It is important for every employee in an organization to have effective communication skills. This is especially so for managers as they have to deal with additional responsibilities or duties in improving employee productivity, teamwork, morale, and performance. If an aspiring or experienced manager wants to remain on the top of his/her game, then it is important to master written communication, verbal, and nonverbal skills.
Remember, any interaction a manager has with an employee can be considered as an opportunity to create a positive impact on both professional and personal front.
Why are effective communication skills for managers so important?
It is the responsibility of managers to provide regular feedback to employees based on their behavior and performance. Now, how well a manager communicates will decide on the way employees receive their feedback. In a way, this will directly have an impact on the way employees behave and perform going ahead. If the communication provided by the manager is concise and clear then employees are able to perform better and behave properly in an organizational setup.
However, when the communication skills of managers are insufficient, a lot of confusion and even decrease in productivity at workplaces can be seen. Therefore, whether in a one-on-one or group situation, managers need to communicate well to ensure the team performance is on the right track.
Relationships with other departments
Effective communication skills for managers are also important when the employees are required to deal with other departments in an organization, in one way or the other. More often than not, managers are required to interact with employees belonging to other departments for exchanging ideas and information. When a manager has excellent communication skills it helps build trust across various departments and enable them to work towards achieving a common goal.
Conflict resolution
Managers need to have excellent listening abilities if they were to improve their communication skills. Managers who tend to listen better to their employees gain confidence from them and let them know that their opinions too count. This also helps employees to discuss all their problems freely that have been affecting their performances. When managers have excellent communication skills, they can keep their team morale high and help resolve conflicts in time before they go out of hand.
Managing performances
To improve performance levels of employees, it is important for managers to hone their communication skills. Managers who exercise open and candid communication with their employees actually facilitate a two-way dialogue that is critical in executing performance-based appraisals.
Building teams
Effective communication skills for managers also help build teams. For example, managers can use their communication skills to set rules, define employee roles, encourage employees to take their own decisions, and obtain goals for their teams. That’s not all; excellent communication skills also allow managers to increase morale, productivity, and team unity easily and effectively.
Studying human resource management helps professionals to effectively assess the relevant candidates based on personal traits and critical skills required for the job. As such, students pursuing a course in human resource management stand a high chance of mastering the key attributes that a hiring manager should possess.
Whether you are a college student pursuing a degree, diploma, or certificate in human resource management, it is essential to learn how a hiring manager should behave during an interview session or when to recruit new employees. In case you want to advance your career to a higher level, it is advantageous to pursue a postgraduate course in human resource management. Apart from that, you should focus on short-term courses, which will help you to learn more about working with people within any kind of workforce environment. As such, you will realize that a successful hiring manager should possess excellent people skills, which help them to communicate effectively with the employees.
Many companies usually appreciate their workers as valuable assets. This is possible if the organization embraces the idea of building effective management of its human resource management department. As such, human resources enables institutions and businesses to create a well-structured team with a distinctive organizational culture. With this, the workforce stands a high chance of getting engaged or developed with whatever activity they are doing. In simple language, effective human resource management helps the organization to enhance productivity.
5 Key Advantages of Studying Human Resource Management
Students pursuing a program in human resource management are likely to become potential hiring managers after they’ve completed their course and passed their exams. To master your studies, you can ask for help with your assignments from UK essays services. Without any further ado, here are some of the advantages of being a human resource management professional.
Enhances the workers turnover
When students learn more about human resource management, they will be able to master the techniques to control the high rates of turnover in the company. Senior worker turnover is a risk to the organizations’ bottom line. As such, the company will be required to spend a lot of money trying to recruit the right workforce to work with. To control any future cases of turnover in the company, hiring managers to learn more the right business skills that an employee possesses and if they fit the organizational culture.
Conflict resolution
Since people possess different personalities, work ethics, and lifestyles, it is not easy to control them without applying the right management skills. However, with the mastery of proper human resource management skills, you can learn how to deal with the conflict in a more professional manner.
As a student pursuing an HR course, you should ensure that you deal with disputes professionally. Whether the problem arises between the workers and the department or between the employees, you should apply effective conflict resolution strategies to ensure that the conflicting parties come to a mutual agreement.
Boost the workers’ performance
In the business world, it is essential to enhance the performance management framework. This is possible if human resource professionals learn how to identify the right candidate who is fit for the job. As such, a human resource student should master the essential expertise or skills to identify in the person to be hired. Getting the right workforce helps to boost the performance of workers in the company.
Career development and training
Learning the best human resource strategies helps the company to determine if the workers need the discipline to sharpen their skills, or not. As such, in case the company decides to hire its staff based on qualification, it is advantageous to subject their workers to additional training and requirements.
Worker satisfaction
To become a good human resource manager, it is essential to focus on ensuring that the demands of the workers are fulfilled. This is possible if you set up random surveys, interviewing strategies, and focus groups that will enable you to determine if your workers agree with your management or now. So, as a student pursuing a course in human resource management, ensure that you can determine the underlying causes that hinder the workers from being satisfied. Once you’ve identified the factors or causes, address them in a manner that will get the workers motivated in whatever the company is doing for them.
Master the Skills of Becoming a Good Human Resource Manager
In college, human resource students learn more about the development of a strategic technique to recruit, train, and develop the workers, which are the essential asset for an organization. As such, learners should be ready to master the key traits that a good hiring manager should possess.
Are you a student facing time management issues? Well, the majority of students today struggle with managing their time effectively leading to a decrease in their productivity levels along with an increase in stress. Time management is an art that not only brings discipline in a student’s life but also optimises their overall growth. Thus, all students must know effective ways of time management. If you are one of those students looking for ways to manage your time, this blog is for you! Here we will discuss the importance of time management for students and also provide tips for the same. Take a look!
Each one of us has 24 hours a day and how we spend it completely depends on us. As the term suggests, time management is organizing your time and making the most of your daily routine. It is the ability to use each hour effectively. Managing time not only makes us complete our work but also give us ample time for ourselves. People can work smarter when they learn to manage their time effectively. However, each human is wired uniquely different. Hence, it is important to know that each one of our schedules might depend on several intrinsic factors and can be influenced by multiple external factors.
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot”- Michael Altshuler
Time Management Skills
Source: Giphy
While some people find it difficult to manage their time, others manage their time better because they have certain skills. Time management requires habituating oneself to a disciplined schedule. Here are a few time management skills you can inculcate in your daily routine.
Find your most effective and productive hour of the day.
Make realistic plans.
Own your work.
Don’t bite more than you can chew.
Plan ahead.
Be flexible.
“Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!” — Tony Robbins
Why Time Management Is Important To Students?
Youtube: Wairikoo
Time management for students is of utmost importance to balance their studies with other daily essential tasks. Good time management reflects on your health and also adds to your energy to achieve more. Here are a few reasons why time management should be of utmost importance for all students.
It Increases Your Productivity
If you manage your time effectively, it adds to your productivity levels. Assigning a fixed time for all the tasks to be done in a day lets you plan your day in advance and enables you to do more tasks in less time. But you should remember that this will only be effective if you do your work on time, procrastination will definitely have a negative effect on your productivity.
The best way of time management for students is to create and follow a fixed timetable for each day. This is beneficial for students since they will have a clear idea of the different tasks to be done each day, and they could also easily mark the tasks as done after completing them. This will make your daily tasks organised and you can even choose to do the more important ones first by putting them at the top of the things-to-do list.
Positive Effect On Health
Good time management efforts also reflect on your health. When you manage your time effectively, you don’t have to stay up late to finish your tasks. Cutting down on your sleep time will lead to tiredness, which will hamper your schedule for the day. Getting a good night’s sleep is essential for your brain and body to recharge itself, and this reflects positively on your health and energy levels.
When you have a fixed schedule for all your tasks for the day, you get an idea of the extra time you will have left after completing all your tasks. You can schedule your tasks in a way so that you get more time to do what you love. This can include hobbies like drawing, painting, singing, dancing, photography etc, or you can even go cycling or jogging to get some fresh air to refresh yourself.
“Either run the day or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn
It Helps in Stress Reduction
Not completing your studies, assignments and projects can cause you to be stressed out. Taking care of our mental health is very important for everyone, and since students often get increased stress and anxiety levels due to the pressure of studies, it reflects on their poor performance. Effective time management can help you in lessening this mental pressure, which will also boost your confidence and energy levels.English Speaking Topics for StudentsBest Novels for Students
No Last-minute Cramming of Syllabus
One problem that students often face is not completing their syllabus on time. This leads to them cramming up all the chapters just before the exams, which undoubtedly makes them get lower scores than they expected. With proper techniques of time management for students, they can not only complete studying the chapters in their syllabus on time, but also have some extra time left for their revisions.
“To do two things at once is to do neither.”- Publius Syrus
Tips for Time Management for Students
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Now that you know the importance of time management for students, you should start on working on managing your time better. If you are clueless about how you should start with this, worry no more! Here are some tips on time management for students that you will find useful:
Create a daily timetable or schedule with all the tasks to be done
Start your day early
Divide your tasks
Take short breaks between studies or doing your tasks
Do not procrastinate
Work on one task at a time instead of multitasking
Get enough sleep
Do your tasks with full focus
Practice healthy eating
Try to keep away all distractions (like TV, mobile) when you study
Since students have been constricted to their homes, keeping track of studies, assignments and homework has become difficult. With regular classrooms, students had a specific place and a set time for their school/college hours. Online classes have considerably decreased the focus of students and made them lag behind. Here are a few tips that can help students manage their time for online studies.
Create a Well-designed Plan: Schedule your day according to to your other chores and task.
Set-up a Virtual Classroom: Choose any corner of the house and make it your dedicated classroom.
Make a to-do list: Making a to-do list of all your assignments, studies, and chapters will help you know which are to be completed on a priority bases.
Add Minimum Time to do Each Task: Adding a minimum amount can help you allot time for each task throuighout the day. This will also help you know how much time you take for differentr assignments.
Reduce Distractions: While studying, Dedicate this time to your studies only. Make sure you avoid being distracted by social media or family.
Reward yourself: Tale breaks and reward yourself at frequent intervals. This will help your mind stay focussed and also increase productivity.
Hope you found this blog on the importance of time management for students useful. Follow the tips mentioned here to manage your time better and achieve your desired results. If you are looking for higher education opportunities abroad, our experts at Leverage Edu can provide you with the best guidance regarding the top courses you can apply for. Sign up for a free session today
The Importance of Management Principles for an Organisation!
Proper understanding of management principles is very necessary and helpful for managers as these principles act as guidelines for managerial activities. By practising principles managers can avoid various mistakes while dealing with people in the organisation.
The significance of management principles is due to following reasons:
(1) Providing managers with useful insight into reality:
Management principles act as guidelines for the managers. These principles improve knowledge, ability and understanding of managers under various managerial situations. The effects of these principles help the managers to learn from their mistakes. These principles guide managers to take right decision at the right time.
(2) Optimum utilisation of resources:
The management principles insist on planned activities and systematic organisation of men and materials in the organisation. Principles are designed to get maximum benefits from the human efforts and other resources.
For example, scientific principles suggest to cut down the wasteful movements and setting up of standard time to complete a task. By saving time, energy and efforts activities can be made economical and result in maximum utilisation of resources.
(3) Scientific decisions:
Managers have to take number of decisions every day. So they need to assess the resources of organisations very carefully so that the appropriate decision can be taken by using the available resources in best possible manner. The management principles enable the managers to approach various problems systematically and scientifically.
For example, Taylor’s principles always insisted on replacement of rule of thumb by scientific approach i.e., he suggested to conduct the time study to set up the standard time required to perform a job rather than leaving it at the discretion or will of manager.
(4) Meeting changing environment requirement:
Every businessman has to make changes in the organisation according to changes taking place in the business environment. Management principles train the managers in implementing the changes in right direction and at right level in the organisation. Although management principles are relative and general guidelines yet by modifying these principles changes can be made in the organisation.
Administration is the function of top level management. In this function major plans and policies are formed. The management principles act as guidelines and base to form various administrative policies to have systematic working in the organisation. Management principles make administration more effective by discouraging personal prejudices and biases. These principles insist on objectivity and scientific decisions.
For example, principle of unity of command, scalar chain, and unity of direction leads to systematic and smooth functioning of the organisation as unity of command avoids confusion of more bosses. Unity of direction unifies the efforts of all the employees in common direction and scalar chain results in systematic flow of information. So all these principles definitely bring effective and efficient administration.
(6) Fulfilling Social responsibilities:
A business is creation of society and makes use of resources of society so it must do something for society also by performing some social responsibilities. Management principles not only act as guidelines for achieving organisational objectives but these principles also guide the managers to perform social responsibilities.
For example, the principle of fair remuneration insists on adequate salary to employees and takes care of interest of employees also.
The management principles stress on scientific judgements and logical thinking. As a result these principles act as base of doing research and development in management studies. As these principles provide organised body of knowledge to perform research work and generate more and more knowledge, they have provided new ideas, imagination and base for research and development.
Principles of management are at the core of management theories. These act as base for management training and education. Professional courses such as BBA, MBA also teach these principles as part of their curriculum. The entire management institute takes aptitude test and these tests are based on management principles only.
Stress is just one of the many hurdles college students face. Short-term stress can help learners raise a grade, polish an essay, or pursue a coveted career opportunity. But long-term stress, if left unaddressed, can have detrimental side effects.
According to the American Institute of Stress, 4 in 5 college students experience frequent stress. Unchecked stress can lead to physical side effects like trouble concentrating, irritability, a lack of energy, appetite changes, a weakened immune system, and trouble sleeping.
In addition to the negative side effects stress brings, more college students than ever report feeling it for extended periods. Although the majority of this stress often stems from coursework, other factors, such as family, friends, and work, can increase stress and contribute to undesirable academic and personal outcomes.
To address this issue, many colleges provide ample resources and opportunities for students to deal with stress positively. Keep reading to learn more about the different types of stress and solutions for managing it.
What Is Stress and How Does It Affect College Students?
Stress is a physical reaction to a person’s emotions. Both positive events (e.g., an upcoming wedding) and negative events (e.g., the loss of a loved one) can cause stress.
When you feel an emotion that triggers stress, your adrenal gland releases epinephrine — the hormone responsible for the flight-or-fight response — and then cortisol. In dangerous situations, this response can save your life. Too much cortisol, however, can have a long-term, negative impact on your metabolic rate, memory formation, and blood sugar regulation.
Stress can take one of three forms:
Acute Stress: The most common form of stress, acute stress is the result of day-to-day stressors, such as waking up late, running to class, or receiving a bad grade. Fortunately, most acute stress fades quickly and has little mental or physical impact.
Episodic Acute Stress: As its name suggests, episodic acute stress develops when a student experiences acute stress multiple times over an extended period. Common symptoms include migraines and tension headaches.
Chronic Acute Stress: Chronic acute stress happens when someone can’t avoid a long-term stressful situation. For example, students struggling academically in a major course may develop chronic acute stress, which can lead to weight gain, sleep deprivation, and anxiety.
What Are the Symptoms of Stress in College Students?
When people are exposed to stressors or stimuli that provoke stress, they experience an array of physical, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive reactions. As such, two students might experience stress in very different ways.
Below are some of the various ways stress can manifest in people.
Physical Symptoms
Sweating
Increased heart rate or blood pressure
Vertigo
Shortness of breath
Muscle tension
Headaches and stomachaches
Fatigue
Emotional Symptoms
Hostility, irritability, and other mood changes
Increased worrying
Helplessness
Loneliness
Behavioral Symptoms
Binge or reduced eating
Drug or alcohol misuse
Decreased sex drive
Erratic sleep habits
Cognitive Symptoms
Memory loss
Loss of concentration
Negative outlook
Dissociation (i.e., disconnection from your thoughts, feelings, and identity)
What Are the Causes of Stress in College Students?
College students respond to stressors in different ways, but some situations are almost always stressful. Here are some of the most common stressors for students.
Finances
Many students work while in school to afford high tuition and housing costs. Unfortunately, part-time jobs typically pay just minimum wage. If you’re struggling economically, speak to your financial aid office to see whether you qualify for grants, loans, or work-study.
Homesickness and New Levels of Independence
On top of classes, exams, and meeting people, many students have to deal with growing up. Out-of-state students may be living away from their homes for the first time in their lives, which can easily become a source of constant stress.
Living Among Strangers
Students new to campus life often feel isolated, especially if they’re in an unfamiliar city or state. Some students are naturally shy and may find it difficult to make friends.
Students often feel overwhelmed by the increased workload associated with college-level coursework. This realization can blindside students and contribute to stress and anxiety. In many classes, exams make up a large percentage of students’ grades, causing midterms and finals to be more stressful than normal.
Family Turmoil or Loss Back Home
A 2014 NPR study found that the death of a loved one is the second-highest cause of stress amongst U.S. adults. A death in the family can be extremely traumatic for college students, especially if they live away from home and can’t afford to take a break from classes.
Work Schedules
According to a 2013 survey by Citibank and Seventeen Magazine, 4 in 5 students work while attending college. The average student works 19 hours a week. Many learners try to find a job that can accommodate the scheduling concerns associated with full-time education.
Social Obligations
In addition to academic pressures, college introduces plenty of social pressures, such as the idea that you must make tons of friends and party every weekend. Peer pressure and societal expectations can exacerbate stress, especially for first-year students.
Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships take work. When you and your partner face the stresses of college life, the pressure can feel even greater. Additionally, many students may be in the process of questioning their sexuality and/or gender identity, which can impact dating and relationships.
Can College Stress Lead to Other Health Conditions?
Research shows that stress can lead to the development of many mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and substance misuse. It can also introduce physical conditions like chronic pain.
DepressionDepression is a complex mental health condition often caused by a combination of biological, psychological, and environmental factors. Floods of stress hormones can make people, including busy college students, more susceptible to depression.
AnxietySevere anxiety can signal an anxiety disorder. This condition, which is especially common among college students, is characterized by physical symptoms, such as muscle tension and shaking, as well as by racing thoughts, feelings of impending doom, fear, excess worry, and irritability.
Sleep DisordersSleep disturbances and anxiety often come hand in hand. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, sleep problems can cause or exacerbate anxiety, and vice versa.
Substance MisuseSome students turn to alcohol or drugs to help manage their stress; however, these dangerous coping mechanisms can lead to substance misuse. A 2018 study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that 28% of college students had engaged in binge drinking in the two weeks before the survey was conducted.
Chronic Muscle PainFor some students, stress can lead to ongoing physical conditions such as chronic neck aches, backaches, stomach aches, and headaches. The National Institutes of Health recommends practicing yoga and meditation to relax your body and release muscular tension.
How to Manage Stress in College: 7 Key Tips
Figuring out what situations might cause stress is only half the battle for college students. Fortunately, there are several tricks you can use to help you avoid getting stressed out, reduce how much stress you feel, and improve your ability to cope with and ultimately eliminate stress.
1. Get Enough Sleep
Getting both quality sleep and enough sleep offers a variety of health benefits, including reducing stress and improving your mood. What’s more, students who sleep well are less likely to get sick, have better memory recall, and enjoy a clearer mind.
In addition to keeping your body healthy, regular exercise releases endorphins and improves your overall cognitive abilities. Exercise can even help you fall asleep, thereby reducing stress. Keep in mind that exercise doesn’t need to be strenuous — yoga, short walks, and stretching can all lead to immense mental health benefits and help relieve tension.
4. Don’t Rely on Stimulants
Drinking coffee and energy drinks to fuel your late-night study sessions will inevitably lead to a crash later on. These stimulants boost cortisol levels in the body, increasing the physical effects of stress.
5. Set Realistic Expectations
Consistently having too much on your plate can lead to a lot of stress. Try to manage your workload by setting realistic expectations and picking a class schedule that gives you plenty of time to study and relax.
Procrastination might feel good in the moment, but it often leads to stress. By managing your time wisely, you can avoid spending all night catching up on coursework. Additionally, habitual procrastination may be a sign of ADHD or anxiety.
7. Identify a Stress Outlet
Stress can never be completely avoided; however, finding a healthy way to reduce stress can go a long way toward keeping it from overwhelming you. Common stress outlets include exercise, spending time with friends and family, and getting massages.
You can also try relaxation techniques such as deep abdominal breathing, concentrating on a soothing word (like “peace” or “calm”), doing yoga or tai chi, and visualizing tranquil scenes.
Where Can Students Go for Help With Managing Stress?
Stress can rise to dangerous levels, threatening students’ physical, emotional, and mental health. But nobody has to face stress alone. Here are some organizations and resources you can contact to receive treatment and support for managing stress in college.
On-Campus Mental Health Services
Most colleges offer on-campus (and sometimes virtual) mental health services to students. You can usually find out more about a school’s services by going online to its official website.
If you need immediate assistance, contact your school’s student services. This department can direct you to appropriate resources, such as mental health clinics, online screening, and individual or group counseling. Taking advantage of these services can improve your mental health, allowing you to thrive academically and socially.
Off-Campus Centers and Hotlines
Schools that can’t provide appropriate stress management resources will direct students to use an outside service, such as a local counseling or therapy center.
Other external resources include 24/7 hotlines. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 gives students space to talk with trained professionals about suicide ideation and conditions such as severe stress, depression, and anxiety.
Similarly, The Trevor Project offers many support services, including a 24/7 crisis counseling center and hotline, for LGBTQ+ students experiencing stress and other mental health challenges. For help, text START to 678678.
Once these professionals identify the underlying issue, they connect students with a long-term solution, such as a psychiatrist or substance misuse prevention group.
Leading a team can be inspiring, rewarding and exhausting. Busy working environments can leave little time for team leaders to check-in with team members and ensure they’re feeling happy, creative and on track. But with these 6 simple and effective team management tips, there’s an alternative.
How to Achieve Effective Team Management
With good communication channels and plenty of opportunities to give feedback, you can provide your team with a strong support system. With this, team leaders can develop accountability, trust, and a less hierarchical approach.
Here are our six tips for achieving a happier and more productive team via some supportive workflows:
It sounds like a big claim but transparent environments help to develop a feeling of mutual respect between team members and team leaders. Via open and consistent communication, transparent and authentic workplaces help employees to feel secure in their positions. In turn, team members feel freer to contribute ideas and suggestions, enhancing creativity.
Marc de Grandpre, senior VP of Marketing at KIND Healthy Snacks, believes that transparency in the workplace is hugely important. Marc explains how they use transparency for effective team management at their company:
“How can your company learn, grow and succeed if people are afraid to be themselves, voice their opinions and genuinely show that they care about the brand and team? Having the company become a sort of safe space allows for brilliant ideas to flow and for problems in your company to be flagged and addressed head-on.”
Marc and his team aim to make all employees feel in the loop, respected and valued. Consequently, they found that each team member felt happier in their job, while also more creative and loyal.
James Hannam, team management consultant, agrees that transparency is a cornerstone to high-functioning teams. James explains that on his projects, teams use MeisterTask to achieve effective team and project management. They do this by providing team members with an overview of projects and responsibilities, via their shared Project Boards:
“If all of your team members can have a high-level of visibility over the project, while also understanding the part they are playing at any given time, you will foster a sense of responsibility, creating accountability among team members.”
Each task within each Project is assigned to a specific team member, making everyone’s responsibilities clear. This also enables team members to understand the role they’re playing within the bigger picture. With all tasks and responsibilities displayed transparently, team leaders can take a less hands-on approach, knowing each task will be seen through by the assigned person.
2. Keep communicating
You must have heard this one before: the basis of a cooperative and productive team is good communication.
The aim is to create an environment in which team leaders feel able to provide honest and constructive feedback, and team members feel confident to voice concerns and communicate with one another.
For teams with members working remotely, Google Hangouts can provide an ideal way to ensure some face-to-face time is achieved.
If your distributed team is working across time zones and you’d like to set up a standing appointment for calls, it’s important to find a time which works for everyone involved. By not always holding calls at inconvenient times for the remote team member, they’ll be more open (and awake) to honestly and accurately communicate with you.
Try a chat channel, like Slack
Another great communication tool is Slack. Lots of companies are already using Slack, as regardless of whether your team is working remotely or all in one office, it’s a great way to cut down on emails and build a positive and friendly working culture.
At MeisterLabs we have a ‘stand up’ Slack channel, where everyone begins their day by sharing what they’ll be working on. This helps to prevent siphoning between teams and gives managers a good idea about what everyone’s focus for will be. It also allows team members to jump in and offer support when useful.
Providing feedback to team members is one of the best ways you can support them to develop professionally and personally.
Jean-François Manzoni, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Development at IMD International, explains:
“You do your star a disservice if you fail to help her figure out how she can continue to grow”
Even if you have no negative feedback to give, make sure to hold regular opportunities to check-in. This way, you can provide advice on how you feel your team members are progressing and could grow further. If there are any areas of work that you feel could be improved, these discussions also provide a good opportunity to share your constructive feedback.
Feedback can be difficult but it is an essential part of effective team management. When summarizing her advice on how to give effective feedback, Belle Beth Cooper said:
“If you’re finding a conversation difficult or nerve-wracking, remember that your aim in providing feedback is to help your team members succeed and grow.”
So although feedback conversations can be difficult, especially in non-hierarchical organizations, they’re important and necessary for the development of team members and the success of your wider team.
4. Encourage collaboration
Inevitably, your team members will be happier if they can get along well with one another. As an added bonus, they’ll perform better too.
To achieve this, encourage your team members to collaborate. On your team, there will likely be a whole bunch of diverse skills. Make sure these different skillsets are utilized by ensuring everyone is aware of ongoing projects. That way, team members can jump in to collaborate wherever they feel they can bring value.
On our marketing team, for example, I’ll often draw on support from the SEO specialist while creating the content strategy. Equally, if I know the SEO specialist is coming up with text for a PPC campaign, I’ll offer to help. A collaborative task management tool can help this process by sharing the upcoming tasks for each team member with the rest of your team.
In our marketing team, we use the Google Docs upload feature within MeisterTask to share documents via the relevant task. This means that we’re always working on the most up-to-date version of the document, as other team members are able to edit it in real-time. We then use the commenting feature on each task to leave relevant feedback, questions or updates on how the task is developing.
Try mapping out your ideas
For a less linear take on collaborative working, try using a collaborative online mind map. With MindMeister, multiple users are able to access mind maps at the same time, meaning team members can add their ideas, provide feedback or vote up or down on ideas. This can all be done in real-time, whether brainstorming in a meeting together, or working entirely remotely.
Generating ideas collaboratively while mind mapping has been found to boost creative thinking, as it integrates both the linear, convergent (left-brain) thinking with divergent, non-linear (right-brain) thinking. This engages the whole mind in processing and creating new information, using our visual, spatial and kinesthetic senses to come up with new ideas, increasing our creativity.
5. Trust your team to do their job
When I asked Michael Hollauf, MeisterLabs’ CEO, what his advice would be to other team leaders, he said it would be to always recognize when to delegate tasks.
Companies hire competent staff for a reason and effective team management shouldn’t mean micro-management. If you’ve hired staff for a specialist area like programming, you need to know when to just leave them to do their job.
Delegate tasks while staying in the loop
Sometimes it can be hard to let go. Especially if you’ve been working on a project for a while but need a team member to take it over. With MeisterTask, try using the Watching feature, where you can add yourself as a ‘watcher’. Becoming a ‘watcher’ allows you to remain in the loop with how the task is progressing and any related discussions.
Michael Kranner, MeisterLabs’ Growth Marketer, explains how this function helps him to run the Growth team here at MeisterLabs efficiently:
“at everystage, the experiment task is assigned to one specific person…Other team members can “watch” the task’s progression, keeping everyone in the loop with how the experiment is developing… As experiments develop we move the tasks between the sections. All team members “watching” the experiment are notified about the move.
By allowing “watchers” to keep an eye on progression, the feature allows team leaders to entrust team members to get on with their tasks or projects alone while feeling able to jump in to query or help where useful.
Retain an overview of team and project progress
In MeisterTask, team members can gain a clear overview of team and task progression via the Statistics & Reports area. Featuring graphs on task creation and completion, team productivity can be viewed transparently and reports can be downloaded as CSV files if needed.
Teams can also choose to time-track their tasks to gain even further insight into how long projects are taking.
As a team leader, you’re in a great position to set positive boundaries of work, play, and relaxation. In her article on managing work notifications, Belle Beth Cooper argues that it is the responsibility of employers to set the precedent about when and where team members should be switching off from work entirely. This could mean, for example, by not expecting team members to check emails after working hours.
Of course, this can be difficult. Particularly in teams where members work flexibly and might prefer to start early or work late, to save time elsewhere. However, encouraging team members to set themselves some working limits, to sleep well and avoid burn-out, is important.
With MeisterTask and Slack, our main communication channels at MeisterLabs, you can choose which notifications to receive. For example, I’ll only receive a push Slack notification on my laptop if I’ve been mentioned or been sent a direct message. Similarly, as Belle Beth Cooper suggests, team members can try setting their phones to do not disturb mode when finishing for the night, so they’re able to switch off, relax and rejuvenate.
Blog is curated by Vikram Kakri.
Blog Link: https://www.meistertask.com/blog/6-simple-tips-effective-team-management/
A recruiter’s job involves more than just being a people person. Recruiters need to interact with a range of personalities, identify whether candidates have the relevant skills for a position, know their employer’s company inside out, have experience with up-to-date recruiting technology, and much more. That means there are many more recruitment skills to look for when assessing a candidate for an open recruiter role.
What recruitment skills are important in 2021?
When hiring a new recruiter, it’s also important to take into account the evolution of the recruiter role. For example, the new technology used to source, communicate with, track, and hire candidates has changed significantly over the past ten years. This means that recruiters need an understanding of this technology and an understanding of how this has changed the recruitment process and how they interact with candidates.
So, which recruitment skills are most important today? This article will explore the technical and soft skills all great recruiters should have and how to assess your candidates’ talent acquisition skills.
1. Attention to detail
In a survey, executives said that the primary effects of low attention to detail are decreased product quality, productivity, employee morale, and decrease customer service quality. When the product of an employee’s work is your workforce, it’s easy to see why poor attention to detail can lead to lower quality of hire.
Managers surveyed agreed with executives on the top four negative impacts. But, while executives ranked a decrease in product quality as the number one negative impact of low attention to detail, managers said it was decreased productivity. Of course, no company wants to hurt productivity, especially not in a busy HR department.
So, clearly, attention to detail is a must-have recruitment skill.
Recruiters deal with a lot of information related to the people in the departments that are hiring and the candidates themselves. That’s why successful recruiters need to have an eye and an ear for detail. After all, even one missed detail can result in a bad hire, reputational damage, and wasted time and hiring resources.
2. Sourcing
Sourcing has become one of the most important talent acquisition skills today. On average, 45 percent of applicants are unqualified, so it’s crucial to have recruiters on your team who know how to find top talent.
Whether you need a recruiter to engage in passive candidate sourcing, strategic sourcing, or basic sourcing via an Applicant Tracking System, it’s vital to know what experience your candidates have in this area. This will include assessing their knowledge of the local recruitment market, their experience with various sourcing strategies, and their skills in developing candidate personas.
3. Experience with recruitment analytics
Thanks to the latest technology, HR is becoming more data-driven. This change has a huge impact on the roles of recruiters and talent acquisition specialists.
As a result, organizations are increasingly seeking talent acquisition managers who have experience using recruitment analytics to analyze recruitment data and use it in strategic ways that can help them hire better candidates, increase revenue, and lower costs.
4. Onboarding new hires
Better onboarding practices leads to higher levels of employee retention.
While onboarding is not technically a recruiter’s responsibility, there are times when they should be involved in the process. For example, on a new hire’s first day, the presence of the recruiter, who they’ve gotten to know through the hiring process, can be comforting.
Even if you’re a recruitment agency looking to fill an outside recruiter role, an understanding of the onboarding process is important. There are times when an outside recruiter should be involved in the onboarding process as well.
For example, when the candidate is one of the top talents in their respective industry. In such a situation, [the new hire’s] experience is of paramount importance and if [the recruiter] can help their new employer onboard them more quickly and elegantly, [they] simply have to do it.
Recruiters must have skills beyond legacy recruiting practices, such as using spreadsheets and email chains to manage the recruiting process. Modern recruiting skills include using Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to compete in a fast-paced job market.
Recruiters need to be able to use ATS software to scan, sort, and rank candidates, post to job boards, track candidates, parse resumes, and maintain career pages. Ideally, they’ll have experience with the ATS your company uses, but if a candidate can learn one ATS, they shouldn’t have much trouble learning another.
6. Improving the candidate experience
Improving the candidate experience is another critical recruitment skill. A positive candidate experience increases the likelihood that your top candidate will accept an offer. In contrast, 69% of candidates say they will never work with an employer who provides a negative experience.
Your recruiter has a huge impact on the candidate experience. They are responsible for managing the full-cycle of communication with candidates and ensuring the end-to-end recruiting processes are fluid, easy to use, and respectful of candidates’ time.
Candidates for a recruiter role should have experience in:
Maintaining career pages and job descriptions
Optimizing the job application process
Managing communication via the ATS
Updating candidates on rejections and job offers
Negotiating job offers
7. Time management
Forty-six percent of the stress experienced by employees in the US is due to an overwhelming workload. Since recruiting requires juggling so many different people and processes, it can certainly be overwhelming for a recruiter without excellent time management skills.
Skilled recruiters should be able to identify which tasks and candidates their time is best spent on, work well with ad hoc deadlines, and organize their tasks in a way that allows them to meet their recruiting objectives.
8. Communication
28% of employees say poor communication leads to missed deadlines, and miscommunication can cost your company over $400,000 a year. You can avoid bringing these problems into your HR department by hiring a recruiter with great communication skills.
Communication is one of the most essential recruitment skills because not only are recruiters the crucial link between candidates and the company, but they also have a variety of other responsibilities that require well-honed communication skills.
Great recruiters are able to:
Read candidates well
Engage their active listening skills
Effectively relay information about the job role
Convey candidate information to relevant people
Encourage candidates to move forward in the hiring process
Relay disappointing job rejection news
And recruiters with these communication skills don’t just improve productivity. It will improve the candidate experience because candidates will feel heard and respected thanks to your recruiter’s ability to listen and keep them informed.
How to assess recruitment skills
Hiring great candidates begins with the recruiter. They’re the cornerstone of sourcing, recruiting, selecting, and facilitating the hiring process of candidates. To do this, they need various skills and experience in enacting several different methodologies and strategies.
Although you can ask candidates about their recruiting experience during the interview process, proving their skill level in each of the relevant areas can be difficult. The most effective way to assess recruitment skills is with a pre-employment test to help you uncover candidates’ real and quantifiable skill level.
These tests provide an unbiased way of measuring a candidate’s recruiting skills in a way that isn’t possible during an interview.
For example, TestGorilla’s talent acquisition test evaluates whether a candidate has the necessary recruiting and talent acquisition skills they’ll need throughout the recruitment process, including sourcing and recruiting the right candidates, designing a great candidate experience for best results, and onboarding talent for long-term success. It also tests candidates’ experience with recruitment analytics.
Find out who has the recruitment skills you need with an online skills test
Recruiting and hiring recruiters is no easy task. In fact, it’s often been said that they’re some of the hardest roles to hire for. They are used to being the person in your shoes, and have experience in all types of recruitment situations. Essentially, they know what to say during interviews. They know what it means to be a good recruiter and a good candidate on paper.
Using a pre-employment talent acquisition assessment is the easiest way to evaluate your candidates’ true skills so that your organization can start hiring better and faster.
Blog is curated by Vikram.
Blog Link: www.testgorilla.com/blog/recruitment-skills/?utm_term=&utm_campaign=Performance_Max_IN_PK&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&gclid=Cj0KCQiAzfuNBhCGARIsAD1nu-8kG30hBWwIReuuf9uq5Qbwg7h-jKH_0GXjZl85kEqWmQhZJtxkB2QaAntBEALw_wcB
Many people feel as if they’re adrift in the world. They work hard, but they don’t seem to get anywhere worthwhile.
A key reason that they feel this way is that they haven’t spent enough time thinking about what they want from life, and haven’t set themselves formal goals. After all, would you set out on a major journey with no real idea of your destination? Probably not!
How to Set a Goal
First consider what you want to achieve, and then commit to it. Set SMART (specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) goals that motivate you and write them down to make them feel tangible. Then plan the steps you must take to realize your goal, and cross off each one as you work through them.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality.
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You’ll also quickly spot the distractions that can, so easily, lead you astray.
Why Set Goals?
Top-level athletes, successful businesspeople and achievers in all fields all set goals. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation . It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you’ll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence , as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you’ve set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
You set your goals on a number of levels:
First you create your “big picture” of what you want to do with your life (or over, say, the next 10 years), and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.
This is why we start the process of setting goals by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that you can do in, say, the next five years, then next year, next month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.
Step 1: Setting Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.
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To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you):
Career – What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
Financial – How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
Education – Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
Family – Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
Artistic – Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
Attitude – Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
Physical – Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
Pleasure – How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)
Public Service – Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on.
As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. (If you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants – however, make sure that you also remain true to yourself!)
Tip:
You may also want to read our article on Personal Mission Statements . Crafting a personal mission statement can help bring your most important goals into sharp focus.
Step 2: Setting Smaller Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan.
Then create a one-year plan, six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
Then create a daily To-Do List of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.
At an early stage, your smaller goals might be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your higher level goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Finally, review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Tip:
If you feel that you’re not paying enough attention to certain areas of your life, you’ll find our articles on The Wheel of Life and the Life/Career Rainbow useful.
Staying on Course
Once you’ve decided on your first set of goals, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your To-Do List on a daily basis.
Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience. (A good way of doing this is to schedule regular, repeating reviews using a computer-based diary.)
SMART Goals
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants (some of which we’ve included in parenthesis), SMART usually stands for:
S – Specific (or Significant).
M – Measurable (or Meaningful).
A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
R – Relevant (or Rewarding).
T – Time-bound (or Trackable).
For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it’s more powerful to use the SMART goal “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2027.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!
Further Tips for Setting Your Goals
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective, achievable goals:
State each goal as a positive statement – Express your goals positively – “Execute this technique well” is a much better goal than “Don’t make this stupid mistake.”
Be precise – Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you’ll know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
Set priorities – When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down – This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
Keep operational goals small – Keep the low-level goals that you’re working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals – You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control!In business, these reasons could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, they could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck.If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals, and draw satisfaction from them.
Set realistic goals – It’s important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.It’s also possible to set goals that are too difficult because you might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.
Achieving Goals
When you’ve achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress that you’ve made towards other goals.
If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve.
With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goal harder.
If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goal a little easier.
If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Tip 1:
Our article, Golden Rules of Goal Setting , will show you how to set yourself up for success when it comes to your goals. If you’re still having trouble, you might also want to try Backward Goal Setting .
Tip 2:
It’s important to remember that failing to meet goals does not matter much, just as long as you learn from the experience.
Feed lessons you have learned back into the process of setting your next goals. Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, consider letting them go.
Example Personal Goals
For her New Year’s Resolution, Susan has decided to think about what she really wants to do with her life.
Her lifetime goals are as follows:
Career – “To be managing editor of the magazine that I work for.”
Artistic – “To keep working on my illustration skills. Ultimately I want to have my own show in our downtown gallery.”
Physical – “To run a marathon.”
Now that Susan has listed her lifetime goals, she then breaks down each one into smaller, more manageable goals.
Let’s take a closer look at how she might break down her lifetime career goal – becoming managing editor of her magazine:
Five-year goal: “Become deputy editor.”
One-year goal: “Volunteer for projects that the current Managing Editor is heading up.”
Six-month goal: “Go back to school and finish my journalism degree.”
One-month goal: “Talk to the current managing editor to determine what skills are needed to do the job.”
One-week goal: “Book the meeting with the Managing Editor.”
As you can see from this example, breaking big goals down into smaller, more manageable goals makes it far easier to see how the goal will get accomplished.
Key Points
Goal setting is an important method for:
Deciding what you want to achieve in your life.
Separating what’s important from what’s irrelevant, or a distraction.
Motivating yourself.
Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.
Set your lifetime goals first. Then, set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Keep the process going by regularly reviewing and updating your goals. And remember to take time to enjoy the satisfaction of achieving your goals when you do so.
If you don’t already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you’ll find your career accelerating, and you’ll wonder how you did without it!
Teamwork is one of the most sought-after skills in the workplace, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Advancements in technology have allowed companies to be more connected and collaborative than ever before, with a diverse workforce dispersed around the world.
As a result, it’s even more important for employees to demonstrate strong teamwork skills, in both face-to-face and virtual team interactions.
College is the perfect time to start practicing your teamwork skills. Group work is an integral part of your academic coursework, and your internship, externship and clinical experiences are also a great opportunity to develop your relationship building, project management and leadership abilities.
Here are seven teamwork skills that are essential for your academic and professional success:
1. Communication
Communication is the foundation of effective teamwork. Whether you’re working on a presentation with your classmates or spearheading a new project at work, it’s important to talk openly and honestly with your group members about expectations, deadlines, and responsibilities. Establishing open lines of communication promotes trust and makes for a positive team environment. While disagreements might occur, being upfront and respectful in your communication with other team members will help you resolve issues quickly.
2. Time management
Time management, accountability and responsibility are all equally important for your career as they are in your academic life. Project managers, for example, must have strong organizational skills in order to set manageable goals for their team and keep others on track to meet their deadlines. Nurses must also demonstrate strong time management skills, prioritizing and delegating tasks so that they can spend more time on the patients who need extra care.
Learning how to balance multiple deadlines and assignments while you are in school will make it easier for you to adjust to a fast-paced and collaborative work environment in the future.
3. Problem-solving
Effective problem solvers are able to think outside the box when challenges or issues arise. Rather than focusing on negative outcomes, they stay calm and help their team work towards a solution. This approach helps uncover roadblocks or inefficiencies that are inhibiting the team’s success, so you can work to improve those processes in the future.
4. Listening
When working in a group, it’s important to keep an open mind. Recognize that your team members may see things from another perspective, and hear them out. Listening to other points of view can help you see multiple sides of an issue, including ones that you have never considered before. This allows you to be a better colleague and leader, to anticipate needs and challenges before they arise and to respond effectively when they do.
5. Critical thinking
Critical thinking allows you to make better, more informed decisions. It can be tempting to follow along with whatever the group decides, or what one team member believes is the best course of action, but sometimes a different approach or a new idea can help achieve better results. By thinking critically about the situation – examining all sides of an issue, reflecting on past experiences, and listening to what other group members have to say – you could arrive at a breakthrough that moves your team forward in new and exciting ways.
6. Collaboration
Working in a team can be challenging at times, but more often it is a great opportunity to uncover creative ideas, share different perspectives and experiences, as well as enhance your own skills. If you treat each group project as a learning experience, you can help foster a more productive team environment. Your desire to learn and your willingness to explore new approaches will make you a better contributor, manager, or leader.
7. Leadership
A leader who works well with others – both within his or her own department and across departments – can help spread knowledge and resources, develop new leaders and contribute to an organization’s success. Leaders can demonstrate strong teamwork skills by promoting collaboration, acting as a mentor or coach for their employees and by empowering others to learn, grow and advance.
At Herzing, we help you sharpen or develop the skills you need for career advancement through group work, hands-on learning experiences, presentations and capstone projects. Additionally, our P.R.I.C.E. of Success philosophy is focused on the core values of professionalism, respect, integrity, caring and engagement, which are the foundation for a successful, meaningful career.
Learn more about our degree programs and start your path to career advancement today!
Team building brings people together by encouraging collaboration and teamwork.
Team building in the workplace is the process of creating a team that is cohesively working together towards a common goal. The importance and main purpose of team building is to create a strong team through forming bonds and connections. Creating these bonds through team building is very beneficial to businesses and organizations. The benefits of team building include increased communication, planning skills, employee motivation, and employee collaboration.
Fun activities that help people see each other in a different light allow them to connect in a different setting. People on your team are asked to think about the implications of these activities at their workplace.
One of the most powerful reasons for team building is to get results. Through a series of planned team building events that are fun and motivational, teams build skills like communication, planning, problem-solving, and conflict resolution. These team building activity ideas help to facilitate long-term team building through fostering genuine connections, deeper discussions, and processing.
A close-knit team will ensure productivity and a good work environment. Here are 12 reasons to start team building: motivate your team members and bring them closer together, even in the virtual workplace!
Networking, socializing, and getting to know each other better
Teamwork and boosting team performance
Competition and bragging rights
Celebration, team spirit, fun, and motivation
Collaboration and the fostering of innovation and creativity
Communication and working better together
Enhance company culture
Create something to look forward to
Show employees appreciation
Build bridges across departments
Unlock leadership potential
Improve employee engagement and morale
Learn more about the 12 reasons to start planning team building activities at your company below.
Socializing and making friends in the workplace is one of the best ways to increase productivity in the virtual, hybrid, or in-person workplace. Not only does it increase morale in the office: it will help your team adapt to a virtual work environment more efficiently, solving issues that come up with the “new normal.” Holding a team building activity can be short and sweet, or it can be a more complex event that everyone has more time to plan for! Either way, TeamBonding has all the resources you’ll need to make it fun. Try one of our virtual team building events to bring your team members closer together and show your appreciation.
2. Teamwork and boosting team performance.
Team building activities also work to improve workplace projects that involve teamwork because it helps the teams understand each other better. After completing team building activities together, employees better understand each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests. This understanding helps them work even better together on future progress vital to a company.
When everyone is contributing their best, it sets the tone for a positive work culture. Each team is different and every individual has something unique to contribute. Once you can identify and encourage everyone to reach their individual potential, your team will be able to reach its collective potential as well.
3. Competition and bragging rights.
Competition has been shown to increase productivity. By channeling that increased productivity into a fun, inclusive team building activity, teams can bond in a more effective way than by other methods. Learning to work well together can take some time, but you’d be surprised at how fast teams can come together when there is an incentive to win on the table.
4. Celebration, team spirit, fun, and motivation.
After any sports team wins a major championship, they celebrate and have fun, which motivates them to want to win even more. This extreme example shows that the celebration, cheering, and fun that comes with every TeamBonding event can motivate employees to bring their job to the next level!
5. Collaboration and the fostering of innovation and creativity.
People tend to have a larger imagination when they are around people they are comfortable with. Successful team building events not only bring people closer together, but they also contribute to a more successful and creative workplace. Everyday workplace collaboration is key to a successful business. For example, a coach always has assistants to help out when needed.
6. Communication and working better together.
To no surprise, communication and working better together is the top reason why people choose team building. Everybody wants a friendly work environment, where people are comfortable and happy to talk to and work with anyone.
One of the best outcomes for team building is that the activities actually work to improve communication.
Many hold these activities with the specific goal of working on communication and trust. While this is a general goal for every office, you may find certain areas of communication that could be focused on. Learn more about the crucial factors of team building success here.
7. Enhance company culture
Company culture can be explained as the values, norms, goals, and attitudes that exist within your organization. Simply put, it defines the environment you work in and makes up the personality of the company. According to Indeed, job seekers highly value a company’s culture, and 46% of those who considered a job, but did not apply to it, said they ultimately chose not to because they didn’t feel it would be a good culture fit.
Regularly scheduled team building events can improve your company culture and provide a space to understand your employees’ wants and needs. Sometimes the culture of management doesn’t match up with that of the employees, so finding a middle ground is an important step in creating a more positive environment. Team building activities help to cut out toxicity and get everyone on the same page while working together. The benefits will be sure to follow you back to the office.
8. Create something to look forward to
Whether it is once a week or every few months, scheduling team building activities will give your employees something to look forward to other than those project deadlines. No one wants to look at their calendar to see what seems like a never-ending list of tasks. Have your employees get excited about non-work-related events during the workweek, not just on the weekend.
It is also important to recognize that these events give employees a shared goal that doesn’t have to do with their work. This much-needed break is good for employee mental health and ties back into the idea of creating a more positive work environment for the people who make your company successful.
9. Show employees appreciation
Along the same lines, team building events let employees feel appreciated for their hard work. Many times, great work can accidentally be swept under the rug due to a sea of other things going on. Prioritizing these events shows employees you care about them and appreciate their efforts by rewarding them with a fun activity the team can enjoy together.
10. Build bridges across departments
The connections between employees within one department aren’t the only ones that matter when it comes to building a stronger team. “Team” doesn’t have to be confined to the sales team or the marketing team. It is a unified collection of all the working teams that make up your organization. Ask yourself – how well do you know employees in departments other than your own? If the answer is not well or not at all, then team building will surely bring departments closer together to encourage cross-functional collaboration that will benefit your organization as a whole.
Urge employees to familiarize themselves with people in other departments, instead of working in a silo with members of their immediate team. You will likely find that this practice will help everyone to feel more comfortable in the workplace and open doors to new relationships. Bridging those divides allows for positive relationships to form, which leads to a more productive company.
11. Unlock leadership potential
In a more relaxed and creative environment, you may find employees have hidden skills that haven’t been discovered in the office. Leaders can arise in the simplest of activities and may surprise you. Regularly scheduled team building events can feed employees’ confidence in the workplace. You may discover that the quiet new employee is incredible at inspiring their peers and with the right mentor, development opportunities, and encouragement could be your company’s next rising leader.
Consider creating a mentor program or leadership development program to help employees achieve their highest potential. After each team building event, reach out to team leaders and request nominations for these programs based on colleagues that have stood out during these experiences.
12. Improved employee engagement and morale
Committing to regularly scheduled team building events can build comradery, make employees more excited to come into work, more enthusiastic about their work, and more comfortable approaching each other. It also may help employees to feel more encouraged to step away from their desks and have some fun, which in turn will help them return to their work feeling refreshed and reenergized.
Team building activities give employees something common to talk about other than work. They can break down communication barriers and help teams work more efficiently. Most importantly, employees are able to take the skills that they learn from these events and apply them to their everyday tasks, such as creativity, thinking strategically, adapting quickly, and working collaboratively with their peers.
Testimonials all over the TeamBonding website will attest to the importance of team building.
A successful team building activity will surely mean a more comfortable, successful workplace environment for any company, large or small. Are you ready to improve your team’s communications, skills, collaboration, performance, among other abilities?
We’ve got you covered! We offer a few different program and activity categories designed to fit the structure of your company.
If you have a hybrid company culture and are looking to reconcile your remote teams with your in-person teams, view our Hybrid Team Building Activities.
