Technological developments have brought about great impacts on the world evidenced by constant and unexpected changes in the environment. These effects have been felt in the business circles with an increase in competition. Many businesses have found themselves in stiff and breath-taking competition.
On the same note, this kind of environment requires any ambitious business organisation to utilise its resources well so that it can remain productive as well effective. Therefore, in this fast changing world, most organisations have resorted to increase their levels of production especially by team building at workplace.
To achieve this, they have applied various methods of motivating their workers who are by far and large, are able to use their abilities and work harder and make achieving of high goals in that organization a reality (Gupta & Shaw, 1998, p. 28). Such efforts by employees have also been found to be instrumental towards workers’ satisfaction at workplace.
In addition to motivation, many organizations have adopted collaborative working patterns whereby various team building exercises have been devised by organisations in order to boost the working morale of employees. The teams come together to perform a specific tasks and responsibilities (Appelbaum, Serena & Shapiro, 2004, p.5). Teams in an organization would include management team, project team, work team and so on.
These teams are motivated in a number of ways to work together and achieve impressive results. Some of the ways include actions to satisfy their needs, monetary incentives, rewards and punitive measures where necessary (Kohn, 1998 p. 30).
Today, many organizations owe their success to teamwork since workers are motivated when they achieve great goals set forth by the organisation over and above some personal rewards and recognition that they may earn.
The practice of team work has been established in several workplaces and has proved to be not only effective in managing organisations but also a prudent measure of assessing the performance of employees and growth of an organisation (Proctor & Currie 2002 p. 306).
This is an indication of its prevalence and its effectiveness in management and successful operations of an organisation. It is important to note that for a business to grow, work performance should be regularly assessed, evaluated and improved where necessary (Findlay et al., 2000, p.1552).
A team is a group of individuals, who share roles and duties towards achieving the same goal while each team member is interdependent in their duties and are embedded in social systems like corporations or business units (McCabe,1990, p.204). In HRM, teamwork has been found to be beneficial due to the myriad gains it brings to the business.
One of the dominant reasons why managers would prefer their employees to work as a team is motivation of group members. According to Wiley (1997), the attitude of employees while performing a particular task is largely influenced by the nature of team work spirit (Wiley, 1997 p.279). Hence, it is important to create an environment that is conducive enough while forming cohesive teams.
For instance, the respective teams constituted by an organisation should be source of motivation for employees rather than just pulling efforts together. In addition, the author argues that most employers may not be keen in finding out other possible employees can be motivated over and above using monetary incentives.
The way employees behave and respond to their various duties depends on the nature of motivation they obtain while working as a team.
The theory of motivation looks into how to motivate an employee, how that motivation will influence how he behaves and the output of work. It tries to describe ways of motivating workers to work harder to satisfy their own needs as well as attain company goals (Wiley, 1997 p.279).
There are numerous ways today of motivating workers in an organization. These ways or methods include ongoing learning, team based rewards, trust, 360-degree feedback, leadership, justice, empowerment, monetary incentives and so on (Herzberg, 1987, p.90).
Teamwork can be understood in several ways. Firstly, it forms the basic unit of an organization and brings about high levels of production. It is therefore important that an organization know how and where to put teams depending on the wide range of responsibilities that the company has (Proctor & Currie, 2002, p.306).
There are various types of teams in an organization such as project teams, work teams, management teams and so on (Findlay et al., 2000 p.1552). Also, there are teams that perform autonomous work like the self managed work teams (SMWT) and the autonomous work group (AWG). In comparison, work teams that have been formed voluntarily perform better and are highly motivated than non voluntary groups.
An employee’s attitude towards teamwork greatly affects the success of an organization. An organization will fail to realize a certain goal if employees resist teamwork (Proctor & Currie, 2002 p.306).
This will win the attitudes of the employees and as a predictor, will work towards building teamwork in the organisation. Therefore this indicates that organizational outcomes are based on the trust that exists between the management of an organization and the employees (Kirkman, Jones & Shapiro, 2000, p. 74).
The performance of small groups within an organisation is a key ingredient to the overall output of the entire organisation. Hence, the success of any organisation heavily relies on the individual output of small teams that constitute departments or divisions within an organisation. Increased productivity has been directly linked to group efficacy in an organisation.
Besides, there are other group dynamics elated to group efficacy that may also contribute positively to the growth of an organisation (Paterson, 2010 p.10). Most studies have also revealed that group dynamics derive a lot of benefit from efficacy and the overall effectiveness of a group. Although leadership style in an organisation is paramount in driving groups, leadership satisfaction may not necessarily be affected by group efficacy.
One of the most powerful ways through which groups can increase their efficacy and effectiveness is through team building exercises. It is worth noting organisations with high employee base coupled with diverse values may be cumbersome to manage.
In order to improve the productivity of employees working in various departments, team work is indeed paramount. It may not be easy to harmonise different groups to work collectively and still appreciate their contribution and usefulness (Beeson, 2011, p.16). Therefore, team building exercise is duly necessary to improve the efficacy of teams.
Team work is a very important organizational practice and behaviour that is highly recommended for any organisation seeking to boost its performance. The essence behind any team building and team work strategy is that when employees work or pull together towards achieving a common goal, it is more likely that the organisation will realize a much faster growth compared to when they pull in different directions.
Hence, the concept of team building can be described as an organizational behaviour and practice that attempts to bring employees together as one cohesive team that works to achieve a common objective or goal.
Through team work or working in small cohesive groups, an organisation will be in a position to not only advance the leadership skills of its employees, but the morale of its staff will equally be boosted (Casse & Claudel, 2011 p.50). For example, when employees are taken for an outing in form of a retreat to conduct team building exercises, it will assist in breaking some of the barriers that exist among them.
These barriers may be social, political or even personal and can significantly hinder the effectiveness of team work. Hence, team work that has been cultivated through team building for the purpose of creating vibrant working groups can indeed assist in identifying barriers that hinder the ability of members to be creative.
Moreover, the huge number of employees that may be working in one particular organisation can work best if the organisational goals and objectives are clear. In this regard, goal setting theory suggests that employees from all levels of an organisation should participate in the process of goal setting and while they do so, it is upon the senior management to explain to them the importance of setting these goals.
However, this can be achieved with much ease when employees work as small organized teams pursuing a common goal (Kohn, 1998 p.30). Such small harmonized and cohesive teams are capable of giving clear definitions of the expected goals and objectives, set a particular time frame within which to achieve the set goals and objectives and above all, carry out performance appraisal (Kirkman, Jones & Shapiro, 2000 p.74).
In addition, procedures and process within the different departments in an organisation will be improved considerably owing to the fact that there will be a high level of cooperation among workers. In a nutshell, effectiveness of each department in an organisation can only be improved through well defined and constructed groups coined from team building exercises.
An organisation that intends to experience tremendous growth and development in this competitive world must build its foundation for success on the strategy of teamwork. It is the key to the development of the staff as well as the employees.
Organizational objectives and performance results fully depend on the strength and effectiveness of the teamwork (McCabe,1990 p.209). Sequentially, it is through the same that low trust syndrome and the feeling of isolation at the place of work are overcome (Kohn, 1998, p. 30).
Finally, team work enables the management of an organisation to identify, recruit and retain talent (McCabe,1990 p.209). Talent flow within an organisation and the way it is strategically hired, developed, nurtured and retained are all components of talent management.
Although a business organisation or institution may opt to settle for trained professionals, the process of aligning the right personnel with jobs that suits them most demands more than just professionalism and training. Indeed, the availability of sufficient and most productive labour supply requires cross-section of talent management throughout an organisation as per the broad objectives of a business organisation.
Such a process may be difficult to accomplish if the management of a company does not work with small harmonised groups. It is only through team work that managers can integrate and incorporate talent in human resource development.
To sum up, managers play an important role in encouraging teamwork and organizing the context in which they work. Team work adds value to the performance of an organization. However, it is important to note that the system of rewarding and appraisals should be given due attention because it affects team working.
Managers need to motivate their workers, empower and address issues affecting them. Besides, teamwork should not be resisted by the employees or the manager because it increases the productivity of an organisation. Its strategic nature is exemplified in the relationship it has with performance.
References
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