The Tugela Team – boosting morale and performance

At Tugela People, although the majority of us are used to working remotely, a typical week or month (depending on our roles and home locations) sees us visiting the office to touch base with the core team and for meetings.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak and the government mandate for remote working where appropriate, our offices have been devoid of the human touch. With all of our systems being cloud-based, making the business remote from a technology aspect has been relatively simple. The social aspect, however, has required more consideration and effort to ensure that we don't feel isolated or unsupported and that we can stay focused despite the personal challenges we are all facing on the home front.

The key to all of this has been effective management and enhanced communications. We are in the enviable position not only to have cloud-based systems but also to have many communication tools in place to facilitate this. In addition to the standard (and somewhat mundane!) emails (and the more formal way of communicating), we have a host of other tools to hand which we have been using to the max: Yammer, Microsoft Teams and a company WhatsApp group.

It is perhaps not only having the tools to hand but the way everyone in the company has come together to embrace the best of a bad situation. We keep in regular contact about both business and personal matters, are undertaking some individual challenges set by other team members (like 10,00 steps a day) and have bi-weekly group video coffee morning/afternoon get-togethers. I have even had the pleasure of virtually meeting some of my colleagues and business partners kids and pets via video chat! We also have our regular one-to-ones with managers and catch-ups with colleagues (both written and oral) combining to provide us all with a sense of belonging to a caring and supportive professional family.

How is your company managing to keep you and your teams' morale boosted and create a sense of community?