Changing The Culture Of Your Office

July 4, 2008

Changing The Culture Of Your Office

In a business organisation, one thing that is vital to creating a positive and successful working environment is the build up of a strong teamworking atmosphere. Without a strong team, the business will struggle a great deal in seeing the results they want to see in their organisation. Building a good workforce will mean an increase in financial success, improved productivity, improvement in employment motivation and more encouragement for innovation.

In order to instigate a good teamworking environment one will need to do plenty of research beforehand, by attending seminars on creating and a maintaining a productive team, or by observing other organisations and getting an idea on what methods they use to create a good working atmosphere. It is a good idea that people looking to improve the quality of work in the company find a way use a method that suits their existing environment rather than taking on board someone else’s approach.

The first step is to initiate the change, allowing the rest of the team to prepare and stay informed of what they should expect. Companies that receive good feedback from staff are the ones who concentrate hard on the teamworking environment, putting their employee’s needs first and always making sure there is good communication between each other. This is a good practise for all organisations, as studies have shown that employees prefer to be spoken to directly and be informed of any new activities that may occur in the company.

All senior managers will need to read up on available literature that will provide information on the best way to divide up teams, whilst also trying to build up the morale in the office. This is a difficult process as right up until this point the office may have been a place where everyone are expected to work together as a group rather than in separate teams. The idea is not separate people from working together but to establish teams based on their skills and expertise to work better together and also share their knowledge to work with people in a different department.

This will ensure improvement in communication between different teammates and improve the quality of the teamworking environment. The team managers and senior managers must be satisfied by this change, by evaluating how these changes will benefit the company and whether this will meet to their overall strategy for the organisation as a whole. This will mean a big commitment from the senior management in maintaining the teamworking strategy. Without the support of the employers, the team will not work to the standards required of them.

Once the first step has been completed and a plan of action has been put in place, then and only then is the company ready for putting this plan into practise. It will be a slow adjustment for some employees; however, many will notice a difference in the environment. Management should always seek to allow the new teams to feel comfortable in voicing their ideas and encouraging them to communicate any opinions on new product ideas. This help to boost their confidence with their new working environment.

The change should be implemented in small steps, rather than bombarding the staff with actions and new responsibilities. This could be done by introducing new practises such as regular meetings, regular appraisals, trying a trial exercise period whereby the change is implemented for a short time only with the results assessed after this period. This will help to raise any issues and help management identify what worked well and what improvements should be made.

Anna Stenning is an expert on building up a good teamworking environment, having taken part in many team building exercises.

Tags : Teamworking