The workings of the modern office have changed utterly in recent years, as advances in remote working technology coincided with a once-in-a-lifetime international crisis. Coronavirus necessitated a culture of remote working in every non-essential office environment, which may have had a knock-on effect on teamwork in your workplace; with people spending less time in each other’s company, they may have felt more isolated. So how best to increase teamwork in your team or office?
Regular Meetings and Brainstorming Sessions
Increasing the number of contact employees have with one another is a central facet for many of these suggestions, but this is the most direct way in which you can encourage teamwork amongst your staff. By increasing the number of meetings and collaborative sessions in each department, you can create more opportunities for team members to speak to one another, to share ideas and to effectively communicate with one another. Increased contact will encourage employees to uphold that contact outside of the meetings, especially where ideas have been generated as a group and require group interaction to develop further.
Hybrid Working
Even with regular discussion and break-out meetings on remote video-chat apps such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, workers can feel distant from one another, and may struggle to form a cohesive via a tech intermediary. As such, introducing a hybrid working system in your office could encourage better teamwork and group cohesion; allowing certain members of a team into the office on certain days enables them to engage with each other more directly, and conduct in-person meetings with physical materials in front of them. This could inspire better results – and in the case of allowing workers autonomy in choosing their hours and meeting times, improve morale as well.
Events
Bringing employees together need not stop with the provision of meeting times and spaces; you can also make use of events to pull your staff together as a unit. Hosting a virtual event allows employees to attend and collaborate from a distance, while putting on a physical event allows team members to visit and engage in-person. These events could range from product launches to fiscal reports, or involve participation in larger exhibitions to network and market the business.
Socials and Meets Outside of Work
The social element of any workplace is too important to ignore, and there are things you can do as a manager, executive or business leader to enshrine that social element. Creating planned after-work social events can work wonders for bringing staff together in the workplace, by providing a relaxed environment for them to socialise, relax and share their thoughts on the previous week. You could also reward prior teamwork with specific events covered by business expenses, such as a team bowling night or a restaurant dinner to celebrate the completion of a project. In demonstrating rewards for positive teamwork, you are encouraging further effective teamwork, and incentivising your workers to capitalise on their positive interrelationships to deliver better results for your company.
