About 75% of employees find teamwork an essential quality in the workplace essentially because almost 50% of the tasks must be done collaboratively. This is the main reason why teamwork must be promoted in the workplace.
Promoting teamwork is not just about grouping people together and expecting them to do the job. Teamwork is a collective trait that requires every team member to work on.
Everything starts with how you value teamwork.
Importance of Promoting Teamwork in the Workplace
Teamwork, in the simplest sense, refers to the quality of the members of the organization coming together and working toward a common goal as a team. Whether it is done in-person or online, such team dynamics is a critical element in the success of a company.
As the teams become more diverse and dynamic especially when handling different work challenges, teamwork is what pushes the employees to work together on a certain task by uniting all their skills and abilities in a single situation.
Promoting teamwork in the workplace offers numerous benefits that can open doors for personal and professional development.
Let’s discuss each of these benefits here.
Boosting of Office Morale
Statistics say that high employee turnover is often caused by low office morale, which then affects the way employees engage with their respective colleagues and the way they handle several tasks.
A highly engaged workplace increases 21% of profitability and 75% of engagement. High engagement in the workplace entails promoting teamwork.
Making frequent check-ins in terms of the colleague’s personal and professional status of the day, helping the colleague find the root cause of their problem, and letting them become clear about their vision boost the employees’ perception of work and their own value.
Minimizing Work Stress and Pressure
Stress and pressure are usually associated with employees being isolated in their work environment.
Working with a team allows employees to have one another to share stories, emotions, and ideas with, especially when topics are important and relevant to the task at hand.
Psychologically, having someone to talk with while being under pressure in the workplace helps ease the tension and stress. Consequently, teamwork keeps everyone in check with regard to their emotional states and serves themselves as an instrument in helping their colleagues overcome stress in the workplace.
Producing Efficient Work
Like an art masterpiece, teamwork lets the team members make a great and remarkable masterpiece in a time-efficient manner. This does not only mean that the time is emphasized; instead, the quality of work is also enhanced.
Through promoting teamwork, employees become solution-oriented and collaborate together in order to produce innovative pieces of work that will address the company’s vision and problems.
As all jigsaw puzzle pieces come together, teamwork entails the proper combination of strategic and collaborative thinking that lets the members accomplish the tasks efficiently.
Embracing Unity in Diversity
The workplace is composed of diverse groups of nationalities and people. Consequently, there are barriers present that inhibit the way people communicate and understand the intended pieces of messages that should be disseminated to others.
We cannot deny the fact that discrimination and stereotyping are still present in the workplace, and promoting teamwork eases this situation and gives the opportunity for team members to remove this mentality that might affect the quality of work.
Promoting teamwork in the workplace fosters objective thinking and lets the employees focus more on their work rather than the personal qualities of others.
Having a Good Support System
85% of the employees are finding a workplace that facilitates growth and engagement. As reducing employee turnover, promoting teamwork is an essential quality in giving the employees an opportunity to foster more support systems that they can lean on whenever they encounter challenges in and out of the workplace.
As employees make use of teams to accomplish tasks, they get to know more of their colleagues and determine ways on how they can be of support whenever someone needs help.
Individual and Group Accountability
Promoting teamwork does not only speak of the group tasks, but this relays the tasks that should be done in an individual and collaborative manner.
Teamwork produces a spirit of individual and group accountability. For managers, teamwork in the workplace becomes more convenient because everyone gets to have a share in accomplishing a task.
Not only group accountability, but it lets the groups also have individual accountability where the individual tasks serve as a prerequisite in attaining the overall group task.
Collective Intelligence
Through promoting teamwork, all members in the group are working at the same time despite the differences of learning preferences and the way employees attain several tasks in a strategic manner.
It may seem dynamic, but all differences of the employees in terms of thinking merge together in order to finish a certain piece of work. With a collaborative manner of gathering ideas, there is a collective intelligence that addresses a certain problem that is present in the workpiece.
Boosting Productivity
Aside from having an efficient quality of work, promoting teamwork in the workplace boosts productivity. As the tasks are increasing because of the increasing demands of the clients and company, there is a need to handle different action items within a team.
Employees giving frequent reminders to their colleagues, progress charts, brainstorming sessions, and feedback among team members are some of the ways that boost productivity.
Resolving Conflicts
We cannot avoid the fact that conflict is sometimes present in the workplace. Like in a game, a misunderstanding happens in the team but it is immediately resolved because of the immediacy in solving the different problems posed during the game.
Through promoting teamwork, the team members are not just taught how to resolve conflicts but what skills are required in order to resolve a certain conflict present while the employees are accomplishing the necessary tasks in the workplace.
Through teamwork, everyone develops conflict resolution skills necessary in de-escalating issues before they get too out of hand.
Ways to Promote Teamwork in the Workplace
As the tasks become more complicated in the workplace, promoting teamwork is an essential quality that is ought to make employees get accountable while accomplishing a challenging task.
The numerous ways of promoting teamwork in the workplace entail the right actions that you should exercise in order to continuously produce good consequences while handling decisions and tasks.
Eradicate Prejudice
We are not in the workplace to discriminate against other people in terms of their personal qualities, but we are in the workplace in order to work and accomplish the necessary tasks.
The first way of promoting teamwork is to eradicate prejudice. You can make use of team-building activities or group dynamic sessions where everyone understands the qualities of their colleagues and knows more of them.
Establish Frequent Brainstorming Sessions
Problems in the workplace are already solved collaboratively. With this, you need to establish frequent brainstorming sessions in order to also give an avenue of letting other employees express what they truly feel about an idea.
When having this way of promoting teamwork, do not kill the perception of creativity in the employees’ minds. Remember, all are creative but the perception differs. Make sure to organize the ideas properly to enhance the visualization of ideas.
Entice the Harmonious Way of Sharing Ideas
Prevail the quality of letting one speak before the other. In promoting teamwork in the workplace, intellectual noises really happen.
The way of encouraging a harmonious manner of sharing ideas is to not let anyone interrupt when someone is expressing the idea. Let everyone share, and then gather some consensus when making a decision.
The correct way of facilitating ideas plays a crucial role in addressing different work tasks.
Be Open-Minded
By promoting teamwork, do not be close-minded. Be open to suggestions and comments always.
As the adage says, “A closed mind is a dying mind”, make sure that everyone gets to share their ideas that will contribute to the necessary things that are addressed in the workplace.
Learn the proper skill of listening and taking note of the ideas that are asserted by your respective colleagues.
Establish the Right Work Environment
A great work environment sets the atmosphere for creativity, especially when your people need to always be in the moment of crafting ideas that will cater to the different problems and challenges of the tasks given to each of them.
Make sure that when establishing the right work environment that lets the employees appreciate and support teamwork, the work environment should be free of distractions and encourage open thinking of all members of the team.
The work environment lays a strong foundation in the way employees think; hence, make sure that the work environment is set up for promoting teamwork in the workplace.
Provide Recognition
Everyone in the team is reinforced to do more when the team allocates a separate session where everyone is recognized for the enormous efforts they have exerted.
Promoting this activity reminds the team members about their individual contributions to the success of the entire organization.
