Ritual Bank

Community

Lifecycle Transitions

Beyond our work titles, we are all humans with families, friends and hobbies outside of work. Check-in and ask questions about colleagues who are expecting kids, getting married, moving into a new home or going through a hard time. These lifecycle transitions are meaningful, easy ways to connect with your colleages.

Community

Pass the Mug

Each week, an individual with the 'mug' invites another team member for a virtual coffee date. The catch? These two individuals don't know each other very well. The invitee is then tasked with asking someone else they do not know very well for a coffee or tea.

Community

Intention Checks

Appoint an individual to carry out mid-week 'Intention Checks'. These encourage team members to be more mindful and set weekly intentions. Those responsible for checking in promote accountability and act as a gentle reminder to stay on track.

Conflict Resolution

Burn The Argument

If an argument between team members breaks out and is resolved, those involved write their feelings and sentiments on a paper. The wider teams comes together to watch them tear up the paper and discard of the argument, putting it in the past and focusing on a way forward.

Innovation

Lunch & Learn

Lunch and learns are a great way to promote knowledge sharing and improve presentation skills. The idea is simple, a team member creates a presentation about any idea and presents it to teammates. Topics can be related to the nature of work, or of an entirely different subject.

Onboarding

A Personal Welcome

A simple and easy way to make new employees feel at home is to send a short and personal welcome email. Sent before they join or on the eve of their first day, these messages are a great way to show you care about new joiners and that you are excited about having them on board.

Performance

Virtual Book Club

Take a break from work-related banter (unless of course, you work in publishing) and invite your colleagues to join a monthly book club.

Performance

Pinning Ceremony

You can use this ritual to celebrate an important milestone for individuals or teams in terms who have really delivered for the company. By pinning a symbol of the company onto the individuals' clothes you welcome them into the circle of trusted employees. Be careful of this ritual becoming a way of excluding people if badly managed.

Performance, Community

Peer Nomination

Prompt employees to nominate a peer that they feel embodies the values of the organization by creating an online submission form or adding a functionality to your HR software.

Community

Jeffersonian Icebreakers

Begin meetings or brainstorms with one question everyone needs answer. These 'Jeffersonian' conversation topics can be your most embarrassing story, or the best piece of advice you have been given, or even your favourite quote. These activities establish common ground, create a safe space and evoke a sense of psychological safety, nurturing stronger team trust.

Community

Random Virtual Coffee Breaks

Every week send random coffee break invites to employees that are not part of the same team. This will help create new connections inside the organization and allow people to discover what other teams are working on.

Community, Performance

Grow Day

HubSpot hosts an annual #GrowDay for customer-facing employees. These teams spend a full day disconnected from their work and instead, invest their time in personal and professional development. HubSpot hosts sessions for employees to learn about and up-skill themselves in areas such as negotiation, consulting and inclusive leadership. This year, the remote off-site was orchestrated around 25+ time zones from around the world!

Innovation

Celebrate Failure

If you want your team to innovate, it's important to show them that failure is part of the process. A weekly session where people can share their failure of that week and help the team learn from it is one way of doing that.

Innovation

Crowdsource Innovation

Set up a way to collect innovative revenue or cost management ideas from all employees, create a committee to select some of these ideas for implementation, and provide a small budget for each idea. You never know which one ends up being what helps you grow or save the business.

Onboarding

The Buddy System

Assign a buddy to help a new joiner navigate the company. Typically, an 'office' tour would be part of the induction but a buddy can be the go-to person should the new joiner have any questions. The buddy will also be responsible for sending a a t-shirt or a plant to make the newest team member feel part of the family.

Performance

Weekly To Do's

On the first day of each week, schedule repeat meetings for the team to all speak over Zoom and go over the priorities for the week. Note down every intention your teammates set for the week ahead. This meeting may take longer than usual but it will be worth it!

Performance

Ring a bell

Remember to celebrate when something positive happens. A project being delivered, a new client, a milestone reached can all be good occasions to celebrate. You can do that by literally ringing a bell or you can design a proprietary emoticon that you use in your slack channel to make a happy announcement!

Performance, Upskilling

Critical Thinking Starters

Begin each online meeting with a single question for employees/student, activating their critical thinking skills. This question should be relevant to the topic of the class/meeting, adding to the conversation and not distracting from the objective or purpose. Everyone can either share their response to a single question, or leaders/instructors can share a number asking the group to guess what that represents or stands for. It's a great way to get a group engaged before diving into the content of a meeting.

Community

Recommendation Station

Create a slack channel or e-mail thread for recommendations of books, movies, series, recipes and activities. It's an easy way for individuals to get to know each other a little better and learn about what they may have in common.

Community

Volunteering Day

Show your company's commitment to giving back by allowing employees to dedicate a day to a volunteering activity.

Performance, Community

Dance Party!

Remote group work sessions can be extremely productive, but also a little tiring. Recently, our team had one of those and we broke out into a dance party to lighten the mood and take a step away from the slides. A few pets got involved and the endorphins that good music brought were a huge help in getting us re-energized for the hours of work ahead!

Innovation

Thank God It's Thursday

"To ring in the weekend, our team hosted a small TGIT (TGIF) celebration. We hosted a game/activity or invited an internal/external guest speaker. These were usually friends or acquaintances who are happy to share their story, adventures or cause. At the end of this session, we brought in lunch for the entire team which was a great way for colleagues to gather in the canteen and socialize."
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- Submitted by Rami, KSA

Onboarding

Welcoming Committee

On the first day of an employee assign people from different teams to take them out to lunch (or to join for a virtual lunch). This will allow your new joiner to start building relationships with people from outside their direct team.

Performance

Weekly Recaps

Appoint a team member in charge of sharing the successes of a team in a single Slack post or e-mail thread. Keep it short and sweet and be sure to shout out any special all-star performers.

Performance

Retrospectives

A great way to make sure we learn from both the great and not so great aspects of our teamwork is to have a bi-weekly retrospective where the team can share the best and worst parts of working together. A good framework for this conversation is the list the things that as a team we should stop doing, start doing, or continue doing with clear action points for the next cycle.

Performance

Stretch it out

Sitting at a desk all day can leave you feeling achey and sore. One easy way to promote more active team participation and comfort is to lead a short 1-2 minute group stretch. Add music to encourage movement, combat fatigue and promote healthy blood flow.

Upskilling, Performance

Mindful Moments

Begin each class or meeting with a short exercise to encourage mindful participation. This can be a short meditation, a moment to enjoy music with eyes closed or a quick intention-setting exercise. These rituals will result in a more concentrated, intentional approach to work and learning.