The Power of JunkMail
What if you could have a tool that brings your team together on a regular basis that is not only informational but builds your culture of community and engagement?
Welcome to JunkMail. For the past two months we have been using a weekly email/text-based broadcast to share important information about operations, new hires, troubleshooting through common challenges, new training and of course, highlighting employee performance.
At first, it was a slow start. It was new and with our demographic of team members (average age is 26), clicking through an email to read important company updates was not a norm for them. Having the text message option helped but it still was a slow start.
It wasn’t until we added a weekly “Question of the Week” that we started to get more engagement. Questions ranged from what type of Christmas bonus would you like, to favourite fast foods, to a most recent question about the trucker convoy in Ottawa.
Every question had a purpose behind it and we knew that we would use it to create a stronger bond and culture with our team.
So here is what we have learned from our weekly JunkMail so far:
- Highlight the good in your team. We know that recognizing our team members is important and doing it in a public and collective way not only ensures we celebrate the individual accomplishments with everyone, it also is a very rewarding form of recognition.
- Don’t overstuff your regular broadcast with too much. We all skim emails and we don’t want to spend the time we should on reading everything in lengthy emails. So, keep it short. Use bullet points. And make what is in your message the most important key points for that week.
- Engage with your team. Ask questions. Post photos of your team members. Create a poll. Have a contest.
Use something that bridges the communication with your team in a way that builds your team culture and the bond that you have with your team.
Give it try and let me know how it turns out. If you have something already, how is it going? Let us know!
