Chapter 4 Understanding Work Team

1. Chapter 4Understanding Work Team

2. Understanding Work Teams

3. Why have teams become so popular? • Outperform individuals on tasks requiring multiple skills, judgment, and experience • Better utilization of employee talents • More flexible and responsive to changing events • Effective way for management to democratize the organization and increase employee motivation

4. Work Group vs. Work Team • Work Group – A group who interacts primarily to share information and to make decisions to help one another perform within each member’s area of responsibility, • Work Team – Generates positive synergy through coordinated effort for a common goal. A group whose Individual efforts result in a level of performance that is greater than the sum of those individual inputs

5. Comparing Work Groups and Work Teams

6. Problem- Solving Self- Managed Types of Teams Virtual Cross- Functional

7. Four Types of Teams

8. Problem-Solving Team ?

9. Problem-Solving Teams • Share ideas or offer suggestions on how work processes and methods can be improved • Rarely given authority to implement any of their suggested actions

10. Self-managed Work Team

11. Self-Managed Work Teams • Typically 10-15 employees • Team takes on supervisory responsibilities in addition to job tasks. • Select and evaluate members • Effectiveness is situationally dependent

12. Self managed work team are groups of employees who perform highly related jobs and take on many of the responsibilities of their former supervisors. • Typically from10 to 15 members. • Typically this includes planning and scheduling of work, assigning task to members, collective control over the pace of work, making operating decision, taking action on problems and working with supliers and customers.

13. Cross-Functional Team

14. Cross-Functional Teams • Members from diverse areas within and between organizations • Exchange information • Develop new ideas and solve problems • Coordinate complex projects • Development may be time-consuming due to complexity and diversity

16. Virtual Teams • Computer technology ties physically dispersed members together to achieve a common goal • Differentiating factors from other teams • Absence of non-verbal cues • Limited social context • Ability to overcome time and space constraints

18. Key Components of Effective Teams • Context • Composition • Work Design • Process

19. Context • Adequate resources • Leadership and structure • Climate of Trust • Performance evaluation • Reward systems

20. context 1.Adequate resources All the teams rely on resources in order to sustain and unavailability of resources directly affect the ability of the team to perform its job effectively. Teams usually need timely information, proper equipment, adequate staffing, and encouragement from their management.

21. context 2.leadership and structure • The self managed teams often perform better than teams with formally appointed leaders. And leaders can obstruct high performance teams. • Team members must agree on who is to do what and ensure that all team members share equal work load, how the conflicts will be resolved, and how they will make or modify decisions.

22. Context 3.Climate of Trust: • Member of the teams trust each other. • They also exhibit trust in their leaders. • Interpersonal trust among members facilitates cooperation, reduce the need to monitor each others’ behavior.

23. context 4. performance evaluation. • Performance evaluation means how team members should be made accountable individually and jointly. It should be judged through overall team performance.

24. context 4. Reward system • Individual incentives are not consistent with high performance teams. • The management should consider group based incentives and profit sharing for increasing effort and commitment of team.

25. Ability Personality Diversity Size Flexibility Preference for Teams Composition

26. composition Ability of members. The performance of team depends on the knowledge, skill and abilities of its individual members. Usually it requires three types of skills Technical expertise Problem solving and decision making skills 3.interpersonal skills

27. composition 2. personality. Personality has direct influence on individual employee behavior, which further could be extended to team behavior. High level extraversion,(extravert) agreeableness and emotional stability lead towards effectiveness of team. One single employee with negative behavior can affect the whole team performance.

28. composition 3. Diversity. Most team activities require variety of skills and knowledge. It will be reasonable to compose more heterogeneous teams- those composed of dissimilar individuals would be more likely to have divers abilities and skills

29. composition 4. Size of team. the standard size of team members is considered to be seven to nine employees. some experts say teams with less than ten members are more effective.

30. composition 5.Member flexibility. Teams made up of individuals who can complete each other’s tasks is an obvious plus to a team because it reduces dependency on any single member.

31. composition 6. Preference for team. Not every employee is a team player. Selecting such employees for team who prefer to work as individual can be a direct threat for team as well as individual member satisfaction.

32. Work Design • Autonomy • Skill variety • Task identity • Task significance

33. Work Design Autonomy. the team members must have freedom to make decisions by themselves. 2. Skill variety. skill variety is the ability to complete a task utilizing the potential of all team members.

34. Work design • 3. Task identity. Team members must be clear about the task they performing as well as what other members have to perform as a sequence of whole project at which they are working collectively.

35. Work design 4.Task significance. assigning task to every individual on the basis of his abilities increases the sense of responsibility and ownership over the work and also results in motivation and commitment of members.

36. Teamwork Processes Common Purpose Specific Goals Efficacy Social Loafing Conflict

37. Process 1.Common purpose. successful teams spend good amount of time into discussing, shaping, and agreeing on a common purpose, which further provides a clear-cut direction for whole team.

38. Process 2. Specific goals. common purpose is translated into specific goals as a contribution of each team member. This energizes everybody in team and also facilitates communication.

39. Process 3. Team efficacy. effective teams have confidence in themselves. They believe that they can succeed is called team effectiveness(efficacy). This belief encourages them to work more harder in future.

40. Process 4. Social loafing. sometimes individuals can hide in a group. Social loafing is the name of thinking that in group effort, if one is not working can not be identified by others. In order to avoid conflict team members should be individually and collectively made accountable for carrying out their responsibilities.