Contributing to Effective Team Working

Abstract

Team working is a central feature of lean production and business performance improvement techniques. It is therefore essential that the team working approach is effective, efficient and contributes to the performance improvement planned. Training and skills development is needed for the employees involved for them to optimally contribute to the achievement of the team objectives.

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Contributing to Effective Team Working - what is it and where can it be deployed? Introduction

A workplace team is a group of employees who are working together on either a temporary or a permanent basis to achieve a common objective.

The main types of work teams are:

• Project teams: A project team is a group of people brought together to accomplish a particular task. Typically, when the project ends, the team ends.

• Cross-functional teams: A cross-functional team is made up of employees from different departments or areas of the business where that mix of skills is needed.

• Autonomous work teams: A self-directed work team is typically made up of employees in a particular work area. It can autonomously determine how it will get a job done, has the authority to carry out decisions, and often controls the budget.

Effective team working involves bringing people together with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose and are mutually accountable for its achievement. They work together in a co-ordinated and mutually supportive way to fulfil a specific goal or purpose. Team effectiveness is measured by the extent to which it is successful in achieving its task-related objectives.

What is it?

Team building involves assembling a group of individuals whose job roles and experience will collectively deliver the planned task outcome. The mix of personalities, skills sets, experience, opinions and agendas, all need to be accommodated for effective teamwork to result. Effective teamwork will include:

• A team whose membership, size and resources matches the task; • Good leadership and attention to team building; • A shared vision of the team purpose and goals; • Common ownership of the task at hand and joint responsibility for its achievement; • Coordinated effort and planned sharing of tasks across the team; • Effective communications and open exchange of information across the team.

An effective working relationship between the team members requires a sharing of knowledge and understanding; mutual respect and trust; basic values and attitudes that fit together; and an open, supportive and co-operative environment.

An effective team member will therefore:

• Bring specific skills to the team that complement the skills of others; • Work with other team members to agree individual team roles and responsibilities and

understand how they collectively deliver the team goals; • Participate actively and provide a reliable, consistent and committed input; • Communicate effectively, provide a constructive contribution, and fully consider the

views of others in the team; • Be a team player: recognising the importance of working with others to achieve the

common task outcomes;

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• Whilst not necessarily being the team leader, will take the lead in their skills specialism and proactively guide decision making.

Contributing to Effective Team Working (CETW) training is designed to provide the individual employee with the skills and knowledge needed to fully participate as a team member and add value to both the process and the outcomes.

Team planning. Source: Offshore Energy Today.

How can it help the employer?

The benefits of teamwork for the employer include increased efficiency and the ability to focus different minds on the same problem. This is based on the expectation that:

• Teamwork accomplishes more than the employees can contribute individually (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts);

• Teamwork delivers higher quality outcomes that are more thoughtfully constructed, effective and timely.

The benefits for the employer include:

• Diversity: A team is made up of a diverse number of people, each with their own skill set. The diversity of the team allows it to be able to complete a variety of work tasks, which helps the company be more dynamic and flexible;

• Workload: Within a team, responsibilities are delegated so that each person's strengths are applied to team tasks. Distributing the workload is an important team function that balances the effort across the team and allows the company to achieve increased levels of productivity and performance;

• Employee morale and retention: Teamwork allows employees to take greater responsibility for decision making and the work process. This can lead to improved morale as employees gain more ownership of the projects they are working on. The extra responsibility can lead to a more rewarding work environment for the employee and lower staff turnover for the business;

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• Increased skills: The inter-personal skills developed by employees trained in effective team working add to their job-specific skills and make them a more valuable and productive worker. They have a greater understanding and commitment to the business and make a useful additional contribution to local management capacity.

How can it help the employee?

The benefits gained by the employee reflect those that help the employer: the acquisition of valuable transferrable skills, greater ownership and management of their workload, a more supportive work environment and increased job satisfaction and morale.

The CETW training leads to increased individual productivity as part of a team, greater contribution to business performance and, as a result, greater value to the business as an employee and improved sustainability for both the business and future personal employment prospects.

Team working: Source: Prius Group

What is involved in delivering CETW in the workplace?

Delivering Contributing to Effective Team Working training effectively requires the employees involved to understand and develop the qualities that are needed for collaborative working. It is assumed that they have the appropriate technical skills for the task to be tackled. The training will address the interpersonal skills required and will include:

The characteristics of good team members:

• Working for consensus; • Sharing thoughts and opinions openly; • Supporting colleagues; • Tolerating individual differences; • Prepared to consider new ideas; • Committed to team objectives; • Accepting collective ownership and responsibility.

Personal effectiveness:

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• Understanding team role and responsibilities; • Avoiding potential conflicts with other team members; • Valuing the contributions of others; • Improving contribution to team effectiveness through continued personal CETW

development.

It can be seen that many of the issues covered in CETW training may be considered as common sense or common courtesy. However, they do need to be structured to ensure consistency of approach across the whole team.

Teamwork features. Source: University of Kent

What resources are required for training?

Typically, the training will be delivered onsite by an expert facilitator and will require a training area with appropriate resources. These will include a classroom with furniture, audio visual equipment and training materials.

With the awareness raising and underpinning knowledge resources being made available online, planning for training delivery can be made more flexible. Participants can access the materials at a time and place that is convenient for them, either in work or at home, and can then concentrate on the practical application of the skills in the workplace with the facilitator.

Planning Contributing to Effective Team Working delivery

Timetables for the delivery of the training and scheduling the release of employees need to be agreed. The training may be delivered to work groups, including management and supervisory staff who may already have participated in Team Leader training.

The delivery is likely to include:

• An initial induction session where the participants meet face to face with the facilitator onsite and are introduced to the programme and learning materials, agree outcomes and timescales, and discuss delivery arrangements;

• Engagement by the participants with the online awareness raising and underpinning knowledge materials according to the agreed schedule. Online facilitator support would be typically available;

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• Practical team based exercises to apply the skills and knowledge. These would becarried out as classroom simulations together with, ideally, application in the workareas for which the participants are responsible.

All of the participants will be skilled employees who will be able to make valuable contributions to the discussions taking place during delivery and to the issues specific to the work area involved. Applying the principles of team working to the training itself will enhance the process.

Conclusion

A structured approach to the training of employees to become effective contributors to team working will ensure consistency of skills and knowledge delivery. The application of the skills and knowledge in simulated and real team tasks as part of the employee development will provide practical experience.

Contributing to effective team working develops the ‘soft skills’ needed to collaborate with others in work-based tasks. It aids development of the social relationships that surround individuals working in partnership and interdependently. Such skills ensure that the individual contributions to the task progress in harmony and for mutual benefit for the individuals and for the team and business as a whole.

A key message is that the benefits can include a major contribution to employee job satisfaction and motivation, in addition to the business performance improvement delivered. It is not difficult to see how the former contributes to the latter and that the overall benefits go beyond just improving effective team working.

This has been an awareness-raising module designed to introduce Contributing to Effective Team Working and inform both managers and employees how its implementation can lead to business performance improvement. More detailed underpinning knowledge that includes a range of case studies illustrating how successful implementation has been achieved by companies in the automotive sector is provided in the CETW Principles and Practice module, accessed through the Resources Tab.

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