Ensuring Effective Teamwork in Organization

It has been becoming a common practice in organizations to produce high productive results through ensuring effective teamwork (Papers4you.com, 2006). Many experts have argued that teamwork is really an effective tool in organizations where work is highly interconnected and demands up to date information sharing. For that purpose, it is imperative to first build an effective team and second to motivate them in various monetary and non monetary ways to gain maximum output.

There are certain characteristics of an effective team that should be ensured for optimum out put (Robbins & Coulter, 2002). It is argued that an effective team always have clear team goals that encourage team members to replace priority of individual goals with that of team one. Team should also comprise of people with relevant skills according to the context of goals. Mutual trust is also imperative among team members and that can be facilitated through open, honest and collaborative organizational culture. It was further argued that such trust may give rise to unified commitment that is directly linked with high level of intensity to achieve team goals. Similarly good communications and negotiation skills through which each member can understand each other is also imperative and all these processes should be lead by an effective team leader who can motivate team members even in difficult situations.

Apart from ensuring such characteristics it is highly beneficial if organizations provide teams with any team incentives as it can have twofold benefits (Papers4you.com, 2006). First, it provides an opportunity for each team member to secure a bonus on a outcome of whole group that can push the member to work hard for group achievements. Second, due to common incentive for whole group, it will flourish cooperation instead of competition among team members hence increasing chances of achieving team goals (Cascio, 1995).

Apart from giving monetary incentives, sometimes organizations may pursue non monetary motivational incentives such as giving them sense of involvement and empowerment. Beardwell & Holden (2001) highlights Quality Circles (QCs) as one of such techniques where team of 6-10 employees in meeting held weekly or fortnightly identifies problems from their own area through data collection methods and statistical techniques. These problems are then analyzed by same team, solutions are devised and then formally present to the manager who may implement this circle's proposal. Thus a sense of power of their own destiny is felt by team members.

Hence effective team work can be achieved through effective team building and teamwork is always beneficial for organizations as it increase flexibility and speed as task is being done by more than one individual with different skills, effective use of diverse workforce is possible where more innovative ideas and efficient decision making is more probable due to heterogeneity in the team and more importantly provided by right set of motivation and support it can increase productivity far more than what can be achieved on individual basis (Robbins & Coulter, 2002)

References

Beardwell, I. & Holden, L., (2001), ‘Human Resource Management- A Contemporary Approach' Third Edition, Essex: Pearson Education Limited

Cascio, W., F., (1995), ‘Managing Human Resources' International Edition, US: McGraw Hill.

Papers For You (2006) "P/HR/245. Team work: theory and case study", Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprthrm3.htm [19/06/2006]

Papers For You (2006) " P/HR/220. Challenges of managing groups and individuals", Available from Papers4you.com [19/06/2006]

Robbins, S, P & Coulter, M, (2002), ‘Management', Sixth Edition, New Jersey: Prentice- Hall Inc