They key to great Weekdone usage is how you as a manager or team leader explain and “sell” Weekdone to your team. Without a good buy-in from each employee a good implementation is very hard. Weekdone is half software, half a good process that is customized and applicable to your company culture, values and goals.
Getting it up and running involves three parts: understanding the benefits, defining your ideal process and explaining it to your team.
1. Understand the benefits
First, start from reading the Team Members and Employees Benefits section on the Weekdone benefits page. Think through how each point there could help your people. Also review the benefits to you – the manager the leader – listed at the top of that page.
Do your employees want to get more done and be more productive, focusing on doing the right things? Could a system like Weekdone that keeps their key goals in front of them every day and week make them more focused and productive? When used right, having 5 or so key plans in front of an employee makes them much more focused on big important goals. In Weekdone, that means a mix of quarterly personal objectives and key results, projects and weekly plans. Explain to them, how it all flows from big objectives to practical projects and then tasks under these.
Do your people want to be heard more by you, their leader – and get more feedback and guidance from you? Weekdone has a lot of tools for that: comments, likes, the private 1:1 weekly review. Not getting enough feedback from managers is often listed as number one problem in most employee engagement surveys. Weekdone gives you the tools, but you as a manager must use them regularly. Make it a habit to read through the weekly report each time it arrives in your mailbox. Make sure you then give feedback, likes and upvotes to all your employees. Your people will appreciate it. It’s a great way to direct them in right direction.
Do your employees want to get feedback, ideas and praise from co-workers? This starts from sharing regular weekly or daily updates. Co-workers can then comment, like and give kudos to each-other. Explain, that Weekdone is not just for leaders, but for them to communicate with each-other.
Also think what other benefits there will be not just to you, the leader, but to your people. What are the advantages of knowing what others plan and do? What about having a regular 2-way communication channel between everyone?
Based on above, make a document or presentation describing the benefits to your employees. Good buy-in starts from that.
2. Define your company’s ideal team goal-setting, planning and communication process
After defining the benefits, think how you would like your people to use Weekdone. What’s the process each quarter and week?
On a quarterly basis you usually first set the high-level company and team objectives and key results. You have to then decide, do people also add personal objectives. It’s fine to use just a quarterly projects list at the top of their personal page. Think through what is the meetings process for quarterly goals.
Quarterly goals are only useful if people focus on them each day and week. Majority of Weekdone’s usage is what happens by employees on their personal level weekly and daily. That includes keeping their big goals in front of them, breaking these down into prioritized projects and planning each week‘s work. As it get’s shared as weekly status updates, everyone can read and comment on co-workers activities to keep each-other in the loop.
The most important part is everyone giving a status update on the progress of their objectives, projects and plans by the end of each week. By default the report deadline is Friday 5 PM, but you can adjust that to your liking. As part of that it’s important they bring everything on their page up to date. Planning what they promise to get done next week is another important part of that. They shouldn’t also forget giving kudos and feedback to others.
Ideally, to reap all the benefits, the best way for everyone is to use Weekdone daily in real time as you go – not just once or twice per week. We describe the weekly usage in more detail here. Make it an integral part of everyone’s daily routine to share their information via Weekdone and read the Buzz timeline newsfeed, adding their comments and likes as they go.
Some use Weekdone just once per week to share their updates, but we do not suggest that. Make it a daily habit. Daily communication is what makes your team work as one and accumulate knowledge from each other. It gives you, the leader, the opportunity to go to any employee’s page in Weekdone at any moment to see where they stand. It’s always a good preparation between any 1:1 meeting with the employee.
Weekdone often is used as the core backbone of any weekly team meeting. Make sure people come to those meetings prepared with their page up to date. It can save huge amount of time from status updates and make your meetings shorter.
3. Explain and roll it out
Good initial explanation to get going from day one is the most important. The best way to roll out Weekdone is at a team or company all hands meeting, face to face. Don’t think only sending out the invitations from the tool is enough. People always have questions and it’s a team effort.
Start by describing what you prepared above: what Weekdone is and what benefits there are, both for the employees as well as the managers. Have employees ask questions and discuss these openly with the whole team. Make sure they understand what they have to fill in weekly and how much you want them to keep it up to date daily.
Try to get a buy-in from everyone or at least the majority, that you all try out Weekdone for at least one quarter, both online and at all your weekly team meetings. Have people agree to enter their objectives, projects, plans, progress and problems, as well as their satisfaction ratings. Get them to comment, like, give kudos and check the newsfeed daily. See how it goes and adjust. During first weeks always discuss at team meetings how to make Weekdone usage better.
You should also explain to your people, that:
- Ideally they should not have more than 5-7 items under their weekly plans at any time. 5-7 is a good manageable number that makes sure they focus on key big important items. It’s not a list of all their tasks – just important ones. Tell them that others read your plans as well. If they start listing tens of small detailed tasks you cause an information overload for others. Weekdone is not a task manager, it’s a team communication tool first. Think of it as an online version of your weekly status update meeting.
- When adding items, keep one thing in mind: word everything for others to understand, not just yourself. Don’t use 1-2 word tasks like you would in a task manager. Use longer sentences, commentary, insights, lessons learned, background information etc. Imagine it’s a weekly meeting where everyone has 1-2 minutes to present. Always think if co-workers and manager will understand and learn something from what you wrote. Good writing is a key to successful Weekdone usage.
And as a leader, remember that you are the best example to your employees. So make sure your personal objectives, projects and weekly items are always listed and up to date.
Need some help? Our account management team is ready to give you a video demo webinar or just discuss how to implement Weekdone in your team. E-mail us at hello@weekdone.com and we’ll get back to you right away. You can also use the Live chat feature on the site, just click the tab below.