In a complex business environment where organizations are made up of more and more diverse goals and careers, a great value is placed on leaders who can bring diverse groups together in a spirit of cooperation to get things done. To ensure that your employees work together, these leaders must guard against “tribalism”—an attitude that arises when subgroups fixate on their own activities and fail to look at the organization as a whole.
Whether it is departmental, hierarchical, generational, geographical, categorical or gender-specific, cliques are formed in organizations every day. The older generation resent the younger generation for being obsessed with social media and technology, while the young people are frustrated and impatient because they are unable to free the organization from it's old ways.
It does not matter if you want to call this phenomenon cliques, tribes, groups or finger-pointing, it takes up unnecessary time and energy. It distracts people from their jobs, wastes resources, disconnects people and stops the flow of information.
Here are 5 Team Building Strategies to Strengthen Employee Ties:
1. Help Your Employees to Get to Know Each Other Better.
In larger organizations, many employees go through their days without knowing their
colleagues very well, if at all.
The bigger a company gets, the more of a chance there will be a disconnect. As a manager, it’s important to place focus on helping your employees to get to know each other better, and there are a number of fun ways to go about doing so.
You could play office games.
Just watch all of the seasons of “The Office” and you’ll get more take-aways than you’d get from reading every employee engagement book on the planet.
Or !
You could just plan a happy hour at the end of the workweek .... it’s a great way to cut to the chase, and to get employees to communicate with each other on a more personal level.
2. Focus on Collaboration and Working Together
Take a look at any employee whose engagement levels seem to be suffering, and you might find a constant — they’re likely to prefer to work alone.
Collaboration is one of the most important things for businesses to focus on improving, as it can help to generate ideas, cut down on wasted time and — yes — improve employee engagement.
It may seem like a lofty goal if your employees tend to stick to themselves, but it doesn’t have to be at all.
One of the best ways to improve collaboration in your company is to implement social business software. This serves as a virtual platform where all of your employees can work, which means they’ll have little choice but to work with one another, regardless of how disconnected they may be.
It’s important to view social business software not as a way to “force” employees to collaborate, but as a tool for motivating employees to branch out and work more closely with their colleagues. Once they get the hang of how to use it, social business software becomes an incredibly powerful tool that will likely serve a huge role in the future of your business.
3. Give Your Employees Visibility
If there’s an employee engagement idea that practically every employee can attest to, it’s wanting to be given credit for the hard work they’ve done.
Giving your employees visibility within your company can have a huge impact on their levels of engagement and it’s often exactly what it takes to help someone feel more in-touch with their job.
“You Matter.”
Sometimes, all it takes to give them visibility is to put their name in or on something that other people will see. If someone had a huge part in spearheading a campaign for a new product or service,give them credit in a press release or mention them in the company newsletter.
@Mention them on your intranet (where other people can see it) and thank them for a
job well done.
4. Celebrate Staff Birthdays, Accomplishments, etc.
Most managers know they should put effort into recognizing their employees for the work they do, but that’s not to say that staff members shouldn’t be recognized simply for being a part of the team.
Celebrating your staff is essential.
Pick and choose specific occasions to celebrate, with time-out from the day ... these can include birthday parties, work anniversaries, the birth of a child, or major professional achievements.
Or, better yet- nearly every day of the year has been designated as some type of holiday. They might be informal, weird, stupid, meaningful, etc.
Even more important, is to pay attention to random accomplishments, be they personal or professional.
5. Let Employees Work in Other Departments on Occasion
If there’s one thing that can make employee engagement levels soar, it’s helping your staff to learn the ins-and-outs of the business entirely.
What this means, is that members of your organization need to have the chance to see what it’s like to work in a department other than their own. After all, you can only expect to get a small part of the picture if you’re constantly stuck in your own world, and the same can be said for any other member of your company.
By allowing your staff to move around from one department to another on occasion, you’ll not only help employees get to know each other better, but everyone will begin to see the ways in which the business truly runs.
This typically leads to a more engaged workforce, and each employee will bring with them the information they take away from working in other departments to apply it to their own position.
It’s truly a win-win situation, and more than worth experimenting with.
Bringing your team together is key to creating a flourishing culture within your company. We can help keep your employees happy with simple and effective payroll strategies. Give us a call to find out more!