(upbeat electric music)
- So welcome back to another episode here.
Here with John and today we are talking about
investing into your team
and how we invest into our team here at TeamGantt,
specifically our team being remote
so what we do specifically
to invest in our remote team.
- Yeah and I think some of this will apply
to teams that aren't remote as well.
- Yeah.
So John, why is it that we talk about investing in Team
and why is that so important?
- Well I think the cost
of hiring someone is great right?
So it's much easier and much better
to retain people than it is
to be constantly looking for people.
So you know I think there's that aspect of it
but then I think too sort of more on the personal end,
the relationship end, at the end of the day work is work
you know and we want to be able to create environments,
create spaces where people can get
to know each other sort of outside of work.
And I think that the relationships
that they are able to build
in those moments outside of work
really pay dividends in work at work.
- Yes, yes,
'cause if we don't get face time and we're just going over
Slack to each other or emailing back and forth
you never get a chance to interact.
So what what do we do to handle that?
- One of the biggest things we do
is we have meetups.
So meetups are a great opportunity
for your team to get to know each other
especially if you're remote.
If you're not a remote
maybe this is just a company sponsored event
that you do every couple of months or something
so you know like most companies,
TeamGantt we're 20 people
but we're broken into smaller teams.
And with us we're also dispersed across the country
so we try to have the smaller teams meet up
on a semi regular basis.
On the dev side I think we meet the most often
and we'll do once per quarter
and we normally try to pick a city near where
another dev already lives
so what that does is
it sort of make travel a little simpler
and then also make sure we always have a dev
on the clock.
We're not all up in the air if something happens.
So a little forethought there.
But basically once we get to the meetups
we either do hotels or we'll get like a big house
that has enough rooms for everyone
and then we've got a week planned out,
we've got some work goals
but at the end of the day
the main goal, the main vision of that week
is really just to build a unity you know
a cohesion amongst the team.
- So what you guys do
to build unity amongst the team
is actually more important than the work
that you're getting done.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- Why do you think that is?
- Because these are people you're working with everyday.
You know, you work everyday
we have essentially four weeks out of the year
where we actually get to see each other in person
and those weeks they're not even full weeks,
so it's an opportunity to say hey you know what?
I don't don't see you all the time.
We're not actually physically in the same state
all the time so it's just a great opportunity
to build relationships, to build trust,
and that'll carry through into work
- Yeah, yeah.
So what kind of fun things do you do on the meetup?
Like how do you,
'cause you know if you don't wanna just work the whole time,
what are just some of the fun things we've done?
- Well I think for a start
you actually have to plan fun things,
you can't just expect fun things to happen.
- That's true.
- So we'll plan out...
We've done escape rooms, we've gone fishing a few time,
we've gone to baseball games,
we've done a go kart racing thing where we rented out
a racing facility for like the afternoon.
- Trampoline places.
- We've gone trampoline places.
- Customer Success is actually doing a meetup right now.
- Yeah. - In where, Florida right?
- In Florida, yeah,
- And I just saw pictures of them jumping off of boats.
- Yeah, totally!
- And fishing and doing stuff, so yeah.
Skiing, people went skiing out in Oregon.
- Yeah, so it's all just events designed around
just kind of building a friendship, building a community.
- And that really lasts.
Like once you do that and by the time we spend a week
together or three or four days together,
that lasts for a good six months or a year
where you just know those people so much
you've gone through fishing,
you've gone through these experiences
where you've kind of
you know you've broken those work boundaries
and you've more of become friends
and that changes everything
when you work with each other.
- Absolutely, yeah I think when you learn how somebody
is outside of work, not only does that sort of carry in
into work on a relationship level
but you also learn how they work,
you learn how they tick, how they think.
So you learn to work better with them.
- And not only do we do like these team meetups
but every year, once a year we do a company meetup.
- Yes, so we're a remote company.
We're in I don't know how many states,
12, 13 states, something like that.
So Baltimore or Maryland is our home
so once per year the whole company comes
to Maryland and to Baltimore sort of specifically
and we'll have a week just like the smaller meetups
where it's dedicated to just getting to know each other
you know, building those relationships
and we'll have some work goals as well.
One time we did a Hackathon where we tried
to build a product from nothing to something
so we made this cool a little to-do list
we never really did anything with it after the meetup
but it was neat in that we had design, development,
and then even some of the idea process behind it
but all happening at the same time
and we're all in the same room.
We had a couple whiteboards, like it was just kind of a fun
event just to kind of be everyone working on the same thing
towards the same goal
and then it was cool I mean we spent
probably three days on it
maybe not even three full days
and at the end we had something that was usable.
- Yeah and then even the last meetup
I think we did the project health report.
- Yes.
- And that was all just
over the course of a couple of days
and we put that together
and we were all working together
and collaborating on that it was a fun time.
- Yeah so the project health report
if you're not familiar with it,
it's a very high level view of your project
and it just kind of lets you know
hey how is my project tracking?
Is it green?
Which means you're on pace.
Is it yellow?
Which means you're a little behind.
Or is it red?
which means you're way behind.
So it's just a great high level view of all your projects.
- Yeah, and that was a great thing.
We do have the fun, we've got a meetup coming up this year
and actually this one, the one we do this year,
this has been started a tradition
of every two years we do a whole family meetup
and we do that family meetup
because I think it's kind of weird
if maybe people in your family
never get to meet your coworkers
so we actually fly all the families in,
everybody that wants to come,
and it's every two years.
Kids get to come, spouses get to come,
and it's a chance for everyone to kind of hang out
Cookouts and whiffle ball and just having fun together.
- Yeah, it's one big party, it's one big fun.
- Yep, yep.
So the meetups are the big thing.
- Yes
- But what else do we do to invest in the team?
- I think one thing is you be into what their into, right?
So it doesn't mean you have to have the same hobbies
even though a lot of us I think are into similar things.
We have a conference budget that we give everyone
in the company, so what it is is that we give them
the finances and the time off to be able to go a conference
about something that they're interested in.
The only sort of catch is it's gotta be
somewhat beneficial to the company.
(laughing)
But basically we give them the time.
So let's say they go away,
they're out for three days,
we make that work with our schedules,
but at the end of the day when they come back
they're super excited about the things they've learned,
they're super grateful to the company
in allowing them to grow themselves
and I think from the company end too
we're able to take that knowledge and that excitement
and apply it to the product.
So at the end of the day it's a small investment
of a couple of days and some money
to make the event, the travel, happen
but it pays off dividends in the long run.
- Yeah it does, it does,
and they make connections and meet other people
and they get excited and that is super valuable.
So what else?
What other things do we do?
- So I think one of my favorite ones is missions time off.
So it's this unique perk that we have
where if there's a charity or there's a non profit
or there's some sort of organization
that someone within the team wants to serve in or at,
we've got a couple of people that
they do a lot of great work in third world countries
so what we do is we say hey you know
the time you take off to go do these things
we want to match that,
we want to be in on that with you.
So we'll basically match whatever PTO days they take off,
we'll match that with MTO time basically
so what that does is if they're gone for four days
we put up two days of missions time off,
they only put up two days of PTO.
- Yeah, so that way we don't hold them back
and they're not thinking,
'cause then they probably wanna do a little more
with their life, I mean TeamGantt's great
but there's other things they might wanna do
or goals or ways they wanna serve people
but we don't want them to feel like oh my gosh
I don't wanna use my only vacation time for that
and that way they can still do some other things
and accomplish some more of what they want to do in life.
So yeah, it is great.
All right, and then another thing is just kind of
what we talked about in a previous video
but the half day Fridays.
Making sure that everyone has a good work-life balance
because that's important.
We don't want anybody to feel overworked.
We want to make sure that they do that good work-life
balance and that's a big thing in retaining people,
keeping people happy, and keeping them around a lot.
- And we have the health and wellness budget
so that's a budget that we give everyone per month
that's just gym memberships, healthier food
just sort of however they need to do it
and just building themselves up to be healthier people.
- Yeah, yeah, and then also the office budgets.
So basically whatever anyone needs to get their job done
they can basically pick out whatever computer they want,
we give everybody money for a desk, chair,
everything that you would have in a home
that you want to be set up and comfortable
and be able to do your job well
and I think everybody enjoys
picking out a new computer computer, that's fun.
- Yeah and for devs we like keyboards
so it's nice having some browns to type on so.
- Developers have fancy keyboards.
- Yeah, they're nice.
- Well cool, I think that wraps it up for what we do.
Those are just some of the things we do
to invest in the team
and hopefully it just gives you a few ideas
of ways to invest in your team
and really trying to find ways to keep the morale up
and keep your team around for a long time
especially if you have good people.
We're so blessed and thankful
to have an amazing group of people here at this company
and we want to make sure
that everybody stays happy here
and there is a lot of inspiration from this
that you can take away.
So have a great day, great weekend
and we'll talk to you again later, bye-bye!