COVID Killed Cohesiveness for AEC Firms: Here’s How to Get it Back
By: Engineering Management Institute
“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” – Babe Ruth, Baseball Legend
Cohesiveness is defined as the quality of forming a united whole. When the COVID pandemic struck, most firms sent everybody home, and some professionals went two years without physical interaction with their team members, destroying cohesiveness. I recently facilitated an all-day team building event for a company who hired 54 people in the past 18 months, none of whom have met other employees in person. Think about that.
When your employees are a cohesive unit, they feel like they are part of a team that is focused on a greater goal. When you don’t build a cohesive atmosphere, then the loyalty or interest to stick around is very low, because people don’t feel like they belong to something. They feel like they have a job and they get a pay check, and they can do that anywhere.
Based on all of the consulting and training that we have provided to AEC consulting firms I would like to offer three actions that your firm can take to build cohesiveness.
#1 Foster Relationship Building Between Team Members
This may sound obvious, but when people work with people they know and care about, they become more passionate about their work. They become more interested in helping the other team members succeed. They take on more of a ‘team first’ mentality as opposed to ‘me first.’ This one action can dramatically increase cohesiveness.
To accomplish this, you must give people opportunities to learn about their co-workers. This can be done through team building events, or even easier, through simple learning and development programs. For example, when we give project management training to a firm, we ensure that there are breakout sessions where participants work with 2 or 3 of their co-workers giving them time to really get to know each other.
#2 Give Opportunities to Lead
Good leaders drive cohesiveness, however because of the past few years, you may not know who the leaders in your firm are. Consider giving different people opportunities to lead different initiatives so you can learn about their leadership abilities.
I have seen firms create committees like learning and development, innovation, or diversity and inclusion committees. By creating outlets like these and giving some of your team members the opportunity to lead them, you will quickly determine the leaders within your firm, and then you can put them in the best positions to build cohesiveness in their respective departments or offices.
#3 Support Career Growth and Development
Your employees want career support more than anything else, as proven by this poll. Focus on providing this support through initiatives that allow them to connect with their co-workers. As I mentioned earlier, you could utilize a learning and development program with heavy interaction between participants. You could even organize a P.E. exam study group within your firm so a number of your professionals will build relationships while preparing for the exam.
If there are ways that you can support their growth while they are building relationships with each other, your firm will have a distinct advantage.
Anthony Fasano, P.E. | 800.920.4007
Most consulting engineering firms are too busy to focus on attracting, developing, and retaining talented professionals, making it hard to grow. At Engineering Management Institute, we use a proven framework to help firms build professional development plans and programs including people leadership and project management, that help them attract, build, AND maintain strong teams and grow sustainably.
