As we return back to our offices post-pandemic, many may experience some unfamiliarity, readjusting to old routines and reconnecting with colleagues. Read on for essential tips to boost teamwork and productivity at the workplace, helping both managers and employees better communicate to build a sustainable transition to the new normal.
After massive disruptions brought on by the pandemic, people have begun to make a long overdue return back to their normal lives, routines, and workplaces. Over a third of the employed population in the Asia Pacific region reported to work from home at least once a week during the peak of Covid-19, with most preferring such flexible work arrangements.
As coming back to the office may not have been ideal for many, it has become increasingly important for employers to offer workers better benefits and incentives to make their return smooth. One of the most sustainable methods is to boost team building initiatives which facilitate a hospitable and welcoming work environment and build stronger workplace culture.
What is Good Teamwork?
There is no denying that effective teamwork is key to an organisation’s success. Good teamwork goes beyond merely measuring workplace collaboration and engagement incentives; it factors into the effectiveness of a team, enabling employees to perform at their best in unity with their colleagues.
The first step towards building effective teamwork is understanding that each individual brings their distinct sets of skills and personality to work. When devising team activities, it is important to accommodate their individuality, and as managers, acknowledge those differences. Your employees in turn will feel valued and will often reciprocate such attentiveness.
Continue reading as we spotlight six crucial tips that will help you fast-track your team-building strategies.
6 Essential Tips to Build Effective Teamwork
1. Transparency
Transparency is key to building up any team, especially at the workplace, ensuring both employees and their managers have a clear understanding of everyone’s respective responsibilities. By being transparent, one offers their team a comprehensible idea and access to the resources and information required to optimally perform.
While maintaining transparency with employees is essential to boosting engagement, collaboration, and performance, being able to facilitate this within a team is equally important. Team members need to form trusting relationships with one another to gain a better understanding of their collective tasks, always keeping in mind that an honest team is an accomplished one.
A great way to incorporate transparency is to start off with having frequent team meetings to delegate responsibilities and shared goals so that everyone can be on the same page and work together towards their objectives.
2. S.M.A.R.T Goals
Setting goals in one of the most important tasks within an enterprise, whether it’s a small company or a multinational cooperation. Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals can collectively bring the workforce together to achieve a business’ targets, and this way, employees work closer together, while efficiently and effectively accomplishing their tasks.
To ensure employees maintain a good understanding and work towards these objectives, employers can perform periodical checks and performance reviews for teams and individuals. It is important to be specific with the review guidelines for all workers to have a clear idea of their accomplishments so far, what they want to achieve in their roles, along with feedback sections on what can be improved on the employer’s end. This demonstrates that the employees are being valued and gives them autonomy to set their own goals and aspirations for their future in your company.
In addition, employers can keep raising the bar little by little to maintain the difficulty level of the goal to keep team members motivated and inspired to accomplish more.
3. Recognition
Showing recognition and appreciation of employees’ achievements and milestones, big or small, plays a pivotal role in building a sense of togetherness at the workplace. Not only does this bring the team closer together, but it also allows your team members to feel validated and enabled in their roles, empowering them to push beyond their goals.
Employers should feel obligated to applaud their workers’ hard work and commitment to their collective vision, and by doing so, they create a positive corporate culture through employee recognition and humanising the workforce. Remember, most employees value genuine appraisal over monetary rewards.
4. Communicate Through a Unified Channel
To effectively ensure teamwork and good communication is established within a department, it is paramount to have a unified and consistent channel for most or even all forms of internal communications. Working from home, many may have used multiple channels for their day-to-day communications, however, abundant and disorganised information can lead to the employees questioning their responsibilities as well as those of others.
To maintain a positive work environment and keep the team morale high it is important to keep the team in touch with their roles, responsibilities, and hold them accountable. Furthermore, in order to improve teamwork within the workplace, managers should encourage employees to respect others’ roles.
For efficient flow of information, employers can make use of chat apps, email platforms, and other meeting tools, and assign each channel a dedicated purpose.
5. Empower Your Employees
Delegating power to your employees can help improve teamwork, increase its effectiveness, as well as improve morale and productivity. As an employer, empower your workers with the ability to make decisions which will essentially boost their confidence, give them autonomy, and reinforce their roles and responsibilities within the organisation and their respective teams.
Empowered employees are more likely to work collectively as a whole-team when given the opportunity to communicate their versions of a goal, as this allows them to feel heard and work towards a shared objective as a team. Effective delegation of decision-making is important to facilitate teamwork- rather than fixating on a person’s working ability, one should help them share work responsible for team tasks. 
6. Respectful Communication
Employers need to understand that each individual has a distinct way of communicating, and with too many strong personalities in one place, it can be challenging to navigate conversations and disagreements. Respectful communication holds more value than simply just responding kindly to your colleagues- it is vital to building a healthy and supportive work environment. Both management and employees should take an active role in ensuring effective and respectful communication.
To achieve this, Human Resources (HR) should provide team building and conflict management workshops. Moreover, change begins with upper management, so lead by example – observing respectful interactions from an employer will encourage workers to follow suit and apply these communication methods with their team. Without a doubt, effective teamwork is achieved when every member feels valued, respected, and empowered to work together as a whole unit.
It is essential to foster an open and inclusive work environment that will facilitate effective teamwork. By doing so, businesses can achieve optimal productivity levels that will enable them to further innovate and scale their companies. It is essential that managers incorporate functional teamwork strategies into their workplaces, to keep their employees motivated, driven, happy, and most importantly, all together as one!
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