Guest Post: Penisula Group
It’s one thing to hire the perfect team, it’s another to keep them motivated enough to stay in the company long-term.
While pay and various employee benefits play an important role in motivating your staff, nowadays, they’re seen as a baseline reason for taking a job. A survey from TINYpulse actually, found that peer motivation and encouragement were among the top incentives for employees.
With this in mind, it’s important for companies to start recognizing achievements in the workplace as a means of motivating their workforce.
As well as being an important part of company culture, teamwork recognition helps to improve team performance, productivity, and morale.
In this piece, we’re highlighting why teamwork is important in the workplace and exploring the ways that rewards and recognition can affect team productivity.
Why is teamwork important in the workplace?
Before getting into the ways rewards and recognition can affect teamwork, we thought it might be a good idea to explain the importance of teamwork.
Anyone working in HR will tell you that promoting teamwork is a priority for every organization. In today’s working environment, and with most jobs now involving interaction with people on different teams or in different geographic locations, the need for teamwork is even more critical for business success.
So, why is teamwork important in the workplace?
Promoting unity
Often, working individually can create an environment where employees are focused on completing their own goals while competing against their co-workers, which can be a prime contributor to a demotivated workforce.
When you encourage teamwork, you’re also promoting an atmosphere that fosters friendship and loyalty. These relationships motivate employees to tackle difficult projects together and enable the collaboration and support of each other.
Efficient work
Teamwork is a key pillar of the digital revolution as it forms the foundation of modern civilization, i.e., the division of labor. And in the workplace, effective teamwork enables the workforce to divide tasks into smaller chunks and divide them according to skills and experience.
This allows tasks to be completed better, faster, and more efficiently, which in turn improves the productivity and profitability of your workplace.
Diverse feedback
With employees often coming from diverse backgrounds and with many different experiences, an atmosphere of teamwork enables your staff to brainstorm collectively and offer feedback from multiple unique perspectives.
By allowing for this, you’re opening your business up to diverse thoughts, and opportunities, accounting for unique viewpoints and solutions. It should go without saying, but diverse teams are more likely to spark innovation, which can, in turn, offer you a competitive edge you might otherwise miss.
Developing individual skills
Any workforce is likely to be made up of a combination of staff members with uniquely different experiences, skillsets, strengths, and weaknesses.
As well as improving employee performance, a varied setup like this will allow your staff to develop new and old skills alike by learning from each other on a daily basis.
Synergy
By making your workforce aware of the goals and objectives of the company, you place your employees in a much better position to offer support, cooperation, and encouragement, all of which provide synergy throughout the workplace.
By keeping your workplace synergized, you’ll be making employees collectively responsible for work, as well as invested in the outputs of tasks, ultimately giving them a greater sense of accomplishment in their work.
12 ways rewards and recognition impact teamwork
Employees value appreciation at work. Yes, you absolutely should pay them well for the job they do, but teamwork recognition and recognition of their efforts also go a long way towards showing them they’re valued.
Based on the points highlighted above, employers are now aware of the need for the recognition of employee performance, engagement and achievements, both individually and as part of a team.
Here are 12 ways in which recognizing achievements in the workplace will ultimately go a long way towards improving your business.
1. Increased productivity
It should go without saying, but when employees enjoy and feel valued at their jobs, they tend to be more productive. And how can you ensure they’re happy at their jobs? By offering rewards and recognizing their achievements in the workplace.
It doesn’t have to be expensive; a simple email thanking them for their hard work goes a long way to securing their loyalty to you. When your staff are engaged, they’re significantly more productive than they would be otherwise.
2. Boost morale
According to Entrepreneur magazine, backstabbing and arguments amongst employees are among the most common reasons for declining morale. In contrast, rewarding employees is one of the best ways to keep morale up.
When you make employees feel like they’re being recognized at work, they’re more likely to be happier in the role and with the company.
3. Retaining employees
As we explained in the intro, employee motivators stretch much further than their pay package. Rewarding staff members for their own achievements and teamwork recognition is important when it comes to retaining existing employees.
Those that are recognized for their achievements in the workplace and praised for their hard work are more likely to be satisfied in their role, which can then result in greater loyalty to the business.
To increase team spirit, cooperation, and innovation, consider pulling individuals together to receive compensation and recognition as a group.
4. Increased communication
A major importance of recognition and rewards in the workplace is greater communication. By celebrating achievements and milestones, you’re able to build stronger team relationships.
Employers can communicate their goals and vision with their staff while employees can work together to problem-solve with effective communication, making projects and workloads that much easier.
5. Employee happiness
The happiness of your staff is of paramount importance. Happy and fulfilled employees are motivated to perform better because of the positive feelings they have towards your company. When you treat your staff with gratitude and respect, they’re more likely to want to work harder at their job in return.
6. Attracting recruits
The recruitment process can be a long and daunting one, so it’s important to take steps to make it easier. One way to do this is by leveraging your existing staff.
When your existing employees are happy, they’re more likely to recommend your company to their friends or family. With the popularity of review sites like Glassdoor and indeed, it’s easier for your employees to share their opinion about your business.
While this may have positive impacts for your company, it can also lead to negative reviews, which can be surprisingly damaging. With technology being what it is, negative reviews can spread faster and wider, and could have consequences for your business that you didn’t foresee.
7. Culture
Rewarding and recognizing your employees and teams for the work they do is essential for keeping a happy and productive workforce.
By linking employee recognition to the values and culture of your organization, you’ are ensuring that your staff are engaged for the right reason and in a way that can benefit the business.
8. Job satisfaction
Recognizing employees for their achievements and efforts shows them that you value their contributions with regard to the success of the organization.
Offering rewards shows staff that their hard work is worth rewarding and so must be important. This, in turn, builds their confidence by letting them know that they’re making a real difference.
9. Developing employee branding
As well as helping to attract recruits, rewarding your staff can also do wonders for your company brand. It’s common knowledge that an organization that recognizes and rewards its employees can build a positive brand, as employees are more likely to talk positively about the benefits of their workplace.
As well as being identified as a company that values and rewards their staff, it’ll also stand out as one with good leadership and excellent people management skills.
10. Stimulating development and progression
The points above show us that employees tend to do better when they’re recognized for their good work.
In addition to this, rewarding good behavior and exceptional performance encourage them to seek further development and career goals. It helps boost morale and pushes them to do more to exceed company expectations and move forward in their career.
11. Loyalty
Engaged employees are loyal employees. They’ll promote your business and sell your brand better than anyone else possibly could. By rewarding your staff, you’re developing an emotional bond with them, which in time will grow into loyalty to your company.
12. Focused vision
Working in groups toward a performance award pushes all members of the team to recognize the company’s objective, mission, and vision. With this understanding, employees learn how their roles within the company help to achieve its overall goals and objectives.
To resolve the ongoing challenges most businesses face when it comes to retaining existing staff and attracting newer ones, many employers just throw money at the problem.
While money in the form of pay raises, bonuses or incentive pay is usually always welcome, research has proven it’s not a long-term solution. The importance of recognition in the workplace, on the other hand, is.
In an article published by Harvard Business School, assistant professor Ashley Whillans pointed out that what really matters in the workplace is “helping employees feel appreciated” and not just throwing money at a problem.
With appreciation being a fundamental human need, praise and recognition are essential to maintain a productive and engaged workplace. As well as attracting new talent to the business, it helps to retain the existing ones.
Improve your business productivity with Moneypenny
By now you should be fully aware of just how important teamwork is for your business, but even the best teams can be impaired by constant distractions and interruptions.
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Get in touch now on 844 364 6623.
* This blog was contributed by Penisula. To find out more about their HR services, visit their website here.
