One of the most commonly-used jargons in the management world describes the word “TEAM” as an acronym where T represents Together,
E stands for Everyone, A signifies Achieves and M indicates More. This just underlines that businesses realize that though individual performances can lead to sharp spikes in their growth, it is teamwork and a healthy work environment that can sustain a progressive, sky-facing trajectory of growth. This isn't surprising since most of us realize that Teamwork or working together in a cohesive manner raises our individual and the organizational performance. The following are some of the most established and sometimes-ignored benefits associated with teamwork at a workplace:
Teamwork Helps in Uniting Employees
Functioning in unison to pursue a common goal is what team members abide by once they understand how to work in a team. This kind of working atmosphere brings together employees in the most fruitful manner. Despite their differences, egos and even dislike for a team member, they are forced into situations where trusting and working with others cannot be avoided. This acts as the most efficient form of team bonding. No management seminars or formal training can put employees at ease with each other like teamwork. There are many employees who are not familiar with the concept of working in harmony with others. For such folks, the presence of team members they can depend upon and the collective spirit of working together acts as a motivation to modify their approach towards work and become more cooperative.
Teamwork Raises Overall Quality of Output
Working in a team has its most transparent advantages in the form of people being able to complete assignment faster. The issue of being unable to meet deadlines is diluted once teams at workplace start performing like a well-oiled machine. Once a proper team structure is established, delegation of work, conducting quality checks, getting accurate updates and accomplishing more volumes on a daily basis is easily accomplished. Since work-related tensions are shared, responsibilities are not shrugged-off and there is lesser insecurity about being honest with one’s performance. As a result, the overall quality & speed of work tend to gallop ahead.
Teamwork Helps Employees Share Workload
A team which ensures that the workload is shared equally across its members is perhaps the best example of Teamwork being actually put to use. Office work usually means targets and deadlines. Owing to personal or professional causes, everybody tends to get side-tracked at some point. This is when the utility of teamwork becomes more apparent. The team is ready to share the burden of the team member. Once work is smartly distributed, all the team members realize that doing it competently is the team’s goal. Helping-out a team member is just one instance where teamwork helps to share the workload. There are many other workplace situations when sharing responsibilities and delegating duties helps to get things done quickly and satisfactorily.
Teamwork Contributes Towards Creating Workplace Synergy
Workplace Synergy is discussed a lot by business managers and CEOs but it seems that not even a fraction of organizations are actually able to achieve it. The challenge is often misunderstood where people assume that by removing constraints in performing more effectively and making the organizational communication transparent, synergy can be established. On the contrary, synergy at the organizational level can be achieved only when a simplistic way of work is combined with a happier workplace environment. Once the work distribution, execution and reporting structure is leaner and the hierarchical roadblocks are removed, people feel less challenged at their work. This is when employees can contribute beyond their defined role. This is when the concept of a ‘happy employee’ becomes more realistic. These objectives can be achieved by creating smaller, effective teams rather than investing in individualistic employees.
Teamwork Infuses Competitiveness without Negativity
With effective teamwork, the risk of failure or committing mistakes is shared across a greater pool of people. This doesn’t mean that people become lax in their outlook. Instead, it infuses a sense of healthier competition among the team members. Since, all team members are collectively responsible, their attention is shifted towards doing work in a more impressive manner. The decreased threat of blame helps to shift their energy towards creative pursuits at work, stimulates their ability to think outside the box and gives them the incentive to take upon self-improvement endeavors.
There are many other advantages associated with teamwork such as helping employees gaining a sense of belonging, teaching employees about collective accountability and helping employees become more accommodating towards constructive criticism. However, it takes time to weave and establish a pattern of efficient teamwork and thus, organizations should accept it as an inherent, achievable aspect of their work culture and not a philosophical goal.