Reflect and recharge: The value of team ‘halftime breaks’ for your company

Summer may be the season for easy living — backyard barbecues, family vacations, laying on the beach with a good book.

But for many of the best businesses, this slower time of year is the season of recharge: a moment to pause, to reflect and to reset priorities, operations and culture so that their teams emerge focused and energized for whatever lies ahead.

Think of it like halftime in sports. Players go hard until that buzzer sounds, and then retreat to the locker room to take a breather, look at how they played, get a pep talk, examine their strategy and adjust as needed.

Companies and managers can create halftimes, too — planned breaks and reflection periods to think through and recalibrate operations and goals. They can come in summer, at the year’s midpoint, or whenever your industry tends to slow down. The volatile economic realities we all face are evidence that the plans we make at the beginning of each year — or quarter or month — aren’t necessarily going to carry us all the way to the end.

Indeed, enterprises can foster these kinds of recharges throughout the year, to help teams and individual contributors perform their best and avoid burnout. As circumstances change, employees’ sense of their goals can become fuzzy, without the chance to revisit them. But when teams can step back from the onslaught of day-to-day responsibilities and come together to reflect, brainstorm and problem-solve as a group, they emerge refocused, excited and, importantly, in sync with one another. 

Individual team members need personal recharging as well, which means time off that actually allows employees to disconnect and rest. So, it’s important to make sure there are systems and processes in place that enable your team members to take that time, whenever in the year it comes. We’re more creative, more innovative and better at problem-solving when we can step away from work.

Plan ahead

For many enterprises, summer offers the best opportunity for a pause and reflection. Ideally, a company would set aside both time and budget for the break when planning its year. When the business is moving forward and hasn’t scheduled that halftime break, it’s that much more difficult to coordinate calendars and find the time to take it, especially during the slow season when team members are juggling vacation slots.

It’s important to include trust-building activities along with the reflection and brainstorming. The highest-performing teams are ones with high levels of trust among members as well as between contributors and managers. These days, with so many of us working in remote or hybrid environments, building team trust and cohesion takes more intention and creativity, and may require travel to bring people together.

Recharge regularly

As summer winds down and we head into the final months of the year, instead of waiting until the beginning of next year to set new goals, businesses should create space to allow for periodic brainstorming, like once a quarter. Hack weeks or “think weeks”, as Bill Gates calls them, are popular ways to get team members away from doing their work so they can think about their work in new and creative ways. But it needn’t be a full week — even a day or two could help.

There are also many no- or low-cost things businesses can do to keep teams energized. At each Monday morning kickoff meeting at my company, for instance, our chief executive calls on a different person to read our values. It’s fun and unifying — team members cheer you on in the chat as you read — but it’s also a reminder of our mission that propels us into the week feeling refocused on the core of what we’re doing.

If your company doesn’t have that kind tradition, you can find ways to refocus on your own. Here’s one suggestion: Set aside a time at the start of your work week to take a look at your company’s values and mission and ask yourself what will you be doing that week that embodies those values and propels that mission forward. That’s how you begin to take values from being words on a wall to being something that actually influences your decisions and how you spend your time.

Start at the top

It’s important for leaders — including the chief executive — to demonstrate to employees a commitment to recharging. For example, a leader could communicate, “I’m taking time this week to dive into the past six months and see what lessons I can find to share with the team.” That shows that contributing to the enterprise is not just doing the work, but also reflecting and learning as a part of renewing clarity and focus. 

In addition, managers need to model for employees that time off is time that allows for truly disconnecting from work. That could mean a lighthearted nudge to get back to the beach if you see a vacationing team member participating in an office Slack chat. It could mean refraining from sending work emails on weekends or during your own time off.

Don’t kill the culture

Whenever we’re in uncertain economic times, companies often look to cut the fun things, or the things that are considered nice to have but not essential — the dog-picture segment of the agenda that everyone really likes, or offsite team meetings that foster the kind of brainstorming that may not thrive in virtual environments. But eliminating those kinds of things can kill the culture that may have attracted, supported and retained the best-performing contributors, and you can bring a team together without spending much money.

For example, you could begin regular meetings with a question everyone answers to break the ice — like where they grew up, who was their favorite childhood celebrity crush or what was the most embarrassing fashion trend they rocked. You could also compile a list of questions to use from individual contributors, further engaging the team. Or you could designate a certain day for a theme, like Motivation Monday, say, where team members talk about what they’re looking forward to each week, or sharing Weekly Wins on Fridays so that employees can cheer each other on.

Related: Employee burnout is a warning sign — about your organization

Finally, even virtual activities can help refresh team spirit. Consider organizing online games like Heads Up!, or hiring a choreographer to lead a virtual dance class, or giving everyone $20 to purchase a gift for another team member and then having an online unwrapping party.

Whichever sort of approach you choose, a more collaborative and cohesive team is one that is guaranteed to work better together. 

Alexandra Moser is Chief Operating Officer at Clockwise, a time orchestration platform for teams.