Creating great work teams and departments

You may find within your business that you have some teams that work fabulously together, while others need more assistance to reach success.

Having the right people for a job or role can make all the difference in your workforce, but it doesn’t mean anything if they aren’t melding within the team or department they are placed in.

Building your teams and departments can be tricky, because you want to be selecting people that bring value and have the right skills to your organisation, while also bringing diverse thoughts and ideas to the equation.

A great team should look like:

• A group with clear goals and set plans
• Strong leadership and task-driven members
• Team members support and assist each other 
• Each member communicates their thoughts and ideas
• Approach and solve any conflict in a constructive way

Hiam Sakakini, CEO and Founder of The Culture Equation in NSW, understands the importance of developing high-performing, high-impact and healthy teams, and has worked with some high-profile businesses to optimise their culture. 

She said there are a number of important steps you can take to reach your goal of creating successful work teams and departments, including ensuring that teamwork is supported, improving communication among team members and encouraging ongoing development. 

What does a good functioning team need

It is important that team members feel that they have ‘psychological safety’ within their group, department, and organisation.

Psychological safety means that employees feel like they can:

• Speak up when they want to
• Can have conflicting opinions to the rest of the group
• Can make a mistake without harsh judgement or are reprimanded in front of people
• Feel okay to be themselves and are able to be authentically “you”

“That for me is key to high-performing teams, that sort of environment is intentionally created with the team by peers, by the leader of the team, or the manager, and having check-ins on how people are feeling,” said Ms Sakakini.

If workers feel safe to make decisions or voice opinions, it leads to a more efficient and successful team or department.

Improving teamwork

Even if you have successful teams, you shouldn’t forget the ongoing development of your current members of a team.

You may find that some people in your team could improve on their current teamwork skills. It is vital within your teams and departments that everyone is able to work well together, otherwise, it can result in poor performance and hurt feelings.

While it may seem obvious to you that teamwork is important, some people may not know how to best work within the team they are in or be that team player.

You can improve this through a number of ways, including:

• Putting members on specific projects with other employees to work towards a common goal. This gives these members the chance to get to know each other better and get into the rhythm of working closely with others
• Providing opportunities to learn and enhance on their teamwork skills, such as workshops, speakers, or team-building group sessions
• Encourage bonding among team members, including at work functions, through outside activities, or allocated team building events (like escape rooms or scavenger hunts)

Team building activities can be an important part of teaching teamwork, as well as result in closer connections among team members. For example, office scavenger hunts can get the team creatively working together, or undertake a five-minute newspaper quiz together which is a fun competition among a team.

These team building activities could be long or short events, such as during a meeting that includes a ten minutes team building exercise or an allocated hour long session.

When your teams undertake these types of exercises, it gives them the opportunity to bond on a different level, boost team morale, encourage creativity, and lead to a team spirit.

Communication is key

For teams to work together well, they need to be able to communicate effectively and efficiently.

This could be done in a multitude of ways, however, having individualised communication methods based on team members’ preferences can make a difference.

Ms Sakakini adds that any good functional team knows how to communicate with one another and in a way that best suits individual team members.

For example, you may have one team member that likes everything to be set out in an email, while another member prefers quick five-minute verbal debriefs to understand everything they need to do.

The way people work is also an important factor that should be communicated within your team. Ms Sakakini likes to ask people she works with:

• “When is your brain on fire?”
• “When do you love to get work done?”
• “When does your brain completely shut down and is not ready for any more interaction?”

These questions can give you an idea on how best your teammates work and ensure you are engaging them at their most productive.

A team or department should not only be seen as successful or well functioning just through performance, but also through the way they communicate, interact and work together.

Additional team help

It is not uncommon for aged care providers to have teams or departments that are a mixture of workers with different employment statuses. 

Your organisation may find adding part-time workers can lend an extra hand when the current team is overworked or you may call in more casual staff if you need last-minute assistance for a busy time of the year.

Noticing where your team may need another person to help with workload can strengthen your current team and its success.

These multifunctional teams can work really well together as long as there is mutual respect amongst all the workers.

If your organisation has a mixture of teams of full-time, part-time, casual, and contract workers – it is important to make sure everyone is feeling included, otherwise it can cause disharmony within a team.

This could mean making sure your casual or contract workers attend training events, work functions, and other meetings related to the team, department and workplace.

“If you expect that team to work at its best, everybody should be treated equally when it comes to team design, culture design, and how we work well together,” said Ms Sakakini.

When tensions get high

Sometimes disharmony occurs among teams, especially if a deadline is arriving, a worker doesn’t feel heard, or these teams are becoming overworked.

During these times, it can result in heat of the moment exchanging of words or other grievances arising, which is why you should have a strong complaints process in place.

The Fair Work Ombudsman requires businesses to handle and resolve complaints efficiently for their workers in a manner that is quick, fair, and transparent, and handles complaints sensitively. You can learn more about this in our article, ‘Managing workplace disputes‘.

It is best that your staff feel comfortable raising concerns they have, as your complaints process should be considered the last step of action.

It can be beneficial for a provider to look at where team disharmony is coming from – is it just venting from an employee or something greater? 

If the disharmony is due to overwork, you can try to lessen the team workload. Or you may decide to organise a group session for the team so that these smaller issues can be raised now, before they turn into bigger problems.

If a particular team member is causing ongoing problems, you should sit down with the staff member and see what you can do to minimise the impact on others and encourage good work behaviour.

If you are able to prevent the complaint from escalating, then your organisation won’t have to go through more formal complaint processes.

This means your teams can return to their former success without concern that more problems will appear on the horizon. 

If issues are not handled effectively, it can result in pent-up grievances on your teams and impact the productivity and success of the team.

Always look at improve your teams

If your organisation successfully builds great teams and departments, it doesn’t mean you can hi-five and move on to the next issue. 

You should always be working on team building to ensure every team and department feels valued and respected.

As your teams work, monitor and review how they are performing. Are they meeting their set goals? What doesn’t seem to be working? How can we improve and pivot to get the team back on track?

Understanding the functioning of your teams can allow for adjustments were necessary to make sure everything is streamlined and running smoothly.

It is also important to acknowledge and celebrate the hardwood of your teams, on both a team and individual level.

How strategies has your organisation used to work and create great teams and departments? Tell us in the comments below.