5 simple questions to measure team health and satisfaction
In November 2022 our Development Leadership Team (DLT) started asking our teams to let us know about Team Health and Satisfaction via monthly surveys, to enable Engineering Managers (EMs), Coaches and Tech Leads (TLs) to look out for, and act on, any problems in teams or trends across teams, and better support our teams.
We wanted to keep it short to ensure that people would take the time to fill it in, so after some trial and error, we decided on just 5 facets of team health and satisfaction:
The 5 facets:
1. I feel able to able to bring up concerns and tough issues in this team
2. I would recommend working on this team to others
3. I am satisfied with my personal development in this team
4. I am satisfied with the amount of flow that I am able to achieve as an individual
5. I am satisfied with the amount of flow that we are able to achieve as a team
We used the Likert Scale, a rating system to measure attitudes, perceptions and opinions, and, as we wanted people to answer honestly, we kept the survey anonymous.
The number of responses has been consistently good, with a survey sample averaging 69% of people across the engineering group.
With five surveys done we want to share what we have found and how we’re using the data.
Statement 1 “I feel able to bring up concerns and tough issues in this team”
This statement measures team psychological safety. Psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished for speaking up in your team. Dr Amy Edmonson’s research on the subject demonstrates that psychological safety is one of the most important aspects of high team performance.
As an organisation we can be proud of our achievement here, with an average of 95% people responding positively (agree or strongly agree) and just 0.84 % of people responding negatively (disagree or strongly disagree) over the five surveys. We’re confident, therefore that we have a high level of psychological safety in our teams. Those who scored negatively were scattered across different teams, so there isn’t a single team with a specific problem.
Predictably, the scores dipped a little in February following our annual deliberate reteaming, with 3.1% strongly disagreeing with the statement, but we expect it to take a short while for teams to re-establish safety after this event, particularly those with new team members. And, as we’d hoped, 0% of respondents disagreed with the statement in March, so we were confident that teams were taking care of this. They didn’t need support from the leadership team in this area and EMs could use the data to see which teams may have (unnamed) individuals that need some extra support to feel safe.
Statement 2 “I would recommend working on this team to other engineers”
This statement aims to temperature-check overall satisfaction in a team, in the same way the Net Promoter Score measures overall customer experience with a single measure.
The November and December data pointed the DLT to a team that was scoring negatively on this facet. This backed up what we already knew and felt about dissatisfaction in this team and confirmed that our plan to reorganise the team was appropriate.
In February we identified a team that most of its’ members wouldn’t recommend. They reached a low of 20% of the team responding positively in February. We had to act to turn this around, to make working in that team a better place, and to reduce the risk of people leaving. The team is now receiving support from their Tech Lead, Engineering Manager and a Coach to understand and address the sources of dissatisfaction. The great news is that 83% of the team agreed that they would recommend working in that team in the April survey!
Across Engineering as a whole, over the five surveys, most people agreed with this statement, indicating high levels of satisfaction, but in November 9.2% of those surveyed told us that they wouldn’t recommend their team to others. In December this number decreased to 5.6% (meaning people were more likely to recommend) but bounced up to 12.6% at the end of February, suggesting that a significant number of people were less satisfied with their teams immediately after Reteaming. Once the new teams had a chance to settle in, however, we saw dissatisfaction lower to just 1.3 % in April, with 88.6% agreeing or strongly agreeing that they would recommend their team, and 10.1 % remaining neutral.
We will continue to monitor this to look for other patterns, then act based on what we find, for example, we may want to look at why satisfaction dips in any given month, if that emerges as a pattern.
Statement 3 “I am satisfied with my personal development in this team”
Redgate strongly believes that personal development makes our people happier and smarter. Initiatives such as 10% personal development time, our Personal Development Plan (PDP) Canvas, Progression Framework and annual ‘Level Up’ internal conference are all designed to support individuals in making the most of their personal development. However, sometimes we feel less able or willing to take the time we should, whether that’s because of external pressure to deliver features, or personal preference to ‘just get stuff done’.
Across the 5 surveys, between 80 and 87% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement; just 1.5% to 6.1% disagreed or strongly disagreed, and the rest were neutral. We’re really pleased to see that, overall, things are working as they should be, and that people are satisfied with their personal development within their team.
Saying that, a handful of teams had temporary lower levels of satisfaction with this facet at one or more data points. With the exception of one team however, sources of dissatisfaction appear to have either been addressed from within the team or with team moves at reteaming.
The team that showed the highest level of dissatisfaction with personal development went from a low point of 33% of the team being satisfied with their personal development to a current high of 83%. We were aware of several issues within this team and continue to support them, and their TL is working hard on helping them to identify initiatives to own in service of their growth and development; and to amplify their successes and challenges in this area.
Statements 4 and 5 “As a team we are regularly able to achieve a state of being ‘in the zone’ or ‘flow’ when appropriate” and “As an individual I am regularly able to achieve a state of being ‘in the zone’ or ‘flow’ when appropriate”
Being in this state enables people to get their best work done, efficiently. It boosts creativity, productivity, quality and happiness, among other benefits.
We added this as a single question to the survey in December, and then split it out into team and individual flow in February to distinguish between the two. These statements received the highest levels of disagreement by some margin so we decided to focus on these in the DLT.
In addition to a significantly high level of disagreement with these statements, we noticed that a high number of people were answering neutral, so in the February and March surveys we asked people to elaborate on why they gave the scores they did for this question. A wide range of reasons was given, which steered us to where leadership can better support teams with practices such as mobbing and retrospectives. We also felt that further refinement and definition might be needed, so we added a definition of flow to the survey.
Since then, there’s been a steady increase in agreement with the team flow statement, from 63.9% in December, up to 77.3% in April. We put this down to people being more mindful of it since they were asked about it — we hear that teams are having conversations about how to improve their flow — and perhaps a better understanding of what it is. However, there is still a high number of people answering neutral (20% in April) so there may be more work to be done here.
People gave far fewer qualitative responses about individual flow. The quantitative results were similar to those for team flow in both December and March, but significantly worse in February. Some people find individual flow harder to achieve than team flow, blaming procrastination, working on too many things at once and a personal lack of focus.
To achieve a state of flow we need to be able to focus on just one thing, without interruption. Clearly, we can’t expect to be, and wouldn’t want to be, in this state all day every day, we would be exhausted! But we do need to actively create the right conditions to enable it to happen at least some of the time.
We hope that this post is helpful, feel free to reuse our 5 simple survey questions!
