaps even fuel some friendly competitions with other similar teams. Remember that it’s not just you entertaining the troops – think about sharing the responsibility by brainstorming ideas in the team, or everyone taking a turn to organise something small and fun.
- Keep giving praise. They will really appreciate it, but if you want to target specific praise – reserve some of your most effusive recognition for people who are delivering higher performance. Make sure to give detailed praise saying exactly what you liked and why it was helpful. Create an environment where people start to aspire to gain praise and recognition through higher performance.
Sometimes you need to remove people or restructure the team. But if you have some low-ambition, long service team members, surely the best first step is to try to motivate this loyal workforce?