The Perfect Combination: How To Turn Your Staff Into A Team

Your employees are undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of your business. They are the cogs that keep the whole machine working properly. You might be able to see the big picture but they are the ground troops getting up close and personal with the nitty gritty aspects of your business ever day. But a business can’t be successful with good employees alone. It needs something else. It needs a team. A group of employees, all of whom might be incredibly talented and motivated, isn’t ever going to be more than the sum of its parts until they learn to become a single, cohesive unit, each using their skills in combination with everyone else’s. And whose job is it to create that unit? It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s yours. That might sound like a lot of responsibility, and it is. But don’t worry, there are a quite a few very simple ways to do that. So here are some things that you can do to turn your employees into a fully fledged team.

Communication

This is is by far the single most important skill that any business owner needs to have when dealing with employees. If you’re not able to communicate effectively, then you’re never going to be able to create a productive, motivated workforce. But getting your employees to act as a team requires something even more than that: you need to teach them to communicate with each other. There are a lot of different ways to do this and what you choose will depend on your employees. But it’s important to reduce the separation between employees as much as you can. Open plan offices and communal spaces are fantastic for doing this. The easier it is for your employees to talk to each other, the easier it will be for them to start working in sync with one another.

Training

Training is essential for all of your staff members and the best thing about it is that you can train them as a group. That way, not only are you able to disseminate all of the information they need as efficiently as possible, but it creates yet another opportunity for them to bond and communicate with each other. By training together, they grow together and are sure to all be one the same level playing field. Whether it’s security awareness training or learning new health and safety procedures, by training them together you reinforce the idea of your employees as a singular unit.

Recognize Individual Strengths

The previous two points were exclusively about creating an environment that ignored the differences between employees. But of course this isn’t really possible. Every employee is different, and they each bring something unique to the business. By being aware of each employee’s individual strengths and weaknesses, you can combine them with others in ways that complement each other. That way you don’t get stuck with one employee dragging the rest down or someone doing all of the work for everyone else. A team is not a group of people all doing the same thing, but individuals using their skills to work in tandem with one another.