Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Work

Chat with other users about all things related to working life on our Work forum.

Communication and inclusion working at different sites

2 replies

Musteatcake · 01/08/2023 19:15

I am employed by a school and work with a small team, but we are based in a different building to the main team. I am finding of late that there is a feeling amongst my local team that we are part of a team but not part of the wider team unless staff are needed to help elsewhere, which also doesn't tend to be a two way support mechanism. Any change to processes/new processes/systems etc are all dealt with by the central team, we are not asked to input in any way. So generally speaking the wider team don't want us to do our own thing but equally they don't involve us in the nuts & bolts, which is equally annoying when changes or updates are made using incorrect information. How can I change this? I have tried the soft approach in asking for elements to be updated and suggesting that it would have been useful to be included and I do appreciate that there is a balance in terms of adding more work. I also don't want to have meetings for the sake of meetings but also want my team to feel part of something and that their skills/experience and input are of value. I think task and finish type groups would be good for improvement projects. Has anyone else had experience of this? Any suggestions on how I can approach this?

OP posts:
UsingChangeofName · 02/08/2023 00:11

I think if one team are working in different bases, then you do need to have a regular update / meeting, just in the same way that people who wfh do, and people who do agile working do.
We have a weekly meeting on Teams - one is for 'business' / work related things, and has minutes, and the alternate week there is a less formal meeting, where people do sometimes ask a work question - being as colleagues are there - but sometimes it is asking about a holiday or a life event - and sometimes it is "Is anyone else having trouble with X system at the moment?" or "Has anyone got any resources for Y?" type things. Seems to work well.
Everyone has the opportunity to raise things...... Management has the time to inform us of things ........ if there isn't much to be said one week then the meeting finishes early. There is no feeling of "Everyone has come over to this building, so we need to justify it by making the meeting last an hour and a half" - because it is on TEams, if 10mins is all it takes, then that is as long as it lasts, BUT, you've had the chance to raise things if you want, or need to.
Also cuts down on e-mails and phone calls with people trying to find things out, as you know you'll get the chance every Wednesday.

OwlBabiesAreCute · 02/08/2023 12:28

Can you as a manager meet with their manager regularly to go through any changes?

Alternatively, if your team does give out wrong info / do incorrect process because they didn't know, surely that's not on them?

Schools are v hierarchical, can you go to the manager above if no joy?

New posts on this thread. Refresh page