5 Tips for Creating a Team Building Culture at Work

Creating a team-building culture starts with individual, engaged employees. Engaged employees are happier at work, get more done, and routinely go above and beyond their job descriptions. They also encourage other employees to be more engaged and productive. Most importantly, these employees are proud to be a part of their companies and are likely to stay long-term. There is no one simple set of actions that will create increased engagement levels. You will need to identify opportunities, simplify solutions, take action, and hold people accountable for following through with the policies you put in place.

If you want to create an atmosphere that fosters engagement, you must:

Evaluate the employee – The ideal employee is one who is fully engaged on the job, and consistently exceeds your expectations. He or she not only meets their own goals, but improves the performance of those he or she is around at work. Assessments can help show you those target employees that stand out. A good approach is to communicate with the employee to identify: What can be improved? What does he or she need? What can be adjusted? What should we start or stop doing?
According to a case study by the National Employment Law Project, over 65 million American adults carry an arrest or conviction on their record. 90% percent of companies have reported using criminal background checks for hiring decisions, some even specify on the job description, “You must not have any felony or misdemeanor convictions on your record. Period.”

Evaluate the leader – First off, engaging employees is part of every leader’s job at every level. If you want to help increase the effectiveness of your leaders, then you need to identify the leadership skills that are most effective for engaging employees. Seek feedback about each leader from his or her boss, peers and direct reports. Align the leader’s behaviors and leadership skills to the expectations of the organization. Then, close leadership gaps through on‐the‐job performance, feedback and coaching.

Evaluate the team – Each team member brings something unique to the team. It’s important for managers to understand the individual talents of each member and understand how those skill sets interact. Once interaction pattern results are clear, it is easier to make adjustments to the current work environment. How the team works together directly affects the productivity of the company. With an overall understanding of where strengths and weaknesses vary, managers are now able to make appropriate adjustments in order to maximize efficiency.

Create a culture that values engagement – Your company’s “culture” is the unique personality of your company: core values, ethics, the rules that guide behavior. Communicating a clear vision of the future is crucial. Engaged employees require a work culture that is fundamentally stimulating, a return on the investment they are making in your company and leadership from people they can respect. These three elements will ensure that your employees remain engaged and productive throughout the course of their employment at your company.

Teamwork is rewarded and recognized – While individual achievements are great, collaborative ideas and practices are what create a team-building culture. Encourage team members to work together to come up with the very best ideas, and reward them when they do.

A company’s brand creates customer loyalty. Your recruitment, selection, on‐boarding, coaching, development, and succession planning processes are part of your brand. Think of each of these as a means of retaining top performers and developing future high performers. When you enhance your existing processes with the use of predicative performance patterns and job matching, and then empower your managers to use this data, you will accelerate performance and build your employee brand loyalty. It’s also important to remember that team building isn’t just an activity you do once a month. It’s something that you should work on every day to make it part of your organization’s culture.

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