In a previous job, following a company merger, two web engineering departments were smashed together from two former companies; two varying sets of personalities, two sets of traditions. The head of the department was from the other company, so we didn’t know much about them but there was high anticipation of the joining of two teams.
It was clear that it wasn’t going to be a smooth transition - I heard rumblings from people I line-managed that they were unhappy with some things they had heard on the grapevine. Primarily, one new requirement was performing a mandatory presentation in front of the entire practice - no exceptions. This troubled a lot of the team, particularly some neurodivergent team members and introverted people who simply can’t talk in front of other people. When it was first announced, every one of my reportees directly messaged me with their concerns. Finding something unique to talk about was difficult enough, let alone be judged by other people, some far more experienced than others. It just wasn’t going to work.
We had a weekly practice meeting, it wasn’t mandatory but out of almost 30 people, only 3 or 4 people showed up every week. Sometimes even less! The dedicated slack channel was non-existent, once in a while someone would post a link to barely any reactions or discussions from the team, usually zero for both.
A few months later and a restructure within the business was implemented; the team size was reduced and I was to be part of a new leadership team of the department. My first task: to fix the largely negative yet non-existent team culture. We had our own moodbot that asked people on Slack how they are feeling at work, in terms of happiness. Unsurprisingly, Web was consistently at the very bottom of all engineering departments, it was clear that people in the team were not happy.
Scrapping some unpopular decisions
First things, first. The mandatory presentation requirement was scrapped, at least the mandatory part was. The relief in the team was apparent, everyone was immediately lifted by this change. This was due to several factors, including anxiety from presenting, time pressures from project commitments and contributing became flexible outside of presentations. People can still do presentations if they want to, and would still be encouraged to do so as part of their career progression, but it was no longer an obligation. Besides, there were plenty of other ways to contribute to the practice in meaningful ways, such as blogging or sharing content via Slack.
Re-introducing everyone
Following the still-fairly-recent merge, the team behaved like they were all strangers - because they were! Part of the low engagement was purely driven by not knowing the other people they are engaging with. So starting with the first few weekly practice meetings, almost everyone showed up to introduce themselves to the rest of the practice. Who were they? What are their interests?
This change was a revelation; the following weeks, engagement in the slack channel increased, a consistently high attendance to the weekly meetings endured, moodbot was steadily climbing up the charts.
Soft-launching back-to-office
Following the shift to remote work in 2020, office attendance was very low. To begin with, I was the only person to physically go into the Manchester city centre office out of my department. This was linked to the low engagement issues we previously had; why would someone go into the office and sit with people they don’t even know? Well, suddenly people did know each other.
After a few weeks I proposed something different, that on every Thursday the entire practice should go into the office. We all go out for lunch from our office, then do our practice meetings in-person. At first I was skeptical it would work and it was, of course, not mandatory. But suddenly the entire Manchester team was coming into the office every single week. Once people actually knew each other, the office stopped feeling like a room full of strangers and started feeling like a team environment that people wanted to be part of. There were similar results throughout the country too, even remote workers would come in occasionally. The team, having not been integrated at all previously, was now completely integrated on a geographical level. Moodbot was almost number one in a matter of weeks.
Restructured practice meetings
Following on from the cancellation of the mandatory presentations, we needed a new format for our practice sessions. It needed to be fresh and engaging: people had to want to attend, without it being laborious. So, the final idea was to rotate each session: we’d open every session with any news or announcements, followed by a different format every week.
The first session of the month would be something I named ‘Question Time’, after the political tv show (the format also happened to be very derivative of that show). I created a postbox form, people could submit their own questions to pose to the rest of the group and each session I would pick 2 or 3 questions and ask the group what people thought. What is a feature of JavaScript people don’t use enough? What technologies are you considering dropping? Tabs vs spaces, etc…
Next up was a simple show and tell - what cool things have you seen in the wild? Have you been working on any side projects?
The third session was a slot for people to present on a topic if they wished, but a key difference was to split this session into mini-presentations that were a lot more relaxed. It was more of a tech-demo than a presentation and surprisingly, more people volunteered now, knowing that it was a low-key affair and they knew who they were talking to.
The final session was what I called the ‘wildcard’; basically, we’d do whatever we feel like doing. Have a chat, play a game - it was a purely social affair to keep the team bonded. And it worked!
Conclusion
Within the space of a few weeks, our department went from dead last to dead first. By a long way. People from other teams were asking me what the secret was, because they had similar issues.
Over time, the formats were experimented with but we kept going back to the old favourites that always remained popular. Attendance remained consistently high, so obviously it was popular with the team. We even had an inter-office meetup in London, the first one in many years.
This remains something I’m still very proud of, to create something from nothing like that. Sometimes all it takes is a few little tweaks, but at the end of the day, it’s the people that make the culture.
