The Niko-Niko Calendar: take your team's pulse regularly

The Niko-Niko calendar, a fun and effective team management tool

Good project management is not just about organization and planning. Our tip? Measure your team’s mood regularly to improve the way you work together and make teamwork more effective.

Do you know what Niko means in Japanese? Smile! The Niko-Niko calendar is an agile method that everyone can use to say how they feel about their working day. The last thing they do each evening is choose a color to represent their day: green for happy, yellow for neutral and red for unhappy. At a glance, the team can see a pattern based on the dominant color. Is there some red in the table? The manager can have a one-on-one with the employees concerned, or individuals can give feedback to the group to solve a mutual problem. In short, the aim is to improve team productivity in a way that keeps everyone happy and facilitate team management.

The Niko-Niko calendar helps you to improve teamwork

An important aspect of teamwork is looking after the group as a whole and that means the individual team members too. Often, in meetings or workshops, you can take the team temperature, but you don’t really know how individuals are feeling. Some employees might feel unhappy or have suggestions or comments for the team management.

The Niko-Niko calendar is an invaluable indicator and visual management tool that the team can use face to face or remotely, to check in every day, detect the slightest hiccup at a glance and intervene quickly.

Team management means learning to work with people, not just tools or software. Research shows that happy employees are more productive than unhappy employees in the long term. In fact, when an employee encounters a problem, they feel unproductive and unhappy. By measuring a team’s mood, the project manager can unearth issues that are stopping it from moving forward. Being able to visualize team morale contributes to effective team management.

How to manage a team effectively with the Niko-Niko calendar

Start by inviting your team and, if need be, familiarize the members with the various Klaxoon whiteboard options. The Niko-Niko Calendar template will become their daily companion, so your employees need to know how to use it. They can put their mood or ideas on it themselves, quiz another team member using the question tool and report any difficulties or urgent problems in the early warning area.

Before starting the session, ask your team members to post a selfie and choose a calendar row, then explain to them how it works.

At the end of their work day, each team member logs into the whiteboard and notes their mood. They just copy the corresponding smiley face and then place it in the box for that day, opposite their photo.

• A green smiley face shows that they are happy after a problem free, productive and fun day.
• A neutral yellow face shows that the day was normal, with nothing to flag.
• An unhappy red face indicates that they are upset, or worried about something that happened that day.

No need for a specific meeting, the Niko-Niko calendar will soon become an end of workday ritual for the group. This team management tool can be used to improve teamwork and look after team members individually too!