Building a happy and collaborative team is the first step toward the success of your business. Essentially, happy employees are satisfied employees, and they’re more productive in their daily tasks.
According to a British telecommunications firm study, happy workers are 13% more productive than unhappy workers.
Collaboration also encourages problem-solving. Every collaborative team member has a unique perspective on a particular issue. As you bring together their views, you can much more easily find solutions to challenges that arise.
For these reasons, you always want to work towards fostering a happy and collaborative team in your organization. Here are a few pointers on how to make it possible.
1. Provide them with the appropriate tools
Offering the right equipment for specific tasks can make your employees more productive and efficient. This is because their duties are much more straightforward, enabling them to work flawlessly. It also demonstrates that you’re concerned about their productivity, and they feel valued.
When employees do a great job, they feel happy and work together better, regardless of the industry they work in. In the very niche example of an irrigation business for instance, you can acquire industry specific irrigation service software, which enables you to perform a range of business functions such as the below much more easily:
- Schedule jobs easily: You can seamlessly assign tasks to your team members and avoid scheduling conflicts.
- Organize your business in one place: With such software, all team members can view a specific project’s status plus all the activities completed and those yet to be tackled.
- Provide exceptional customer service: It enables you to keep your clients’ information in one place, thus minimizing errors.
- Turn quotes into jobs: You can create quotes and turn approved ones into a work breakdown structure.
- Send professional invoices from any location: Using free invoice templates like those developed by Jobber, you can easily create professional and customized invoices for any job and get paid faster.
2. Recognize your employees
Recognizing and rewarding your employees is a sure-fire way of making them happy while also fostering a sense of collaboration. When your employees know that their efforts are appreciated, the feelings of boredom and exhaustion are far more likely to melt away. They’ll be much more ready and willing to get on with the job at hand. This also supports employee retention rates.
Furthermore, when employees are encouraged to recognize one another’s achievements, they naturally develop a stronger team mentality. They learn to work together and support each other, creating a positive and motivating work atmosphere that transcends job roles and departments.
Incentives can play a pivotal role in reinforcing this culture of appreciation and excellence, and they can be tailored to suit various roles within your organization.
For example, when contemplating gift ideas for software engineers, you might consider providing them with cutting-edge tech gadgets or access to coding bootcamps to enhance their skills. Similarly, for sales professionals, incentives like performance-based bonuses or trips to industry conferences can be highly motivating.
Meanwhile, administrative staff may appreciate flexible work arrangements or wellness programs.
By customizing incentives, gifts, rewards, and recognition to align with the unique needs and preferences of various job roles, you not only convey your sincere appreciation but also ignite individual excellence.
This tailored approach not only boosts morale and motivation but also cultivates a thriving work environment where every employee feels valued, recognized, and inspired to contribute their best, thus playing a pivotal role in driving your organization’s overall success.
Here are some types of rewards and recognition you can implement in your organization:
- Reward kindness with a thank you card for those employees who make a special effort to help colleagues in need.
- Celebrate important days such as birthdays
- Organize a team dinner or outing once in a while
- Involve their families by setting up activities they can attend with them.
- Give honest and specific praise for achievements
- Celebrate the work done, not the outcomes
- Reward them with team-building activities
3. Concentrate on each member’s strengths
It’s always good to focus on each person’s strengths rather than weaknesses. You can highlight the strengths and share them with the entire team. This enables them to identify who’s best in a particular field, and they can divide their tasks accordingly. In the long run, they get the most out of their teams and feel empowered. When employees do their best, they become more fulfilled.
To develop a culture that focuses on employees’ strengths:
- Assign duties according to best fits: Focus on allocating tasks to every team member based on their skills and knowledge. This encourages engagement and motivates them to work better.
- Establish a diverse team: Having a team with like-minded members can affect your bottom line. Aim to have people with different experience levels, skills, education, age, backgrounds, gender, etc. This allows them to share their ideas from other points of view and contribute fully to team building.
- Foster outside-the-box thinking: By establishing brainstorming sessions that are collaborative and engaging, members may have to go the extra mile and be creative. This enables them to discover talents and skills they didn’t know they had.
- Embrace a clear strategy: This allows employees to speak candidly about what they like and what they’re the best at.
4. Set clear team member expectations
Lack of clear expectations compromises outcomes and achievements within a team and negatively influences participation, relations, and teamwork. On the other hand, clear expectations eradicate or minimize confusion between team members and increase the possibility of every team member achieving their goals.
Besides that, setting expectations brings your employees to the same table, which helps them come up with ideas that are in line with your expectations and goals.
Below are some critical tips for setting expectations for your employees:
- Highlight your objectives
- Set the expectations earlier
- Make workers accountable for the goals
- Provide substantial feedback
- Leverage motivation. You can set the expectations based on what motivates your employees
- Set measurable, attainable, and realistic expectations
5. Honor team member feedback
Providing good feedback clarifies expectations, helps you learn from your mistakes, and builds confidence and trust with your employees. Your workers are the first people who determine the success or failure of your business. They see the workplace issues first and they know what works best for them and your business. When they give you feedback, they do it for the growth and prosperity of your brand and they expect you to provide solutions to them.
By listening and responding to their feedback, they feel better and happier. In return, they feel empowered and contribute much to teamwork. For that reason, you should focus on creating a positive environment that lets your employees air their views frankly, without fear of being ignored.
Conclusion
Establishing a happy and collaborative team is the perfect way to increase productivity. It allows your employees to improve their skills by working with a more capable team. There’s nothing as enticing as working on specific tasks faster and efficiently and winning more as a tea, so keep these tips in mind to boost happiness and teamwork.
References
- “If You Want To Be More Productive At Work, Get Happy”, Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/04/16/if-you-want-to-be-more-productive-at-work-get-happy/?sh=6b0c86d17be2
- “10 Types of rewards and recognition for employees you should implement in your organization”, Source: https://medium.com/@advantageclub22/10-types-of-rewards-and-recognition-for-employees-you-should-implement-in-your-organization-b404af0772b5
- “This Is What Happens When You Focus on Employees’ Strengths”, Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279579
- “6 Tips on Setting Expectations for Employees”, Source: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/people-managers/pages/setting-employee-expectations.aspx
