Tag: Test Management

Improving Staff Satisfaction in your Team

“How to improve staff satisfaction in your test team? What are the quick wins and what long-term strategies could you adopt?”

Maintaining and improving the satisfaction in any team requires sustained effort not only by management but by the whole team in general.  Following the discussions at TestBoss, our award-winning networking event for Yorkshire’s Test Management Community, Corecom Consulting has created an exclusive Whitepaper for ways in which to improve staff satisfaction in your Test Team, including quick wins and long-term strategies to achieve satisfaction.

Quick Wins

Quick wins are highly important, not only because they drive satisfaction short-term, but because the absence of quick wins can cause a great deal of resentment by employees.  Here is a list of short-term incentives to keep your Test Teams satisfied:

• Cake, or any type of food for that matter!
• Huddles / Meetings
• Having an active social calendar and committee
• Celebrating small successes
• Team events including lunch, team building exercises, drinks after work and ultimately learning about your team
• Saying thank you, as simple as it sounds, it makes a difference
• Birthday celebrations
• Company and Testing team updates / newsletters – “The Testing Times”
• Fuddles… (Food huddles)
• Bake-offs
• Empowering staff – enabling them to do their jobs

Long-term Strategies

Yes, quick wins are important, but there also needs to be longer-term strategies in place to ensure that your company is promoting satisfaction from the heart of its values.  It is important for the team to be influencers behind the introduction of long-term strategies, as the implementation of many of these will be outside the capability of the team and need to be executed at organisational or Board level.  The attendees from TestBoss have come up with a list of strategies and visions that should help to ensure and indeed improve staff satisfaction:

• An open and honest company culture, ensuring that there are always opportunities for both personal and professional development and progression
• Office environment – try vibrant colour schemes and fun break-time activities, what better way to attract a Developers attention than shooting them with a Nerf gun?
• Working from home and flexi-time, at least for scripting and documentation
• Sustained effort to keep providing quick wins
• Continuous improvement stemming from actions for change and the early adoption of new technologies
• Invest in your employees, empower people, offer promotions, these all go a long way in improving staff satisfaction
• Community of practice – enabling knowledge and ideas to be communicated across the team and build a sense of community

There is a lot to be said about how best to improve staff satisfaction, but if the company values don’t promote an open and honest culture and putting people first, then this is a recipe for disaster.  It’s important to keep the momentum of employee satisfaction and remember that it is not just a manager’s responsibility, it’s a team effort.

This question was answered by the attendees of TestBoss, our award-winning networking event for the Test Management Community across Yorkshire.  If you’re a Test Manager and would like to join the conversation please email testboss@corecomconsulting.co.uk or call 0113 457 1454 to enquire.