The Importance of Working Together As a Team
Modern business moves at a lightning pace, thanks to constant improvements in technology and best practices. However, despite these breakneck commercial advancements, one area of business that has not changed over decades, and can have a huge impact on productivity, mental health and ultimately profits, is how your team works and communicates together on a daily basis.
Never more so than during a global pandemic. Whilst there has been extensive homeworking, which has had advantages and disadvantages, people still want and need people and face to face communication.
The benefit of in person communication is that building of informal rapport, getting to know each other not only on a personal basis but working styles. Even with the wonderful advances with Zoom and Teams it is still easy to miss some nuances or subtleties that can lead to misunderstandings.
I think many people can probably think of instances over the last year or so when things might have been polarised, or not dealt with due to lack of personal contact.
In the same way one bad apple can spoil the barrel, if you have one department or team that isn’t running as smoothly, constantly have a breakdown in communications or understanding, it can have a detrimental effect to the overall business.
Companies who have teams that understand and embrace working together as a cohesive and engaged collective are often a lot happier in their work life. It’s acknowledged that there is a fundamental connection between how people feel in a work environment and how successful a business is.
In short happy teams = better performance.
However, poor teamwork and a lack of communication is not a terminal problem, it can be easily resolved with some constructive and engaging bonding team experiences. It is widely accepted that if colleagues engage in a team building /bonding experiences together outside of the office, personal and professional benefits will greatly outweigh the negatives.
Look at any championship winning sports team, it is not always about having the best players, often it is about have a group of people who work for and with each other to achieve the result. Think of England’s football team in Euro 2021, they did have a few superstars, but more than that, what they had was a determination to work hard as a unit and develop an understanding of everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and fill in any gaps as a collective. It was that mentality and approach that got them to the final. They may not have won but what at team.
Team building experiences enable those members of a team who may not interact with each other on a daily basis the chance to spend time building up a working relationship, that can be transplanted back into the working environment. Large events (over 500 people) where multiple departments or social groups are mixed together, helps to give everyone a chance to work with and develop a togetherness that may not come naturally during the working day for logistical reasons.
Of course that said, there are some industries such as healthcare, retail and manufacturing where taking an entire team out of the workspace for a day event is not practical or feasible. This doesn’t mean that they can’t increase their togetherness and productivity as a team. By taking the time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the colleagues around them and build up a better picture of how working together as one can make the daily work balance run much smoother, those companies will find that productivity and workplace organisation will naturally increase.
Modern businesses cannot afford to ignore the benefits of having a team that works together, and works together well. Having colleagues who build and maintain mutually beneficial working relationships, can only serve to increase the effectiveness of the business, which in turn will increase productivity and ultimately profits.
Let Huxley Events help you www.huxleyevents.com 01953 308386 – we look forward to hearing from you.