Promote teamwork in the work environment
Promote teamwork in the work environment
It is clear and clear, dear HR specialist. What has been shown by experience is that organizations benefit when their employees work together in a synergistic manner.
Good teamwork helps build morale in the workplace, which increases business efficiency and ultimately makes employees more productive. For organizations that promote a culture of teamwork, problem solving will be easier because people with different skills and knowledge will work together to produce a creative solution that fits the organization's resources.
The lack of a good teamwork culture in the work environment makes it difficult to progress as an organization and ultimately to avoid hurting its goals and achieving its endeavors. In fact, 86% of employees and executives report that workplace failures are a direct result of a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication. Therefore, dear reader, continue reading this article with us in order to learn about the types of work teams, the skills needed in effective work teams, the advantages of promoting a culture of teamwork in the organization and how to promote this.
Types of work teams:
- Project teams:
They are also known as limited time teams that are mainly organized to complete tasks.
- Permanent teams:
It is also known to be responsible within the current organizational units.
- MULTIFUNCTIONAL TEAMS:
They are teams made up of people from different functional areas within the organization, for example (marketing, engineering, sales, and human resources). These teams take many forms, but are often set up as work groups designed to make decisions at a lower level than the usual ones in a particular organization.
Effective team work skills
These are some of the effective skills that must be available in the work team and are divided into two parts: -
a. Task-focused team skills:
- Organization and planning skills.
- Decision-making skills.
- Problem solving skills
b. Team skills that focus on the process:
- Communication skills.
- The ability to build relationships.
- Persuasion and influence skills.
- Feedback skills
- Skills in chairing meetings.
- Settlement of disputes.
- Pros of working in a team
- division of labor.
- shared responsibility.
- Looking at things from different angles.
- Enhance communication.
- Improve leadership traits.
- Promote teamwork
- Define roles
If there is any ambiguity regarding roles and responsibilities, it is impossible for employees to work together effectively. Even worse, you may end up with cases where employees are unfairly delegating their work to others creating resentment.
To combat this, it is important that roles and responsibilities are clearly documented. These documents should be accessible to all, so that team members can refer to them if there is a conflict of opinion on obligations.
To avoid confusion, each new employee should be referred to these documents as part of their onboarding process. This is especially important when preparing staff.
While it is not necessary for employees to know the exact responsibilities of each person in the organization, employee responsibilities should be crystal clear to their immediate teammates.
It is worth mentioning that you can create a booklet for each team in the organization, detailing goals, roles and projects, which greatly helps in the progress of work and explains how and when each individual contributes.
- Setting goals
All the goals of the organization should be clear to employees. This should be done through periodic meetings, whether weekly, monthly or quarterly. If an organization does not have clearly defined and measurable goals, it will affect all team communication and make it difficult to keep everyone moving in the same direction.
- Enhance communication
Good communication is the essence of teamwork, so you find that excellent work teams have good communication among their members and their members are often happy to share and exchange ideas with each other.
This does not mean that team members always agree, but they are able to communicate through their differences to find a sound solution and keep moving forward as a team.
Therefore, enabling good communication is as follows: -
Be clear: set the tone for communication between the team. When is it okay to call someone after office hours? How often should the whole team meet? This outline will help keep everyone on the same page.
Listening: Communication is as much about listening as it is about talking. Make sure you listen to your fellow team members and actually study their ideas before providing your solutions and inputs.
Method: There are many ways to communicate between team members but try to use the most appropriate tool to communicate your specific needs, whether it's by email, chat tool, phone call, or face-to-face.
The rule of touch: encourage informal meetings, information sharing, and gathering among team members. Excellent team members are comfortable communicating with each other when needed.
- Rewarding flag teams
Employees who receive recognition and reward, whether financial, moral or in-kind, from their organization are happy employees. Experiments, studies and surveys have shown this. Therefore, if you want a happier and stronger team, you must recognize the efforts of deserving employees, honor them and reward them for their excellence in order to motivate them and encourage those who perform poorly.
- Focus on strengths
Focusing on the weaknesses of your team members can seriously affect engagement and thus lower team productivity. According to research, employees who focus on their strengths every day are six times more productive and engaged than others. Therefore, one of the most important pillars of a good team leader is to focus on the strengths of individuals and to combine employees who have complementary skills to complete tasks.
In conclusion, dear reader, you should know that working in a team is somewhat mandatory in many cases, but working well and effectively in a team is optional.
Learning how to do this effectively and implementing all of the above among your colleagues is the best way to make sure you're on your way to reaching your goals while creating a great work environment.