teamecho settings - best practices

How do you optimize teamecho for your company? You can find some of our customers' best practices regarding the settings in the tool here.

Team structure

Teams with less than 5 team members

We generally recommend creating teams with up to 8 people - ideally teams with more than 10 people. This way, you can guarantee sufficien perceived anonymity among team members and keep engagement high.

However, many companies have teams with fewer team members. There are two ways to best represent small teams in teamecho.

Option 1: Integrate small teams into a large team

In order to make team members feel anonymous, some companies have merged small teams into a large one or integrated a small team into a different, larger team. The following characteristics of teams are favorable for such integration:

• The teams have similar activity profiles (e.g., accounting and controlling).
• The teams have similar content orientations (e.g., accounting and IT are both internal services).

The following procedures of teamecho Admins in dealing with small teams have already proven successful:

• Consult with managers beforehand: It is very important that managers in particular are well prepared for such a merger. Above all, you should clarify in advance how best to interpret the results together (such as questions about the direct manager)

• Communicate that teams will be merged: Team members should also be told in advance that they will be merged with another team or integrated into a larger one. This will help prevent any confusion.

• Explain why teams are being merged: Team members and managers should know why their teams are being merged. Here you can especially refer to the anonymity.

Tip: Merging teams also creates interesting synergies for many customers. By having managers interpret the results together, cross-team collaboration is optimized and new ideas for joint projects emerge

Option 2: Keep small teams

Of course you can also keep small teams. However, keep in mind that a low number of team members can significantly reduce the perceived anonymity of the team members.

Therefore, you need to introduce small teams to teamecho together with the manager in order to keep the commitment high in the long run. It is especially important that you define exactly when the results will be evaluated and how the results will be looked at. This way you can eliminate possible fears due to the low anonymity level in advance.

Changing teams and departments

With growth or even changes in goals, teams may need to be changed or combined into departments. For example, it may become necessary to split teams into two teams or to merge them. Or teams may be merged into departments to generate strategically relevant insights at the department level.

Team members as well as managers will receive notifications when you assign them to new teams or departments. When making changes to teams or departments, it is very important to communicate any changes to the teams in advance to avoid potential confusion!

"How do I recreate my organizational structure?"

Survey interval

The survey interval determines how much feedback flows into the team. The interval should therefore match the work and meeting rhythm of employees and managers. Teams should not be overwhelmed with too much feedback.

Fast communication - short interval

A company has a high communication speed: Every Tuesday, everyone in the team meets and does a preview of the week ahead. Therefore, the team chooses a weekly interval for the survey and discusses the questions and comments.

Quick, direct responses in teams, summary response at meeting.

Another company has a larger meeting with the employees* 1x per month. However, management sets a bi-weekly interval because current challenges should be quickly identified and addressed by direct managers. At the monthly meeting, cross-team issues are then addressed and commented on by the management or HRM. This also always leaves enough time to coordinate with the team leads.

🤓 Read more here: How do I discuss the results in my team?

Visibilities

For visibility settings you should make sure that the transparency level is compatible with the culture of the organization. We generally recommend that survey results are visible to team members and managers, as well as comments from the teams in which they are deposited.

Venturing transparency beyond one's own team boundaries can be risky for a number of reasons. An interpretation of the results and comments makes most sense in the direct work context.

If, for example, the results of all teams are released to team members and team management, this can lead to misunderstandings, as the results and comments are read without the direct context. This can lead to very escalating discussions that are difficult for upper management to keep under control.