What kind of team work productively? What is the key to the productive work of all team members at once? Solving problems according to the established algorithm with colleagues, while being in the comfort atmosphere – this is what affects the productivity and efficiency in any, even unforeseen, situations.
Content:
1. Stages of forming a productive team
2. Factors that affect the team's productivity
3. How to work and not get tired?
4. Top 15 recommendations for productive work in a team
5. How to improve discipline and self-organization
6. Examples of successful companies and their management style
Not every group of specialists in one company is a team. And even more so, not every company of employees reaches the title of a highly professional and friendly team. A real team that works smoothly and productively is a team of employees who complement each other, while each member has a different type of skills. The result is a group of people united by the same idea, striving for the same goal and bearing equal responsibility for the work process and the result.
Stages of forming a productive team
So, which team works most productively and smoothly, getting high results from working together? The answer is simple: one where the workflow is properly organized and managed. To achieve maximum mutual understanding, the team needs to go through several important stages. Among them:
- Adaptation. At this stage, effectiveness is low. Employees get to know each other better, evaluate each other's capabilities and professional qualities. Can be formed groups of two or three people. Mutually acceptable behaviors are defined.
- Grouping. The interests of each participant are shown. There are sympathies. There are people who are united by one goal and there are discrepancies in motivation. At this stage, you can identify the level of emotionality of each employee. Often, the manager checks their new employees, creating a tense atmosphere: throws a pile of papers with a bang on the floor or slams the door loudly, watching the reaction of each of them.
- Cooperation. Instead of "you" appears such a concept as "we". Project participants begin to strive for successful completion of the task themselves. Communication becomes constructive and open.
- Standardization. Patterns of interaction in the team appear, participants trust each other, and respect increases.
- Functioning. Each specialist gets a separate role. Conflicts are revealed and resolved openly. A favorable microclimate is formed in the team and the productive work begins.
When the last stage of forming a team is reached– the work between its members will become most successful, effective and productive.
Factors that affect the team's productivity
These days, personnel decide everything! Often there is a situation when at a certain stage of collective activity the company needs a new employee or needs to improve the efficiency of an existing team, but the manager or group leader doesn't know how to achieve this. To understand how to work more productively, you must first understand the factors that affect the team's workflow.
Psychologists distinguish several patterns in the work of the team. So, the number of people in the group affects the work, and the result will be much more successful if the team includes people of different ages and genders, but with the same or similar social characteristics. In addition, the team must adhere to the norms of behavior developed jointly by all participants. All new ideas should be discussed together, because the most risky decisions are born in mutual discussion, whereas each individual could hardly decide on such an experiment.
How to work and not get tired?
The question of how to work productively and not get tired is based on the psychological aspect rather than the physical one. It's clear that fatigue after hard work appears in every employee, which is considered a normal condition, proving his diligence. Another question concerns the psycho-emotional load, when a person is tired more mentally than physically. This happens when you are doing a job that you don't like, or when it is a team activity when you are working together with people who cause unpleasant emotions. The task of the manager or team leader is to eliminate such phenomena and organize the work in such a way that all members of the team could work comfortable at the same space.
Top 15 recommendations for productive work in a team
In addition to creating a favorable psychological atmosphere, there are 15 equally important principles for achieving productive work in a team, including:
- Automation of work processes – introduction of equipment, devices, computer programs and services to simplify and speed up the execution of work tasks.
- Motivation — using programs for time tracking and payroll. Checkiant, a simple and easy-to-use time tracker, has proven itself to be a good choice. It immediately shows the amount of earned money if an hourly rate is set.
- Extra days off – an unscheduled vacation or an extra day off encourages you to get your work done faster and with excellent results.
- Paying for training — improving skills, taking courses to acquire new skills – all this is important for both the employee and the manager. If the boss pays the specialist for his classes, in the future he will try to give his best at work.
- Organization of continuous knowledge exchange — it's necessary to organize the work in such a way that all problems and emerging issues are solved on the spot immediately, and employees don't have to cope with them alone or spend a lot of time on their elimination.
- Proper staff selection is important for reducing the risk of conflicts to zero.
- The right example of a chief manager or boss — the head of the company, as well as the team leader, must personally show how to work more productively and faster, what the result and goals should be achieved.
- Creating trusting relationships – informal relationships between team members help them feel comfortable with each other for a long time.
- No pressure — every specialist should do what they like. The work should not be routine, because productivity in this case will never be high. People should love their work.
- Joint decision – it doesn't mean that personal opinions should be abandoned or ignored. No, rather, all the thoughts gathered together will help find the most correct way out of the situation and make the best plan of action.
- Expression of emotions — to create a comfortable atmosphere in the workplace, you need to allow members of the team to express their feelings, express dissatisfaction or express their experiences, in order to overcome this emotional barrier together with everyone.
- Taking into account the personal characteristics of each group member — individual characteristics, personal qualities, facts from family life, behavior, temperament – all this helps to form a group of people who fit each other.
- Collective recreation – you need to reward the team for their work with a trip, going to the restaurant, or at least to make a party in the office.
- Analysis of the individual productivity of each member — someone works better in the noon, someone – in the morning, and for others, the optimal period of the highest performance is in the evening. It is important to consider these phases of work.
- Focusing on results is exactly what distinguishes a standard team from an effective one.
If we talk about the finances, then monetary incentive is the №1 motivation for any employee. After all, what motivates people to work more productively, than the realization that their work will pay off at the end of the working month or week with a decent salary with bonus for a successfully completed project.
How to improve discipline and self-organization
Working time is an important and valuable resource. Many working people are constantly in short supply. While working hard they still do not have enought time for everything. If you analyze your working day, it becomes clear why this happens: five times of a smoke break, three cups of coffee for 10 minutes to each, viewing social networks during working hours, and you also need to go to the next office to a colleague to discuss the latest news in the company. So it turns out that the main part of the work remains less hours. The following methods will help correct the situation, improve discipline and self-organization:
- Implementation of an automated time tracking system, such as the Checkiant time tracker, to record the time of each employee's presence, when they appeare at work, when they go home, how many breaks they took, and so on.
- Creating a plan and the schedule – also could help apps on your phone, as well as time management techniques, such as the "Pomodoro" method, when you need to work for 20 (up to 40) minutes, then take a rest for 5-10 minutes and get back to work. This approach will help find out for each person how much you can work productively without fatigue and when you need to take a break.
- Prioritize correctly – write down a list of things to do in the evening, grouping them from top to bottom by importance and priority. After that, you should select the first three or five tasks and focus most of the day specifically on them, solving everything in the order of the recorded order.
Creating a morning ritual and following a daily routine also helps to cultivate self-discipline. It must be the same thing being done at the same time. For example, a run at 6: 30 in the morning. Or yoga by video session at 7:00, etc.
The best advice for a manager who wants to increase the productivity of his team is the introduction of incentive payments in the form of a cash bonus, a certificate in a SPA or a joint picnic, as well as paying attention to each employee, which can be shown, for example, in a birthday congratulations or greetings with the birth of a child, etc.
Examples of successful companies and their management style
To better understand how to increase the productivity and efficiency of the team, lets consider the management approach of workflow organizing in the most successful companies today:
- Microsoft — despite the fact that the working day lasts from 9 to 18.00, many employees are not at the office. The company allowes it because a person must "create" the atmosphere that inspires him. Inside, there is a corporate social network Yammer, which is used exclusively by managers and employees of the corporation, what unites people in one team.
- Google – the ability to shift to the category of remote employee, weekly totals of the performed work by each employee with plans for the next week, regular meetings with the entire team.
- IKEA - bonuses for results, the ability to combine work with study, training for beginners, pension accruals for those who have worked in the company for 10 years.
Now you know how to work productively and what to do to increase the productivity of your team. Expert recommendations and successful examples of the world's top corporations will help you.
See also:
How can a work team use the time-tracker Checkiant? 6 simple examples