I’ve recently been discussing how best to measure Voice of the Team with a number of interested groups.

From what I’ve seen and heard there is an over reliance on the “annual employee engagement survey” or maybe a “net promoter score”.

As in all good practice, detection of a problem as quickly as it occurs means you can take action and rectify

My advice is based on the Shingo Enterprise Excellence model is what are the behaviours we might like to observe and record?

Here’s a simple approach to take a daily snapshot of VOT

At the daily stand up meeting or huddle at the Visual Management Board, each team member scores how good or bad they feel about their work or workload. You can have 5 for excellent and 1 for crappy!

The behaviour you want to see is during the huddle the rest of the team can ask anyone feeling under the pump what they could do to help.

Perhaps this will be help with resolving a problem together and using coaching Kata solutions will be found.

You may even take five minutes at the end of the meeting to run through a quick five why’s?

I’ve seen this in action and it drives a clear culture of support and team work, which in turn contributes to continuous improvement.

Give it a try!