One of the most important elements to a company’s short term and long term success is team work. If the different employees within your firm are unable to properly collaborate, it will be doubtful any project will turn into a success.
Unfortunately, teamwork doesn’t come naturally to everyone. However, there are things you can do to address this. Below are a few ways you can help your employees learn how to work together.
1. Build Your Company Culture around Teamwork
Fostering teamwork should begin with the basic building blocks of your company. Try to ingrain collaboration into your company culture and make it part of your mission statement. Make sure everyone in the organization from entry level employees to upper management knows that one of your core focuses is on teamwork. Design your office around giving employees the ability to effectively collaborate together, and allow management to give the authority to do so.
2. Use Outside Training Exercises
You also need to get your employees to relate to each other socially outside of the context of work. If you can get them to work as a team outside of the office, it is more likely they will be able to collaborate effectively while in the office.
Make sure the training exercise you plan is something fun. Your employees shouldn’t feel like they are at work. They should be having a good time. A good choice is something like the Houdini’s Room Escape attraction in Cincinnati, Ohio. This attraction has three different rooms in which employees must work together to figure out how to escape. It was in fact designed by military personnel to foster good teamwork.
3. Implement Collaboration Software
Another thing you should seriously consider is investing in collaboration software. This is software that is designed around allowing a team to work together on a project in a digital work space.
There are many programs to choose from with different features that can benefit your employees. You can use such a program to allow employees who don’t work together in the same department or even building to contribute to the same project. Tasks can be designated, files can be shared, comments can be exchanged and consensus can be reached.
Overall, teamwork is extremely important to the success of any business. A direct link can be made between a company’s competitive advantages and the ability of its personnel to collaborate on important projects. Try to build teamwork and collaboration at every level of your company.
