The new reality of the widespread work-from-home format has transformed employee interactions. As the study shows, teamwork norms have worsened since the pandemic. It’s up to management to determine whether or not their company will experience these worsening conditions, both in the present and the future.

What measures can you take to ensure that your employees operate in synergy and deliver better results, even remotely? This article will shed light on the secrets of great teamwork, regardless of the format.

What Is the Actual Value of Syncing Your Team, and How Does It Work?

Why is teamwork essential? When all team members operate as a whole, they complement each other’s expertise to create a top-notch product. When each employee acts in isolation, however, achieving balance and seamless integration of different aspects of a product can be challenging. 

Growing a group of individual specialists into a highly productive and synchronized machine is a deep and complex process. Let’s explore in more detail the steps your team should take to achieve team cohesion.

Stages of Team Development

It’s a common misconception that gathering qualified specialists together will automatically make a team perform flawlessly. A team is a separate organism that must go through its own development to reach its highest potential. To get a better understanding of this process, many managers use the classic Tuckman’s model, which describes the main stages of team development:

  • Forming. At the beginning of a new stage, specialists are usually excited to be a part of something new and look forward to expressing themselves as professionals. In this phase, it’s crucial to set up essential processes and goals so your team can start developing in the right direction.
  • Storming. Once the initial excitement wears off, employees face the reality of interaction with others. Failure to meet expectations in team progress can lead to disappointment and frustration. In this stage, it’s essential to remain persistent and address all issues. It’s time to reset workers to the right attitude and optimize the current ways of operation.
  • Norming. Once team members sharpen their interaction skills and adhere to generally accepted norms of operation, things become more stable. All the specialists now realize they are part of a whole and should make an effort to make cooperation work. Regular meetings for sharing proposals and constructive feedback can help every employee to develop as an integral element of a single system, not a separate unit.
  • Performing. All team members are now synchronized and on the same page, which allows for effective cooperation. Mutual trust has been built, and issues from initial interactions have been resolved. Finally, a group of employees can perform at their best by using their strengths as both individuals and team members.

Once a team has experienced all four essential stages, it’s time for further development, divided into six more milestones. Let’s focus on building a solid foundation before exploring how to address advanced phases. 

6 Integral Elements for Efficient Teamwork

For all the stages of team development to go smoothly, it’s common for many experienced managers to apply specific practices. You are welcome to explore these practices below. 

Managed Employee Engagement

Team engagement affects general performance. When feeling left out or unmotivated, employees can’t operate either autonomously or as team players. Thus, it’s an essential responsibility of a manager to give workers a sense of purpose and optimally set up interaction processes.

How can you know if your team lacks engagement? Simple and efficient tools like Beams.ai help measure employee engagement and even provide recommendations for influencing its indicators. This service can also send digital surveys to employees, defining their current level of engagement and reporting the results to a manager. In addition, managers can learn helpful employee engagement ideas from real experts.

Efficient Feedback System

Sometimes, teammates can’t operate efficiently due to making the same mistakes over and over again. Another common problem is that employees don’t get enough praise, so they may assume their part of the job isn’t that important. These issues can be summarized into one category — lack of constructive and positive feedback. In this case, a mid-year review isn’t enough to solve the problem. 

When all specialists can safely give feedback to each other (on both strengths and weaknesses), a team’s performance increases. As an optimized and straightforward solution, the Beams web app offers managers a digital system for honest evaluations of work engagement, satisfaction, and other parameters.

Support and Responsiveness of Management

When a team is working in synergy, its members can establish processes for more efficient collaboration. The role of a manager is to demonstrate support and a willingness to assist. Without this, employee job satisfaction may decrease, negatively impacting overall performance.

With Beams.ai capabilities, you can track the overall mood of your teams by gathering depersonalized feedback.

numbers for when teamwork makes the dreamwork

In practice, it works as follows: employees evaluate their current attitude using a mood tracker, and the aggregate results for each team are provided to the manager. The manager can analyze and compare these results and then take necessary steps if indicators are low.

Positive Working Environment

For your employees to trust each other, take feedback seriously, and perform consistently, they should feel that their working environment is safe and welcoming. What can management do to create such conditions? 

Start by building a positive environment before even recruiting employees. This means that your company should define the core values that make employees feel comfortable in your company, such as transparency, proficiency, self-development, and a culture of asking questions. All hired employees should share these values in order to align with the company’s leadership and their teammates.

A Culture of Communication

Recent research has shown that 75% of remote workers have noticed a decline in business communication and team performance since the start of the pandemic. A lack of connection is one of the key causes of this.

That’s why it’s crucial to keep employees connected and foster a culture of open communication, especially in hybrid or fully remote formats. In such cases, offline or online team-building activities can make a difference. 

Processes should also be designed to encourage employees to talk to each other, not just send emails. Establish regular meetings, such as daily stand-ups or friendly cross-team video chats, to keep employee bonds strong.

A Culture of Mutual Respect

Treating all employees as equals and recognizing their proper qualifications are the foundations of mutual respect. These attitudes should be the backbone of any business culture.

According to a study based on recent research by Gallup and HBR, employees who feel respected by their coworkers are more likely to share ideas and collaborate with teammates to work toward common goals.

As a result, overall team performance improves, and employees are able to achieve the company’s business objectives more efficiently.

Make Your Team Perform Fruitfully with Beams

Beams.ai is an all-in-one solution that streamlines employee management and improves teamwork performance. By seamlessly integrating into your workspace, whether with Slack or Microsoft Teams, you can:

  • gather feedback from employees on their emotional state;
  • regularly track the moods of workers, both individually and collectively;
  • obtain detailed statistics that can help you reconnect with each team.

Try Beams for free to see all the benefits for yourself.