TINT’s experimental, monthly self-improvement program is still going strong. We’re continuing to tweak the program as we go, to encourage greater participation and increase everyone’s chances of success. Take a peek at TeamTINT’s continual efforts to improve ourselves – and to improve our self-improvement program. See Running a Marathon and Yoga, Breakfast and Bicycles to read about our first few months.
Team Tint is growing fast! When did we end up with over 20 people? In just the last few months we’ve doubled the team size, and with it we’ve added some complexities in communication. Unfortunately for the self-improvement program this lead to a downturn in successful participation.
I’ve found that the program works best when there is a lot of communication around it. People like sharing about their goals — doing so seems to keep them motivated and helps us hold each other accountable for following through. Plus, it’s fun and interesting to talk about all of the cool stuff people are learning and working towards.
Step 1 was easy. We created a Self Improvement Slack channel for daily reminders, announcements, and just anything related to the program that someone wants to share. Since our team communicates first through Slack and second through email, this made the program more visible and permanent.
Step 2 seemed more difficult. I needed a tool that would increase status updates, would make updates shareable, and would be easy to display. Then I realized that our own product solved all of this for us.
Each month, I create a hashtag specific to our program (like #TINTresolutions or #JanImprovements) and ask teammates participating in the program to post a picture of themselves doing their improvement to social media at least once a week. I then put the Tint up on our screens in the office to serve as a constant reminder and conversation starter. It’s a great way for people to share their progress and achievements.
We’ve also been including additional hashtags to designate which week of the month this status update is for to easily be able to filter, e.g. #week1. Now using search to filter by person or week is super easy. With filtering we can even show only the current week’s posts.
Internally we’re finally venturing into the growing field of Employee Generated Content (EGC). So far we love it. Not only is it a great excuse and opportunity for us to use our own product, but it really has improved engagement in the Self Improvement program and office morale in general!
So without further ado, here’s our posts about what we’ve been working on in January:
