Challenges presented by Teamwork

The implementation of teams is basically, an Organizational change and development process. Teams are vulnerable to all the challenges that can happen during any Organizational change process. In particular, employee resistance may result where employees are required to work with other employees with whom they are not familiar with. In this case, the new teams are breaking up established social relationships. One way in which this can be overcome is through teambuilding. Teambuilding attempts to ‘improve group performance by improving communication, reducing conflict, and generating greater cohesion and commitment among work group members’ (Bettenhausen 1991, p. 369). Employee resistance may also result for other reasons. For example, teamwork may require job enlargement. This often occurs when individuals are required to perform their conventional roles as well as their team duties (IRS Employment Review 1995). In this situation, it may be vital to either reduce some of their duties or to change the system of compensation and rewards. Along with job enlargement, teamwork is often connected with empowerment, ownership and added responsibility. Managers often assume that individuals prefer to be involved in decision making, rather than simply being told what to do. While this may be true in most cases, it is not true in all cases. This may result in alienation for some employees, which may then cause to job dissatisfaction, labour turnover and/or decreased performance. While there is no simple remedy for this problem, training or a change of position within the Organization may be possible.

Another problem associated with ‘empowered’ teams occurs when the teams are not trusted enough to make major decisions. As a result, teams and the Organization to which they belong, are not reaching their full potential. Where teams are required to seek permission before implementing ideas, timeliness and ownership are reduced. Innovation is also reduced as teams are forced to suggest solutions that are likely to be accepted (Nahavandi & Aranda 1994). Furthermore, team members may believe that management is merely paying lip service to the fundamental ideas of teamwork. This will almost certainly reduce employee morale.

Where teams are trusted to make decisions it may be found that they take up more time than the system they replaced. This is also likely where coordination is required and where a number of teams are interdependent. The problem may be somewhat overcome by teambuilding, but is likely to required continued training and development of team members. Such training will be particularly important for new staff, as there may not be set procedures for them to follow. Coordination also requires effective team leadership.  As is the case with all Organizational change and development initiatives, the Organizational culture and climate needs to be considered. It should not be supposed that the goals and values of employees are the same as the goals of management, or even that goals and values are same across the Organization. Employee attitudes concerning teams will determine the likelihood of success. For teams to be implemented successfully, they need to be an extension of existing values (Carr 1992). However, the implementation of teamwork may also be useful where a culture change is desirable. Teamwork demands such a shift in attitudes that Organizations may turn to it when they want to achieve a cultural transformation, for example, when becoming customer or quality oriented (IRS Employment Review 1995).