7 Progressive Tips to Improve Teamwork In The Workplace

The progress of humankind has always depended on cooperation and working together as a team. This has led us to achieve many incredible feats, and the same continues even today. The rapid globalization of businesses has now increased the demand for a high-performance workforce to stay competitive. As a result of this, teamwork has now become one of the most followed organizational cultures.

Every business leader now desires to implement effective teamwork in the workplace. They want their employees to minimize individual working and register active participation in their jobs more like a team player. But ultimately, it all depends on the employees about how they perceive each other and how they can support other members of the team with their varying skills and experiences.

This is one of the most important parts that shape the entire process of implementing successful teamwork in the organization. And here, the HR leaders should take every possible measure to connect the missing dots between the employees by exercising team development initiatives.

Thus, to help the HR leaders and managers create an environment for supporting teamwork and maintain their employees’ job satisfaction, I have listed down the following few points.

Let’s get started!

7 Ways to Optimize Teamwork and Create a Better Team Environment in the Workplace

1. Set Clear Goals and Resonate Your Organizations’ Vision

When we talk about teamwork, it signifies a group of individuals (in our scenario, the employees) who support each other for achieving the mutual target.

Here, the mutual target is bringing success to your organization. But do you think just by telling your teams that they need to achieve this and that tasks by the end of the week or month would be enough to make them work as a team?

Definitely not!

You’re just asking your teams to get the work done, but you’re not conveying how it will impact the organization. In such a case, the team will treat it as a usual job without caring much.

As a manager, it’s upon your shoulders to communicate with your teams and explain the bigger picture associated with their works. Moreover, you should clearly state the team goals to help them devise better plans for completing the tasks at hand.

2. Emphasize on Establishing Strong Internal Communication

The core of teamwork lies in the quality of internal communication amongst your employees.

When your employees are working as a team, the only thing that will decide if they’ll succeed is how well they communicate with each other. If the team members do not share their ideas, thoughts, and progress regarding the task at hand, the entire team may end up proceeding in the wrong direction.

Especially if there are new joiners who are a part of the team, they might refrain from letting out their thoughts. This kind of issue may also persist if any one member of the team is overpowering others. Hence, being a manager, you must check on such acts and take appropriate measures to break the ice between team members. Also, whenever you mail your teams, include some amazing teamwork quotes in it to remind them of their purpose.

3. Focus More on Peer Recognition

Being an HR leader, you would have several other responsibilities. As such, you might often miss out on taking note of the excellent work done by any of the team members. Their efforts shouldn’t go unnoticed just because you aren’t there, but the other team members have seen it all. Hence, you should focus on integrating a mode of peer recognition.

When peers acknowledge their colleagues, they feel elated, and it also gives them instant gratification for their contribution. Apart from this, it also keeps everyone in the team cheerful, encouraging them to do even better. It makes them feel their worth and keeps them connected to the greater goal.

4. Host Team Development Activities

Team building activities play a significant role in boosting teamwork. These activities provide a stage for all the employees to present their problem-solving skills and share their experiences with others. It is a great opportunity for all team members to learn from each other and solve high-level problems when they’re given any complex task.

However, HR leaders must take also note of a few points when they are creating team-building activities. Team exercises are also a great icebreaker as it demands the active involvement of every team member. It teaches the participants how to keep their differences aside and focus on the common goal.

You can even host virtual team-building activities if your teams consist of remote employees. Doing so will help you mitigate the feeling of isolation of your remote workers and elevate their work experience.

Similar Articles: List Of Best Icebreaker Questions For Work

5. Give up Micro-Management Practices

Another important thing that HR managers need to know for optimizing teamwork is that they should stop micro-managing. It is necessary to provide guidance and support from time to time but constantly nagging to get the job done could be a big turn-off for your teams.

When you’ve teams working together on different aspects of a project you should give them some space to create their own strategies. It’ll allow the team members to come up with creative and out of the box ideas that could help them solve various problems.

The main purpose of creating teams is to effectively distribute complex tasks and letting them control it to produce better results at the end.

6. Create a Culture of Collaboration, Not Competition

The ultimate goal of teamwork is to foster collaboration but sometimes it might turn into a competition when you’ve multiple teams. Employers often make the mistake of comparing teams with each other which is indeed a terrible practice.

Each team has got its own set of responsibilities and members with unique skill sets. If you’re comparing them with someone else, it’s like disregarding them and their work. It affects team morale and brings down their motivation when they see you praising others. This also gives rise to internal conflicts within the teams that hinder progress.

Hence, you must refrain from creating any sort of competition amongst your teams and encourage inter-team communication.

7. Review Team Performance and Extend Support

Keeping a close eye on the performance of your teams should be one of the top priorities of an HR leader. Here I’m not saying that you should ask for daily reports from the team leaders but see if they can keep up the constant workflow.

There could be times when any of your teams could be facing issues that could be both technical, or maybe any of the members might have some personal matters for which they’re not able to contribute much. In such cases, you should be more considerate and interact more with the team members to find a feasible solution. When you extend support to your teams, it firmly establishes your leadership stature. At the same time, it fills them with the confidence that they need to overcome any obstacle in their path.

The Bottomline

Teamwork is all about bringing in your employees and helping them set the tune with each other. The above were some of the points that I believe an HR leader should consider if they want to take teamwork in their workplace to greater heights.

However, if you feel I have missed any point and would like to add it, we would love to hear your thoughts.

Working as a SEO Analyst and Content Marketer at Vantage Circle, Angshuman always stays curious and is passionate about learning new things. Got any question? Drop a mail at editor@vantagecircle.com