In this blog post we give four tips for successful teamwork in the office or home office, away from the purely digital equipment.
Digital teamwork is not only a big issue when working with employees in home office. Even within a company office, the joint editing, commenting and discussing of files does not always take place as smoothly as one would wish. At Teamplace, we have set ourselves the goal of making teamwork as easy as possible. No matter if you are in the office, working in an association or preparing a presentation for school or university. Of course, we also think about how teamwork actually works in principle. After all, a tool like Teamplace can only be as good as the team that uses it. The following tips have proven to be especially helpful for working together, whether on or off the screen.
1. Bring Diversity Into the Team and Into Teamwork
Teamwork is most effective when the different skills and abilities of the various team members can complement each other. Therefore, when it comes to putting together a working group for a new project, it makes sense to bring together as many different people as possible. Different views, skills and ways of working often contribute to the fact that the joint work results are often better than in groups in which an already familiar team comes together. Also, the mutual correction of mistakes and constructive criticism often turn out more objective in such heterogeneous groups than in more homogeneous teams.
2. Utilize Existing Skills and Talents in Teamwork
Of course, the tasks in the team should then (as far as possible) be distributed according to interests and abilities. One of you is especially confident on stage and always finds the right words during presentations? From the very beginning they should concentrate on communicating the results of your work to the outside world. Someone else finds it easy to keep track of ideas and comments on documents? They should keep an eye on keeping the results of your teamwork organized and orderly in Teamplace. At the same time, the team should of course make sure that mutual support is guaranteed. Make sure it’s clear that everyone is working together and that the goal is to achieve a common end result.
3. Encourage Compromises
In order to really bring out the different skills of the different group members, it is important to agree on compromises at the right time. If there is a fixed team leader in the group, it is their task to moderate this process and to ensure that all voices are heard during controversial questions: especially those of more reserved group members. Most importantly, the group leader must be able to put personal vanities in the background when working in a team and to view his or her own ideas and preferences from an objective distance.
4. Communication and Cooperation
To identify the skills and ideas of each group member, communication is the most important aspect. Traditional meetings can be one way to do this, but they are not always optimal. Especially with smaller teams, it often makes more sense to sit together in a more informal atmosphere instead. Be it in the canteen, over coffee or outside. A more informal atmosphere can also be created at digital meetings of employees in the home office by keeping the first few minutes free for chats. This may sound inefficient at first, but it makes for more relaxed atmosphere and ensures that more group members contribute their ideas and results to the joint project. The actual discussions should then be kept as short and structured as possible.
If you follow these four tips for teamwork, nothing should stand in the way of successful collaboration.
Our online storage for teams will then provide technical support for teamwork. With Teamplace, you will find a central place to share the documents you need for your project work and to edit or comment on them directly in Teamplace. An activity stream informs you which team member was on the road with which activities in Teamplace. The versioning of files is also helpful, so that no data is lost, and so you are always working on the current version. And a super feature for teamwork is the possibility to automatically synchronize your computer hard drives with Teamplace. What is there to wait for? Give it a try and register for a Teamplace for your teamwork!
Also read our blogpost: Great Tips for Motivating Remote Workers