For many companies, the concept of team building is a long winded process that reaps unsatisfactory rewards. However, as a result of this mind set, the majority of managers who decide to put off any team bonding activities witness a staggering fall in not only their team’s progression, but also motivational levels and overall sense of companionship within the group.
In any business, teamwork is essential and can help a company to grow and develop. In addition, teamwork not only benefits your employees individually, but also affects the quality of your business by allowing workers to communicate on a comfortable yet professional level. In this article we will be taking a look at what teamwork can do for your business and how you can implement new strategic activities into your weekly and monthly working routine.
Work Efficiency
Now this first section not only refers to the quantity of work that is produced on behalf of your employees, but also the quality of work and the advantages of shared responsibility. For starters, by giving employees equal responsibility where possible and providing them with different elements of incomplete shared task, it is more likely that the task will get done quicker and with more enthusiasm.
Not only does shared responsibility encourage a sense of amity in the workplace, it also shows that you as the manager are taking into account each worker’s strengths and potential weaknesses, and using them to the company’s benefit. This is a tactic that will help to increase self-confidence in the individual and correspondingly increase contribution and productivity in the workplace.
In addition, teamwork helps to reduce the pressure placed on each employee, allowing workers to be more thorough in the tasks that they seek to complete. As the manager, you should also take into consideration employee interests and specialisations in order to help increase work efficiency and positivity in the workplace.
A good activity to consider for this section is regular meetings that occur on a weekly basis, if possible. These meetings will allow employees to bring their concerns to the table and should be treated as an open forum following a briefing of the important details you need to go over with your team. You should also use these meetings to give positive feedback and constructive criticism where necessary. This will help to prove to your team that you are fully dedicated to both the business and the well-being and progression of your employees.
Employee Relations
Teamwork is crucial in any organisation as it provides employees with an opportunity to try and bond with one another to improve relations within the team. While issuing direct responsibility will fill team members with a sense of value on the completion of different tasks, shared responsibility will allow the team to share the success of the company and encourage respect. Furthermore, you should assign collaborative tasks that will enhance trust between team members, and as a result you will witness a greater sense of cohesion.
A great activity to consider for this particular section would be to implement several team building events in the coming months. Not only do these events have the capability to increase trust and respect between team members, they also educate workers on the importance of working as a team to accomplish a common goal; a lesson that they will take back to the office and apply to all areas of work.
Increased Accountability
As a business owner, you would benefit highly from employees taking hold of their own responsibilities within the team and completing them to the best of their ability. As team members commonly show signs of not wanting to let others down, the result is greater productivity and completion of smaller, assigned tasks potentially ahead of set deadlines.
Like the first section, meetings and appraisals are a great way to monitor employee progression within the business. Not only do appraisals provide you with an honest insight into how the individual thinks they are doing so far, they also give you the opportunity to outline some of the evident weaknesses and definite strengths of the team member.
This will allow them to build on their weaknesses and continue implementing their strengths into every task. Ideally these appraisals should be done on a monthly basis where possible.
Learning Opportunities
By pushing forward full team cooperation on a project, it will provide the less experienced employees an opportunity to learn from those who have been in the company slightly longer or have more relevant experience to the project in question. Teams often contain employees that come from completely different walks of life, and as a result have a diverse range of talents and skills that they can bring to the company. Working together is a good opportunity for employees to acquire new skills that they didn’t have beforehand which can strongly benefit the business.
A tip for this section would be to start regular, specific training sessions. This way the less experienced workers can begin to be educated about the company as well as the ins and outs of different skills they could acquire that would benefit their work.