Our Path to a Connected Team

Team building is a big deal for us at Bella Ella Boutique. More than just people who share the same office space, we strive to connect on with our team on a personal level. We recognize that each person has his or her own part to play in making up the greater whole of our company. Team building plays a central part in our company, and according to Forbes, it’s the best investment we and any other company can make.

Making sure that each person on your team feels valued and is engaged in their work can look different depending on the nature of your office or company. So, on our 8th anniversary as a company, we thought we would highlight some ways we like to connect with our team members and to strengthen our professional relationships with each other.

Each company is founded upon a system of values that they seek to uphold in everything they do. These can range from integrity to innovation to good citizenship. Here at Bella Ella, we like to highlight one of our core values each month in a specific Values Meeting. This is an opportunity for everyone from our founder, to our warehouse workers, to meet and express their thoughts on the specific value we’ve chosen to highlight for that month. This usually involves relatable memes, movie clips, and the most relevant, or entertaining, quotes we can find.

Last month we highlighted our value “Seek and Accept Change to Improve”, and listened to stories across the company of team members embracing change and creating goals for positive improvement both at work, and in their personal lives. These meetings are vital to our company--not just because they help to continually align our team to our big picture values and goals, but also because it helps us to connect with each other on a more personal level.

To continue to develop our established connections and make sure we’re supporting each other across roles and positions, many of our departments have a system of weekly meetings. On the Marketing team, these take place twice a week. Every Friday, we start out sharing our exciting weekend plans and then we share what we’ve been working on throughout the week and what progress we’ve made. On Mondays, we report just how exciting those weekend plans turned out to be and what our upcoming work goals are for the week.

This is our time to recognize everyone on the team, and to better understand the lives and personal goals of the people we work with every day. It’s easy to see someone as just another corporate robot if you don’t have any indication of their lives outside the office. Team building can be as simple as sharing a bit of our social calendars to get a lens into the kind of people we see every weekday.

Most important within every activity or meeting we have at Bella Ella is the fact that everyone’s voice is heard. Whether it’s at a Values Meeting or one on one time with our managers, everyone’s voice is recognized as important and even crucial to the success of our company. Whether we agree or disagree, communication is always open and embedded with respect. We’ve found that a system of open communication improves office morale, creates better employee performance, and ensures that everyone is on the same page with our company’s values and goals.

Team building is much more than that episode of The Office that makes you want to laugh and cringe simultaneously. Team building to us at Bella Ella is ultimately about connecting ourselves to each other in different ways, a chance to share our experiences, our personal hobbies and our goals. We want to always make sure to showcase the real depth, unique perspectives and skills, that make our company valuable.