Teamwork

Teamwork is an essential part of workplace success. Each team member has a specific role in accomplishing a job task, and every member works to achieve a common goal. Each member’s behavior has an impact on others on the team. The leader of the team coordinates activities so obstacles are overcome and strategies are applied as team members learn to work together. When employees work together, everyone achieves more.

Discussion Points:
• Why is teamwork in the workplace important?
• What are three reasons why teamwork is important?
• How do we encourage teamwork at the workplace?
• What is a good example of teamwork?
• How can we improve teamwork in the workplace?

Discussion:
Teamwork involves communicating with other members, contributing ideas, encouraging each other, building trust and relationships, and overcoming challenges. Members unite to discuss opinions and different approaches to solve objectives, each member cooperatively accepting assigned tasks, with an urgency to perform acquired skills to accomplish tasks and deliver results on schedule. Teamwork skills developed over time, include honesty, responsibility, empathy, collaboration, awareness, active listening and communication. An interesting fact about teamwork according to a Gallup survey is that the right amount of feedback and respect can scale up team members’ emotional well-being by a staggering 80%, and when employee happiness is added, productivity boosts 20%. Working as a team has many benefits, including reducing the workload and spreading it among many workers, encouraging workers to share knowledge and increase communication, productivity increases as workers strive for a common goal, workers building trust in co-workers as they work as a team, it eliminates the purpose of a lone worker setting which has more risk of potential hazards, and there is a reduction in work-related injuries when workers assist one another. A safe worker will know the rules and hazards of the job, thinking and acting safely while performing job tasks. Planning, training, safety, and teamwork are essential in a work environment. “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
– Henry Ford

As always, be safe out there!