The creation of new teams is a challenging moment for all companies, as it may put at risk their existing structure and internal organization. In this episode Jenny and James share with us their own experience and tell us how their teams at Google have been handling staff growth, thanks to some key Google Apps
All teams in Google use Google Groups. It is a flexible platform for discussion and information sharing. Though Groups, new and existing team members can communicate more transparently among themselves and with managers. It is also a more convenient way to send emails, instead of having to insert individual emails at each time: think about it! To create a new group, you just need to go to groups.google.com and click Create group. Name it, add a description and select the Group type (in our case we select Email list). Add new members by clicking the manage link then Invite members link. Now you’ll be able not only to communicate with the whole team via one alias, but also share drive, docs or sheets at scale!
At each time a new team is created, new members need to go through resource and trainings so they can quickly ramp-up. Jenny and Jimmy show that at their team these resources are compiled and centralized in one place, so new hires can check them at all times. Jenny shows us that all training links are gathered in one single Google Sheet and shared with the new employees. They find there relevant resources, check their attendance. Many companies also create a Google Site, where they centralize all sheets, docs or forms in one single portal.
Finally, Calendar is a powerful tool that puts all team members under the same schedule. Google Calendar allows you to create for instance a standalone calendar for members who share a common work stream. James shows us how his team has created a “New Sales Employees” calendar, which is only visible to new hires. Also, Calendar has the benefit of structuring the team work over the week. James and Jenny explain that teams in Google usually set up a “weekly meeting”, to which all team members are invited; invitees can also check, attached to the calendar invite, the team meeting agenda in a Google Doc.
Do you have other tips to share when it comes to the creation of a team? Please share them with us, using the comment section below!
