There are so many benefits that workplace teamwork brings to a business that is certainly worthwhile making it a big priority to encourage better teamwork. How you do this will vary depending on your business and the people that work in your team but there are some standard methods that businesses use to help teambuilding.
Teambuilding activity days are a popular way to start off. This could involve an outdoor pursuit day, an escape rooms style activity or even a course at the Seasoned Cookery School to get your team working well together. These kinds of activities are great for providing a fun environment for the team to get to know each other better and to develop better collaboration skills.
Here are some of the reasons that you should make workplace teamwork a priority for your business:
Teamwork makes employees feel more engaged
Employees that work well with their colleagues are generally happier in their jobs. Engaged employees are more productive employees, which is obviously going to work out better for the business. When an employee knows that they have the support of their team members and can ask them for help when they require it, they will feel a greater sense of belonging and attachment with the team and the business as a whole.
Collaboration produces efficiencies
When a team collaborates well, there are all kinds of efficiencies that will suddenly appear, seemingly out of nowhere. No matter how experienced an employee is, there will always be some skills or ideas that they can learn from another person. Sometimes just having a new set of eyes look over a particular task can bring new ideas to the table on how it could be done better.
One of the biggest wastes of resources in large companies is duplication of work and teams that work well together very rarely duplicate work. Having a regular team meeting where members share a brief overview of their current projects will give them the opportunity to discuss areas where they can work together. This is much more productive than having individuals working in silos and not knowing that someone else is working on the same task.
Collaboration can allow employees to make process improvement suggestions, or can use the range of skills within a team to better use. You might have a team that has someone who is great at Excel formulas for example, that can help others to improve their own skills in that area, which will ultimately speed up how quickly the related tasks are performed.
Teamwork is great for employee development
As well as teaching each other ‘hard’ skills like Excel, there is a range of other ‘soft’ skills that can be developed from working as a team. For example, some employees can develop leadership skills or communication skills that will help them to progress their career. When recruiting for new roles, it is important to find employees that work well in a team environment if that is how your team is set up.
Team support is good for confidence and morale
One of the many great things about teamwork is that colleagues can ask their peers for advice, so if they are not sure about a certain element of their work, they can ask for a second opinion, which will give them greater confidence in their work. It can also be very motivational to share what you are doing with another employee and to receive good and/or constructive feedback.
Your team becomes more flexible
A big risk for many organisations is key man dependencies, where if one person is on holiday or off sick, nobody else can do the work that they usually do. As you will know, this is to be avoided at all costs as it can lead to delays in projects and can cause problems with customers etc.
Teams that work closely together will understand each other’s’ roles better and are more likely to be able to competently take on tasks that their co-workers do in their absence. Some teams have a ‘buddying’ system where two people learn about all of the tasks that the other performs and vice versa to ensure there are no key man dependencies. This only applies if you have a team that has a range of very different types of roles and responsibilities. It is also good in terms of when one employee leaves the company; as you are more likely to be able to train someone from the team to undertake the tasks.
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