Transcript
Transcript: Cup of Joe with Joseph Silva: Hosting Regular All-Staff Meetings
[0:00 A man standing in front of the camera]
Joseph Silva: Hello, my name is Joseph Silva.
[0:02 Title "Cup of Joe with Joseph Silva: Hosting Regular All-Staff Meetings" appears next to an animated coffee mug.]
I'd like to talk about the importance of scheduling regular all-staff meetings.
[0:12 Text appears on screen "Joseph Silva, Former Director General, Human Resources, Privy Council Office".]
[0:24-2:48 a white banner appears and stays at the bottom of the screen, with the text "Canada School of Public Service".]
As executives we want our teams to be fully engaged.
However, we know engagement takes time and effort and I think everyone would agree that taking the time to touch base with staff on a regular basis is a great use of our precious time.
During the pandemic, I started scheduling all staff meetings on a more regular basis than what I had in the past. I found it was a great tool to increase my visibility at a time everyone was working from home and to be in touch with the whole organization given the challenging times.
At these meetings I would discuss what was going on within our organization, within the department and the Government of Canada so everyone had a common understanding of what was going on.
I also took the opportunity to speak about specific work we were focusing on and provide kudos on the projects that the staff had delivered to show my appreciation for their work.
When preparing for these meetings, I made sure that the agenda spoke to all levels within the organization, and that the messaging was genuine. Employees know when senior leaders are not walking the talk.
There was a period for Q&A where folks were welcome to state any concerns, comment or ask questions on anything they'd that day or bring up any issue they felt needed to be addressed. Employees were always encouraged to speak up or to follow up with their respective managers if they did not feel comfortable raising issues within that forum.
In addition to business, I added some fun components at the beginning and end of the meeting to make these sessions more interesting for employees. For example, at the beginning I would choose a particular song that would play for about three minutes while everyone was joining and I would use the theme of that song in my opening speech to the team.
This became a great ice breaker and would add a positive energy to the beginning of the meeting rather than the awkward silence one hears when things are being set up.
I would end the meeting with a peer recognition initiative where two employees would recognize two other employees for something they appreciated in them. We always encouraged them to recognize peers from other teams.
This provided a very positive way to end the meeting and I believe encouraged teamwork across our whole organization.
I found that the mix of fun and serious was a good blend to engage staff, keep them up to date on what was going on, and a good venue to demonstrate our appreciation for what they did.
Based on my experience, staff engagement increases in response to senior management engagement so I would highly recommend quarterly all staff meetings.
[2:42 Title "Cup of Joe with Joseph Silva: All-Staff Meetings" appears next to an animated coffee mug.]
[2:49-2:59 The CSPS logo appears onscreen. A text appears on the screen: canada.ca/school. The Government of Canada logo appears onscreen.]
