Managing a team is no easy task. It gets even worse when your team seems to be clashing rather than collaborating, missing deadlines, bottlenecking tasks or suffering from poor communication.
But how do you get your team aligned when everyone seems to have different working styles?
A simple and effective way to get your team to work collaboratively and collectively is to use a work agreement. It’s an agreement made by the team—for the team.
Working agreements help to build trust, hold each member accountable and create a smoother workflow and collaborative environment.
In this article, we’ll explore the what, why and how of using working agreements, along with actionable templates you can use to implement these tips and best practices. If you’re short on time, check out our quick read section for the key points within the article.
What is the goal of working agreements? A working agreement, informally known as a team agreement, is a document that’s created by a team to establish a set of roles, responsibilities and guidelines. It should govern how the team will interact, communicate and contribute to a shared goal to meet expectations, manage working styles and support collaborative efforts.
A rule of thumb is that team members should contribute and be united in agreement with every item listed in the working agreement. This encourages them to view the document as an extension of their views and needs so that it feels democratic rather than a dictatorship by the team leader.
While the two are informally interchangeable by most, there are key differences between them. For one, a team agreement (or team norm) covers a much wider scope than a working agreement.
Where team agreements include the scope of work, missions, objectives and high-level strategies, a working agreement is simply focused on day-to-day operations regarding collaboration.
This means a team agreement sets an overall vision for the team, while a working agreement outlines a practical approach to team behavior and interaction.
Lastly, a working agreement is often used by an agile or scrum team. Any corporate or business-focused team can use a team agreement.
However, feel free to use one or both, regardless of your profession or industry. They’re both valuable documents for any team to possess.
Now you understand what a working agreement is. Let’s dive into some reasons why you and your team should invest time in creating and maintaining a working agreement. These include, but are not limited to:
For working agreements to truly fulfill their purpose, they need to contain specific pieces of information to effectively capture the culture and work environment you want your team to thrive.
Keep in mind that you can always adjust, add or rearrange items in your working agreement, as no two team cultures are alike, but try not to leave out any items. They might seem like common knowledge to your team, but leaving them unaddressed could resurface as an issue down the line.
Here are seven essential components that should be included in your working agreement:
Overview: What are the purpose, goals and desired outcomes that will help align all members toward a common vision?
When your team takes the time to go beyond the “what” and starts questioning the “why,” you’ll be able to find common ground that will unite each member under a focused goal. This will remind them that the project, company or department they’re in isn’t just focused on getting work done but is pursuing something of value.
This is the first item in a working agreement because it sets the tone for the team, and having your goals written for everyone to see also helps in achieving them. According to a study by the Dominican University of California, you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down.
When creating goals, you’ll want to focus on SMART goals. SMART goals are a more detailed approach to your typical goal setting. SMART actually stands for:
Not having had a detailed conversation about your team’s or organization’s SMART goals could be a contributing factor to why you need a working agreement.
Pro Tip: The best place to start is by brainstorming and planning your SMART goals with one of Visme’s goal-setting templates, like the one shown below. Choose a simple, modern or colorful SMART goal template, then customize it to your needs.
Overview: Specify individual roles, tasks and decision-making authority to ensure clarity and avoid duplication of efforts.
Regardless of what you might think, not everyone on your team has a good grasp of their own roles and responsibilities or those of their teammates. They may have a general overview, but that leaves room for misconception and unaccountability and opens up your team to play the “blame game” when problems arise.
By listing the roles and responsibilities of each team member, you can:
Ensure that when you discuss this section, you allow team members to present their own roles and responsibilities in the working agreement. If anything is unclear or needs to be added or removed, you do it as a team in agreement with what’s being requested from that person.
Overview: Establish preferred communication channels, frequency of updates and expected response times to enhance collaboration and ensure everyone is informed.
Communication guidelines can help you steer clear of silo mentality and communication (or cultural conflicts) that hurt collaboration and stop the team from getting things done in the long run.
The first place to start is by deciding what your primary communication channel will be so that everyone is active and attentive when messages or requests come in.
If you’re using more than one channel of communication, you’ll need to reconsider your communication points. Instead, stick to 1-2 communication channels.
Select one as your primary channel for urgent matters (i.e: Slack channel) and one as a secondary channel for items that need to be done but can be answered at a later point (i.e: email).
This will provide a safeguard against missing any important request, providing late responses or getting disoriented jumping from channel to channel. The same should be said if your team is using multiple apps to complete projects.
Pro Tip: With Visme, you can easily integrate your team's favorite apps like Slack, Monday.com, Salesforce and more so you can effortlessly communicate and create without clashing or missing a beat.
Next, you’ll need to discuss how frequently the team should be messaging each other. The last thing you want is a “This could have been an email” statement at your next meeting. So establish how often you will generally send requests or updates to each other.
For example, Every Monday, we’ll send weekly updates on tasks finished and what’s to be tackled this week. This cuts down on time spent sending unnecessary updates that could otherwise be used to work or finish tasks.
After you’ve established your communication channel and the frequency of updates, you’ll need to decide the expected response time. How long should it take someone to respond to a message? Or if your team is remote, decide when to be online to answer requests or messages.
By asking these questions as a team, you’re creating an expectation and a proper flow of communication, allowing people to get the information they need within a certain time and setting realistic expectations when communicating.
Overview: Define meeting agendas, duration and rules of engagement to facilitate productive and focused discussions.
While you’re working together as a team, you’re bound to have a few meetings during the week or day. This section of your working agreement is all about how you want to ensure that each meeting is as productive and beneficial as possible. The last thing you want is for your team to feel like the meeting should have been an email.
In fact, Booqed found that people have at least eight meetings per week on average, and that number can go up to 17 based on the person’s seniority. That's how easily time spent in meetings can eat away at your team's working hours.
So when writing about your meeting structure, here are a few questions you can ask the team to fully flesh out the details for this section:
Overview: Outline procedures for addressing conflicts, such as active listening, mediation or escalation paths, to encourage healthy resolution.
It’s possible that your team has a wide variety of work styles, temperaments and cultures. With such a range of personalities, you’re bound to see conflict arise every now and then.
Having a conflict resolution process on hand can help not only resolve conflict but also create a safe space for employees to bring their conflicts and concerns to light without fear of being reprimanded.
As you build out this section, you should take into account each member's idea of conflict and conflict resolution style so you can provide procedures and solutions that make everyone feel safe and understood.
Overview: Set clear expectations regarding deliverables, deadlines and individual responsibilities to promote accountability and timely completion of tasks.
By listing out who is accountable for each project or task based on their roles and responsibilities, you set expectations for:
This helps to build trust with team members and allows them to know how to prioritize tasks and allocate resources effectively, as well as improve each team member's management skills, which can be beneficial if they choose to take on a leadership role in the future.
Once you’ve listed this out, you’ll need to discuss deadlines and task completion. This provides measurable milestones for tracking progress. It allows the team to assess whether they are on track to meet their objectives or if adjustments are needed to achieve the desired outcomes.
You may want to ask the team what’s considered a completed task or how long it should take to complete a task or meet deadlines. Furthermore, highlight what to do if there are delays on tasks or missed deadlines.
Pro Tip: Avoid overwhelming your working agreement templates with too much copy or clutter. Instead, add some sleek interactive features to your template. Add hotspots, a clickable menu, link documents for projects or tasks that team members need to be accountable for, and so much more.
Overview: Establish systems for providing constructive feedback, conducting performance evaluations and recognizing achievements to foster a culture of growth and improvement.
This can be feedback on projects, tasks, reviews, meetings or just feedback in general. Creating a system for feedback can look like:
Ultimately, you want to find what works best for your team, even if it means incorporating an informal approach or using software.
Pro Tip: You can invite team members to collaborate in real time on your working agreement or any other Visme project. Team members can edit, leave comments or feedback, make changes and simultaneously work on the same projects.
Now that we’ve covered what should be included in your working agreement, here is a list of some working agreement examples you could use for your next team meeting or project.
Each template listed is easily customizable, so you can edit, remove and add sections or elements based on your working agreement needs. Visme’s templates are so easy to use that even graphic designers are blown away:
“Some templates you stumble upon and are blown away that someone put the time and effort into creating them. You did not know you needed them in your life until that minute.” - Lorens | Graphic Designer
This team working agreement template provides a good foundation for any team, regardless of your industry or niche. It comes equipped with 10 detailed sections you can use to provide your team with a 360-degree approach to crafting the perfect team agreement.
The template is designed with a modern style, including cool and warm tones of blue, clean accent lines along with a generous use of white space to ensure your copy looks professional and is easy to read.
If you’d like to use this template, or you love the style but not the color, don’t worry. You can easily change the colors and fonts to match your own taste or brand using Visme’s AI-powered Brand Wizard. Simply add the URL to your website and the wizard will create a brand kit with your brand colors, font, logo and more for you to access in any and all of your Visme projects.
This flexible working agreement is a more simplified version of the typical working agreement. It comes in a presentation format with bold colors and soft accents to keep the readers focused on what matters most.
This template includes sections about us, purpose and scope, working options, request process, evaluation and review and conclusion. Feel free to add more sections or change icons if you decide to make this template your own.
Take it a step further and upload your own images instead, or replace them with free stock photos and videos. If you find yourself struggling to find the perfect image, you can try Visme’s AI Image generator instead.
Create the perfect cover image, diagram or design in seconds with one prompt. This tool is located inside your Visme editor, so you can tap into the infinite possibilities of AI image generation when you need it most.
Here’s a remote team working agreement to get your remote employees in sync. This template comes with a balanced theme of dark gray, large white space and an orange accent. It has a geometric layout, icons and designs to provide a polished and symmetrical look.
It comes with four main sections, including introduction, communication and collaboration, work environment and conclusion, but also includes additional slides that help you to round out your working agreement in full and keep the reader engaged.
But this isn’t the only template you can use for your remote team. Visme provides a wide range of remote team templates specifically designed to help keep your remote team on track, organized and collaborative.
Need to get your tech group on the same page? Personalize this tech team working agreement template to help you identify gaps, improve meetings and improve your work culture. This working agreement template is in document format rather than a presentation and comes with a more colorful theme.
Each page comes with big and bold fonts, bright neon green or blue accents, logo placement and fun icons to add a bit of flair to your document. You can add your own logo, change the colors or use it as is.
Once you’ve finished creating your working agreement, you can control who gets to see, edit or comment on your template. Visme allows you to choose user permission or share documents privately, giving you more control and privacy when you need it most.
Watch this video to see how the sharing feature works in Visme.
Plus, when you turn your working agreement into a shareable link, you can view who's seen it or completed it in your project analytics. This is exceptionally helpful if you're a team leader who wants to ensure that everyone on your team has viewed the agreement in full.
