5 Effective Ways To Promote Teamwork Among Employees

The saying "Teamwork makes the dream work" seems to be true in the corporate world. Multiple studies have shown that teamwork promotes productivity, enhanced quality of work, creativity, innovation, and job satisfaction in a workplace as opposed to working alone. Employees working in a team also have shown more interest and enjoyment in their tasks, require less self-regulatory efforts to complete them, and generally perform better on their assigned responsibilities.

With the importance of team culture being established now more than ever, organisations are constantly looking for ways to promote it among their employees. According to career coaching experts, here are five effective ways to cultivate team spirit among your employees.

Set Targets

To encourage your employees to work together, you must set targets, even for teams. Setting clear and achievable goals for employees will persuade them to strive and work together to achieve them. When employees depend on each other for skills, competencies, and inputs towards achieving the end goal or assigned target, it naturally influences them to work together with the others in their team- as they are all working towards a shared vision.

Reward Duly

One of the best ways to encourage teamwork and keep the team culture active among your employees is to reward the team when they meet set goals or targets. When a team is recognised, appreciated, and rewarded for their collective efforts as a unit, they are more likely to keep the team bond up and alive. They are sure to stick around and maintain their role in the team to receive similar rewards in the future. You can get the help of a career coach to design an effective reward scheme that will benefit teams within an organisation.

Set Up Team Building Activities

You can't expect employees to work together if you are not taking the initiative to encourage it regularly. This is where team-building activities can come into play. Set up team-building activities or events to promote and maintain a team-working culture. These activities don't have to be large-scale; you can start by turning an everyday meeting into team activities, setting weekly team targets, offering them a team challenge or problem to solve, etc.

Keep Communications Open

We are naturally inclined to get along and work with people we know and like better, or at least those with positive and transparent vibes. One of the main barriers to establishing a team-working culture is restricted communication, more room for misunderstandings, staff not getting along due to underlying conflict, and other reasons that often don't get spoken about.

Having open communication channels that encourage employees to talk and express their views and opinions instantly can set a warm environment for teamwork. Employees will be more open to asking for help, seeking assistance, and sharing expertise, and knowledge, which all collectively promote team energy.

Prioritise Diversity On Your Team

One significant yet overlooked mistake leaders make when creating teams is putting employees from similar backgrounds, skill levels or personalities into one. Although such homogenous teams can be more efficient and see eye to eye, assembling more diverse, counterintuitive groups can lead to more productive collaborations and boost team spirit. Diverse teams easily exchange expertise and knowledge and motivate each other with their specialised inputs cultivating a sense of togetherness and dependency.