How to create a collaborative and cohesive team at work and remotely?

“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” Helen KELLER

Thanks to each employee’s skills and assets, companies can succeed to achieve a common goal. Each person contributes individually but also collectively to the success of their company. That’s why teamwork is essential.

However, teamwork alone is not sufficient. For a team to achieve better result, cohesiveness is a key.

In fact, a cohesive team, collaborate in great stressless conditions thanks to the great atmosphere created by each one of the team members based on respect and understanding. These conditions would ineluctably create job satisfaction which would increase employee’s productivity.

Below there are some tips and tricks that can help managers to build a collaborative and cohesive team.

At the office:

Shared office space:

Nowadays, shared workspace is more and more common. It has several positive effects that help fostering collaboration, improving collective intelligence and team cohesiveness.

For example, it promotes face to face interaction between team member and therefore facilitates collaboration between them.

Of course, sometimes this kind of offices can be noisy, but fortunately there are solutions to help reduce noises in these kinds of spaces. In general, a shared space helps to build a better work environment.

If a company wants to design its shared office spaces, it may be a good idea to involve employees in the decoration or arrangement. Managers can even take that as an opportunity to make team-building by encouraging their teams to add their personal touch. After all, team members spend more than 8 hours a day at the office, so at least make the place feel like a good place to work, to discuss and to relax.

Taking lunch together:

Should employers encourage their employees to take lunch together?

In my opinion, one of the best methods to build cohesiveness between team members is to spend more time together during lunch. This moment allows to learn more about colleagues beyond their professional life.

Employers can encourage teams to eat together or share a drink after lunch. But there should be no pressure because some employees need that break to recharge for the second half of the work day by relaxing, reading or doing sport.

Managers should from time to time eat with their teams, in order to learn more about them and to create a good relationship with them.

Remotely:

Due to climate change, traffic jams or COVID 19 pandemic, many companies have been forced to adopt a new culture of work and to speed up their change to remote work. Home office is becoming the new normal way of working for many people.

As always in life, everything new brings many opportunities and challenges. One of the challenges that can face companies with this new way of work is creation and maintenance of team cohesion and collaboration.

What can companies do in order to build a cohesiveness and collaboration inside the team members?

Digital collaboration tools:

Nowadays, we have multiple tools that teams can use for discussions, organization or reporting. If teams are collocated, managers can encourage their teams to use tools that facilitate face to face meetings. For example, teams can use visual management boards for their daily meetings and Kanban to follow the progress of their work. Companies can also adopt digital tools that match with the physical meetings.

In the case that team members are working remotely, companies can only rely on digital tools. But thanks to new technology, there are more and more powerful and intuitive tools to be used to facilitate communication, sharing of information and collaboration between team members.

Digital project management tools:

There are many digital management tools that keep team members up to date about the status of projects, in spite of the geographical location of the team members and their respective time zones.

Moreover, project management tools can offer different methods to help teams to work on projects and programs.

Thus, managers can choose tools that fit best to their team needs to increase efficiency, transparency, collaboration and cohesiveness.

Digital communication tools:

Use online hangout tools to facilitate communication and make it smoother between team members. Companies should encourage teams to use video conferencing tools to discuss together and use chat tools to send messages instead of emails.

Managers can also motivate their teams to take a coffee break using video conference in order to strengthen team's relationships.

Other tricks that help improving team cohesiveness and collaboration:

Whatever the way of work that has been adopted by companies, it’s important to share the same values between employees and the company that they work for. Managers have to keep transparency in communication with their teams and encourage them to do the same. Managers with their team members should also set up clear and common goals to achieve.

It’s also essential to congratulate teams when they succeed and reward them collectively in order to prevent competition and reinforce cohesiveness and collaboration between them.

Additionally, it is necessary to do team-building that encourage group activities. And if an employer decides to set up a remote company, I think it’s crucial to allocate some budget to bring the team together in a common place for at least once a year. Then members can get to know each other in person, not only through screens.

Finally, I believe that it is important that team leader or team facilitator keep track of team member’s weather and other performance metrics in order to identify and overcome difficulties and conflicts in order to succeed in their mission.

Article is written by Sara MOUDRIK HORN