Teamwork – Achieve More Through Collaboration

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organisational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie

Two heads are better than one.

A well-oiled team can outperform even the best individual. The pooling of talent leads to productivity greater than the sum of its parts. The ability to bounce ideas off others, and to share diverse perspectives on an issue can lead to novel and robust solutions.

Start with culture

To benefit from exceptional teamwork, you need to build an environment for collaboration in your business. Excellent results start with the culture that you foster throughout your organisation. Do you promote team working, or do you focus on individual performance? Change your focus to delivering results as a group. Whether this is your whole business, a department or a purpose-built team, work together – collaborate. Using collaborative working with team-based goals leads to increased performance, as members of the group do not want to let down their team. People who exercise in a team sport are more likely to stick to it than those who train individually.

Team incentives

The same goes for bonuses; in 2001, Washington University researchers used a garment manufacturing facility in Napa, California, for a test. They found that the move from individual to team incentives improved productivity by 14 per cent. Reasons cited for the increase in productivity included not wanting to let others down. Team incentives only work through complete transparency. Ensure that you commend employees for good work in public, so others are aware of their efforts towards the cause. Shared access to performance metrics will also allow others to see who isn’t pulling their weight, and employees will want to avoid being the lowest performer.

Shared goals

Clearly defined goals and roles for team members empower exceptional progress on tasks. Having a workflow that gives all members of the team oversight of the process, and the current status of a job, lets everyone know how they can add value. Using team management software to keep track of the assignment of work to the team member with the right skills and availability to complete the task, will boost your productivity further still.

Talk to each other

Collaboration allows teams to thrive, and excellent communication is the oil that greases the machine. Ensure that your team management software has comprehensive communication tools which facilitate teamwork. Incorporating group chat, or live editing of a shared document, are both brilliant ways to promote teamwork.

Share resources

Sharing of files between team members is an essential feature of any team management software system. Everyone can work to the same set of information, leaving no one in the dark. The ability to add permissions to the file access that you share helps to build security into the system. You may want to share some information, but not allow changes, for example.

Integrate

Finally, integrating your team management software with other systems that your team uses, will keep everything coordinated. It is vital that your whole team are kept up to date, even with the activity that falls outside of the team management software. Look out for out of the box integrations or an API which will enable the creation of custom integrations.

Go Team!

So, if you want to drive productivity across your business, then get collaborating. People who work together, achieve together. Leverage team management software to facilitate excellent communications, sharing of resources, across your team, and to integrate with your other systems. SwiftCase helps thriving businesses, swamped by growing demand, automate and organise, to focus on what matters — loved by 1000s of users across Insurance, Finance, Legal, Service & Contractor sectors.