Getting your team to work well together has many types of benefits. From increased productivity to better team morale, teamwork is worth investing time and money into for the long-term results you will gain.
Creating an environment where teamwork is encouraged will drive many benefits for the business but there are many different ways to achieve this. Arranging offsite teamwork activities such as a variety of cookery courses or treasure hunts are one way to get your team working together. Or setting up projects that will require collaboration across the team also works well. Here are some of the benefits that teamwork brings in terms of workplace success:
Collaborative working and creativity
Collaborative working is proven to improve creativity within employees and it is also great for development. Employees can learn new skills from one another and also develop key skills like negotiation and organisation in a group. Less experienced employees can learn a lot from their more experienced co-workers but that does not mean that it doesn’t work the other way too. Sometimes when someone has been in a job for a long time, they find it hard to look at tasks from a different perspective, so working with a team can present opportunities for this to happen.
Different skills can blend together for greater output
Across a large team, you will usually find that there are a lot of different skills and also weaknesses. By bringing employees that complement each others’ skills together, they can overcome challenges that they may not have been able to individually without the help of others. For example, one employee could be great at analysis and the other is good at writing reports, the combination of those two skillsets would result in a higher standard of report.
More business efficiencies
A team that works closely and communicates well together are more likely to benefit from efficiencies. Talking to each other about problems can quickly find solutions, rather than one employee sitting trying to work out a solution alone for hours. Other benefits from team communication include ensuring that work is not duplicated. Sometimes tasks can overlap in terms of responsibilities; so good, clear communication can reduce that risk of duplication and wasted hours of work. Business efficiencies can drive significant cost savings, so it is definitely worth discovering what improved team collaboration can bring to your business. A small suggestion from a colleague outside of a project could lead to an improved process that reduces workload and saves unnecessary costs. An example of this is someone introducing a way of using technology to speed up a process, or removing an unnecessary step in a task.
Support from peers provides motivation
It is not just leaders that can motivate others, employees can help to motivate their peers, either through supporting them or even leading by example in terms of their behaviour/attitude. When employees feel isolated, it can be hard to find motivation but when they feel that others in the team support them, it can give them a real boost of morale and motivation. Employees that suffer from low self esteem may particularly benefit from seeing other members of the team do well and start to believe more in their own capabilities.
Achieving team goals increase sense of accomplishment
A team can achieve much greater things than one single individual and it is easier to see the impact of a successful project when you see the team output rather than the smaller tasks that one person has completed. Having team goals also can encourage employees to work harder to ensure that they do not let others down.
Improves networking opportunities
In larger companies, working across bigger teams can lead to improved networking, which can raise the profile of teams and individuals within a large business. Cross-team working can introduce new ideas and concepts that may not have been thought of, or had not been tried yet.
Employee retention
When an employee feels part of the team, with colleagues that they enjoy working with, they are more likely to feel happy in their job and therefore are more likely to stay working for the company. Recruiting new staff is a very costly process and one that can easily be avoided by keeping employees happy – creating a united team is one of the great ways of doing this, as well as making the employee feel valued for their work.
