Teamwork is Essential to the Success of Your Business

It’s undeniable that employees have the power to make or break a business. If your employees aren’t able to work together, the consequences of their actions could negatively impact your bottom line. What’s worse is it could harm your reputation. It’s imperative that your employees learn to work well together, and that they strive to achieve common goals. If they do this, efficiency will improve and productivity goals will be met.

Teamwork is a Skill

It begins during the hiring stage. If you hire employees that are team players, you won’t have to provide so much training later on. Your best bet is to seek out staffing solutions, and ask the professional staffer to eliminate any potential candidates who don’t list teamwork as a skill. It’s the goal of the professional staffer to provide you with employees that are efficient and productive, so the interview process will grill the candidate on their experience and worthiness.

Mull over your current employees, and determine who among them are leaders, who are good team players, and who could benefit from team-building exercises. Charge the leaders with directing groups, and ensure teams have a good mix of characters.

How to Boost Teamwork

It’s not difficult to cultivate teamwork in an employee who already has the skill. It takes legwork to build the skill up in an employee that prefers to work on his own. The secret to cultivating teamwork in these shy employees is to show them how both teamwork and originality are valued in individuals, as well as on a group level.

You could offer a reward system. The teams that perform the best will receive a group award, and the individual within the group who worked the hardest will receive an individual prize. It’s important that everyone on the team is still valued as an individual, so that when employees come together to tackle a group project the experience is harmonious.  

Ensure your employees understand that there is no room for skirmishes. If bad feelings between employees arise, it should be dealt with swiftly. These occurrences may require employees be swapped from one team to another. If communication is honest and respectful (and coworkers feel comfortable to express their opinions), the skirmish should be ironed out rather quickly.

Frequent team meetings are a great way to build confident relationships. Issues, such as perspective goals and productivity, can be discussed in a welcoming environment. All teams can come together to share ideas and opinions, and all expressed ideas and opinions should be valued. Compliments for a job well done can also be expressed at these meetings, and they go a long way in building employee confidence.

Maintaining Teamwork for the Long-Term

Remember when Walmart came under fire for how the corporation treated and paid its employees? The corporation’s employees were disgruntled, and they told the media their average salaries and all about the poor working conditions. It can be assumed these employees complained to their superiors before going to the media, but those concerns were widely ignored.

The lesson here is to not ignore your employees. If you find they’re consistently complaining about an aspect of their job, do something about it. Walmart waited to give their employees a 40 percent raise until after the corporation’s reputation was extremely damaged. It’s highly unlikely Walmart will be remembered for this wage increase, and more likely the company will be remembered for the terrible way it treated its employees.

Teamwork is an essential component for business success; among its most beneficial advantages are creativity, productivity, efficiency, and trust-building. It should be taken very seriously, and if it is taken seriously, it can be maintained for the long-term.