Rebuilding your team to get back to business

Whilst some businesses haven’t stopped working, others who had to stop are now beginning to bring their teams back together – either remotely or with social distancing in place. In some businesses there’s been a mix of people put on furlough or working from home. 

 

It’s important that we take time to reconnect, reenergise and reengage people who may have been out of the business and unable to work for a number of weeks. They may need to be refocused so they are ready to relaunch, replan, restart and get back to business. 

 

These teams could be at any level in the business. It could be the senior management team, established work or project teams, supervisors and team leaders or all the employees in a small business. 

 

This checklist is a summary of a process to help your teams improve their capability, productivity and delivery by becoming more efficient and effective as a team and improving how the business works. In turn, this should help to deliver improved business or organisational performance. 

 

 

Work through these steps as you bring your team back together. 

 

 

Depending on the situation your business has been in, it could feel like you’re forming a new team again. Consider using some icebreaker or energiser questions and activities to help team members to reconnect. 

 

• What new skills have you learnt during lockdown? 

• Share something new that you’ve done. 

• Where will your first break or holiday be when this is over? 

• What are your book, music, TV, film or box set recommendations that you’ve discovered? 

• What new Apps have you discovered? 

• What’s the story behind the most recent photo on your phone? 

 

 

You need to recognise and acknowledge what people (including yourself) have been through, and may continue to go through. Review what’s happened over the past few weeks. Help your team to reflect on their experiences by using some of these questions as prompts. 

 

• How do you feel about returning to work? 

• What concerns do you have? 

• What’s changed for you as an individual? 

• What are you looking forward to? 

• What’s changed for us as a team? 

• How has the experience affected us? 

• What have you learned from the experience? 

• What positives are there that we can build on? 

• What do we want to take forward? 

 

 

Help team members to refocus on what they need to work on and encourage them to engage with those areas of focus and each other. Create opportunities for people to work together on projects or tasks. Work through some of these questions as a team. 

 

• What does being a member of this team mean to me? 

• How does being part of this team benefit me from a personal and career perspective? 

• What do we do really well and how can we learn from it and do more of it? 

• What do we want to be different in how we operate as a team? 

• What do we want to be different from a broader business perspective? 

• What new ideas do we have to make things better than they were previously? 

• What opportunities have been created by what we’ve been through? 

• Has our focus changed as a result of the past few months? If so, how? 

 

 

Prioritise the team’s new ideas and activities and put together a plan to deliver them. Use these prompt questions. 

 

• What are our top five business priorities from a team perspective now? 

• What are our top five people priorities from a team perspective now? 

• What barriers might stop us achieving our priorities? 

• How can we overcome those barriers? 

• What do we need to do to deliver the priorities we’ve identified? 

• How do I contribute to achieving the priorities as a member of this team? 

• What resources do we need? 

• What are the timescales to deliver our priorities? 

 

 

You’re now in a position to relaunch the team and its activities and rebuild the business. Consider these questions. 

 

• Who needs to know what we’re doing? 

• How are we going to communicate what we’re focusing on? 

• How will we measure our progress? 

• How will we report our progress? 

• How will we keep all the team members informed? 

• How will we keep up our momentum? 

 

 

Contact me to help you rebuild your team and grow your business. 

 

 

©2023 AWD Development Solutions Ltd