Teamwork is the best way to ensure the success of your organization these days. If you do not have a cohesive team that works well together, this can seriously affect the productivity of your company. With rewards, recognition, and bonus systems singling out the achievements of individual employees, team members tend to focus on personal goals rather than what is best for the entire group. Getting your staff to stop thinking of each other as competitors and start working together is not easy, but it is important if you want to be a powerful force in your business. Benefits of team building include:
Team effectiveness– Teams are more successful in implementing complex plans and strategies when they work well as a unit. Dividing the work into responsibility areas, a team can tackle more projects more efficiently than a group of individuals.
Problem-solving– Cohesive teams come up with more creative solutions because they can network and brainstorm. When team members can bounce ideas off each other, they arrive at solutions that could not have been brought to the forefront by one person. The long haul– If you have one person who is responsible for a project, the loss of that person can cripple its success. When you rely on a team, the loss of one individual may be difficult, but the work of the team will continue.
As a manager, you can plan a corporate event outside the office for a fun-filled day of team-building exercises. Weekly team lunches or drinks after work are a fantastic way to bond a team together. Most importantly, organizing a team day, specifically outlining roles, responsibilities and team goals is an excellent approach to ensure you are building a strong team that understands what they have to do to work towards your company’s objectives.
Sandra Summerhayes & Associates, an independent consulting agency that focuses on employee, team and organizational development, designs and delivers training sessions and seminars for various organizations throughout Ontario. Her team works closely with businesses to help them improve their working environments by identifying departmental gaps and then creating and executing action plans. For more information about Sandra Summerhayes & Associates visit www.sandrasummerhayes.com.
