Importance of Teamwork on the Job

 By Kobe Eru Godwin

Teamwork, when properly channelled, is an invaluable strategy in any organisation. It is often said that the word TEAM means Together Everybody Achieves More and those words couldn’t be any truer. The idea of teamwork basically refers to the cooperative effort put in by members of a partnership, business or company towards achieving a common goal. Apart from the fact that teamwork ensures optimized output in an organization, there are several other advantages of promoting team spirit on the job. A number of these benefits are discussed below. 1. Enhances interpersonal relationship amongst workers: teamwork is one highly effective means to breaking the ice among co-workers. When employees are made to work together as a team, communication and understanding improves between them and this will in turn reflect on the quality of their work. Also, working as a team helps employees to identify minor communication variations among their colleagues and closer teammates are soon able to pick up on subtle inflections and non-verbal communication cues that may otherwise go undetected. Improved communication between members of a team can have a profound effect on the team’s overall performance, and the entire organization can benefit from teamwork that leads to better communication. 2. Collection of innovative ideas: Aside from enhancing communication, a team is the best place for harnessing the originality of each employee. By the time each member of the team comes up with his or her unique idea or contribution, you find that a task that would otherwise have been herculean if handled by an individual becomes a work-over being handled by a team. This saves the company overall time and breeds some level of intellectual respect among members of the team. 3. Reduces redundancy within the workforce: Every organization always has that employee who somehow always skips doing his/her duty. There are also the ones who are annoyingly slow and always need to be dragged along. As a result, you find scenarios in which one side of the workforce is overworked while the other seems to always have a lot of spare time. Such situations can be effectively handled by introducing team work. By the time responsibilities are delegated to each and every member and timelines are given, everyone is challenged to bring out their best and the stronger ones can always make up for the lapses of weaker members. 4. Organizational interests get placed ahead of personal interests: One of the salient benefits of teamwork is the fact that it forces employees to place organizational interests ahead of personal ones. Since individuals do not work alone on the team, there are hardly situations where decision making rests solely on them. As such, there is no question of whose interest should come first on the team; the company’s naturally always does. 5. Targets/goals are easily achieved: when individual resources are harnessed through team work, organizational targets and goals are not only achieved, but sometimes even surpassed. The time it would normally take for a single individual to complete certain tasks can be greatly reduced if handled by a team. Not only is time saved on a team, overall efficiency is increased and all these put together optimizes output and helps the organization meet and beat targets. Though teamwork carries numerous benefits for organizations, managers and supervisors must provide a backdrop for employees when encouraging a team-centric culture. There will be teams in which members just don’t get along and this can quickly result in ineffective work units. Conversely, team mates can get on too well, thus developing an unserious attitude toward the job. To combat these issues, managers must spot discord or detrimental over-familiarities and shuffle team assignments and members as the need arises. Furthermore, managers and supervisors should bear in mind that team work does not in any way discharge them of their duties as regards setting goals. This is because team members must have clear cut objectives in order to efficiently focus their efforts. In all, team work must be encouraged in the workplace as it builds up the bond among employees and ensures that targets are met at a faster pace.