Building teamwork in the workplace is crucial for any successful business. If your teams aren’t working together, they’re likely not giving you their best results and there’s a higher chance employees will leave.  Along with improved productivity, you can improve staff morale by improving teamwork in your office.  Adopt our seven tips to encourage teamwork and create a happy working environment for your staff.

 Here’s Our 7 Simple Tips For Building Teamwork.

Just click on a tip to read more in depth about it.

1. Identify Teamwork Problems
2. Encorage Communication
3. Learn From Your Best
4. Reward Successful Teams
5. Create Fun Activities
6. Change The Office Layout
7. Design A Social Area

And make sure you have the right, modern office. The way people work is changing and your office may need to too.

 

1) Identify teamwork problems

Can you identify a specific reason why your employees aren’t working together as a team? Is there one person who causes unrest or is unresponsive toward teamwork? It’s important to solve any issues quickly to stop them causing any major damage to the morale or happiness of your staff.

Talk to your employees individually to find out if there are any problems they’re struggling with and help fix them.

 

2) Encourage communication

If your teams aren’t communicating, they aren’t working as a team. You need to encourage communication and give them opportunities to talk easily. Some employees might be naturally quiet, so don’t scare them off by putting them on a podium but encourage them to talk. Find out what they’re interested in: having similar interests can help them feel more comfortable to talk.

Team meetings should be opportunities for everyone to share their ideas. Don’t let the same people talk all the time, get people to share their thoughts. Brainstorming sessions are excellent ways for teams to work together in meetings.

• For one of our clients in Milton Keynes we created multiple meeting areas for employees to discuss ideas and strategies easily.

3) Learn from your best

The best way to improve teamwork is to find out which of your teams are working together successfully. Once you’ve found your best teams, consider why they work so well together. Is there a natural chemistry? Do you have a staff member who can inspire the best out of people?

Learn from your best teams and look at your teams that need improvement. It’s possible you need to move people around or encourage social activities to get the best out of people.

 

4) Reward successful teams

Having an employee of the month or having honourable mentions can go a long way in boosting morale in an office. Along with learning from your best teams, you should also be rewarding them. The teams who work well together and give excellent results should be rewarded, whether it’s just a standard ovation or a monthly team prize. Having competition in the office can inspire other teams to work harder and encourage them to improve their own team work.

5) Create fun activities

Get your employees involved in fun group activities. Work shouldn’t always be about work. Taking part in social events in the office are excellent opportunities to improve morale and build teamwork. Some employees aren’t always able to take part in social activities outside of work if they have other commitments, so create time during office hours for fun.

These are some of the different activities you can organise:

1. 1. Icebreaker games: These are ideal if you have lots of new people starting. Two truths and a lie game asks each player to say two true things about themselves and one lie, everyone else has to guess the lie.
   2. Group games: If your main focus is building teamwork in the workplace, then create games that encourage team work. Scavenger hunts are ideal because they get your staff to work out puzzles to find a prize.
   3. Seasonal activities: At Christmas, Secret Santa can encourage your staff to interact with each other and is a fun activity to get involved in.

6) Change the office layout

The design of your office can play a significant role on the productivity of your employees. Between 1960s-90s the norm was to have cubicles.  Whilst this saved space and got more employees on one floor, it put a negative strain on teamwork. From 2000 onwards, open workspaces are becoming the norm. They give employees the opportunity to easily communicate with their team and encourages them to meet and socialise with other people around the office.

A change in office design can positively benefit workplace morale and teamwork.

• • We created an open office design for a Wiltshire client

7) Design a social area

Are there any places in your workplace where employees can go and relax on their lunch or on their break? Eating  at your desk is unhealthy. Sitting for long periods of time is not good for your health and can be a detriment to productivity. You need a break.

Kimberly Elsbach , a professor from University of California, said, “Staying inside, in the same location, is really detrimental to creative thinking.” Having an area where employees can relax and talk with their colleagues gives them an opportunity to talk about other things rather than work. When you’re sat at your desk, you naturally talk about work. Going to a comfortable, social setting can encourage staff to talk to each other which will improve relationships and teamwork.

 

Want to have the perfect working environment?

Offices are very different to what they were over a decade ago. Office design and how staff work has  completely changed. Employees expect more from their employers, and if their managers/boss can’t deliver, it’s more likely an employee will leave.

Having a modern office benefits workplace morale. Find out how you can get a modern office by downloading our FREE eBook.