Cutting Administrative Overhead

In the world of team happiness, it's often the boring admin tasks that get people down. As a leader in an engineering team, particularly in an early-stage startup where roles overlap, it's really important to protect your engineers from needless red tape and make things run as smoothly as possible.

How Admin Can Drag You Down

Admin headaches, like tracking vacations, waiting for expense repayments, complicated referral processes, or useless meetings, can really damage your team's spirit. Good leaders can spot these problems and take action to get rid of them.

Stay in the Loop With Your Team

As the team leader, you need to know what's bothering your team, especially when it comes to admin tasks and procedures. One way to find out is by carrying out regular surveys. Just asking simple things like, "What's the worst part of your day?" or "What tool do you wish we used but don't?" can reveal a lot.

Save Time, Boost Happiness

When leaders tackle and get rid of these "time wasters," they're not just making the team more efficient – they're also making their jobs more satisfying. Nick Caldwell, who's in charge of engineering at Twitter, suggests adding a "time wasters" question to your regular surveys, and then assigning a team to deal with the issues that come up.

As an engineering leader, you should:

• Solve all kinds of problems, not just those specific to engineering.
• Regularly identify and get rid of activities that waste time.
• Keep a close watch on your team's mood and respond appropriately.

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