Team health is commonly used agile metric .As a new team leader I wanted to be sure that my team was healthy, too! But it wasn’t an agile team–the was a functional team. What health metrics could I capture for them?

When I looked for examples of team health metrics, most were related to productivity–some quantity of content produced in some amount of time. But that told me absolutely nothing about how my team felt about showing up to work every day, or how close they were to burning out. Productivity is an ​important metric, but inadequate as the sole indicator of team health. So I revisited agile team health survey tools and the question o f whether I could apply this agile metric to my non-agile team. “Probably,” I shrugged.

Here’s more about how & why I did so, and what I learned from it.

As discussed in this article, the tactic is commonly used in cross-functional Agile development teams. Their goal is to identify problems before they become crises. Typical problems identified might be process compliance issues or communication gaps. They are especially helpful when the team is starting a new project or hitting a project milestone, both of which are characterized by some level of turbulence.

Why I Wanted to Measure Team Health

My functional team of technical communicators:

• Were deployed to document the work of agile teams but weren’t included in agile team rituals like health checks, because they were considered observers rather than participants. 
• Delivered content that was in high demand and highly visible, but their role as the creators of that output was largely invisible. They were able to function so independently that they were often unintentionally taken for granted and only acknowledged when something was going wrong.
• Occupied a role that was fairly new in both companies where I applied this concept, so I wanted to understand what aspects of the workplace and workflow influenced their performance.

I wanted a way to reinforce the core values that I defined for our team—meaning and learning, both of which I see as dimensions of stability​. I had lots of ways to correlate their work to their personal goals & company goals, and to quantify the value of their work to their stakeholders. But no real way to measure how they felt about it and how much risk that created, and that was important to me as their leader and to building the team culture that I wanted for us.

How I Measured Team Health

I used a Slack integration to automatically deliver a monthly survey to my team members asking them to rate the following on a Likert scale of 1 [not really] to 5 [extremely]: 

• My work feels meaningful
• Meaningful work matters to me
• I am learning through my work
• Learning through my work matters to me

When I rolled this out to my teams, I explained that 1) their responses would not automatically result in action on my part, 2) would be a topic in our next 1:1, and 3) would not be talked about anywhere else without their permission.

How I Used Team Health Metrics for the Team

Meaningfulness and Learning were both highly valued but both declined significantly in the lead-up to quarterly and annual roadmap planning. This wasn’t surprising, as those were high-stress, fast-paced periods for everyone. I couldn’t change that, but I could be sure to find ways to give my team extra support/attention during those periods, like using time in our team meetings to present to them on a learning topic, or sending them all $10 Starbucks gift cards to remind them that their work may not feel meaningful in the moment but is valued by me and the company as a whole.

How I Used Team Health Metrics for the Individual

I’m calling it “Team Health”, but I used the survey data to understand individual health, too. Getting summarized survey results from Slack helped me remember to hold space on our 1:1 agendas to talk about something other than simple work output, and was an indicator of how much time I needed to hold (e.g., if meaningful work matters a lot and their current work feels meaningful, then it’s a quick convo that helps me learn more about my employee as a person; if it matters a lot but their current doesn’t feel meaningful, we have something to solve for).

Examples of times we needed to solve for something and how we did that:

That second one is also an example of a time where I might need to share team health info with my boss; if my team member wanted external training, I would need budget approval from my her. In that case, I’d explain that to my employee & share w/them how I’d present it: “Hey boss, I’d like to send Linda on my team to conflict management training next quarter; she’s feeling stagnant, and I feel that the skills she’d learn there would help her better negotiate timelines with her team.”

Other Considerations 

• Is it right within your company’s culture? Both companies where I used this tactic had, as part of their company values, an emphasis on whole-person well-being. I could tie both my team’s values and this method of measuring them directly to the company’s values.
• Does my team understand why I’m surveying them? Key to the success of this tactic was transparency. I talked to my teams about how & why I was rolling it out, how I was using the data in both the short- and long-term, what things I could and couldn’t do to help, and how I would respect their privacy if a conversation about the results led to a discussion of something really personal/vulnerable.
• Do I understand why I’m surveying them? No other functional teams were using this tactic; only the agile teams were While I understand the need to think about practice parity across a company, I’m not sure that would make sense with the way I used it, which was specific to reinforcing my team values/culture. Other teams (e.g., Biz Dev or Customer Success) could use the same survey tactic but would likely have different health metrics and survey cadence based on their own goals.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have tried this concept with your team!