Teamwork: Advantages Over Individual Effort - Essay Example

? Teamwork In delivery of services in an organisation, stakeholders can participate in various activities as individuals or in teams so that improve the operation. This implies that stakeholders can complement each other so that the organisation for which they work can achieve its goals. The complementary activity between various people in the organisation means that teams are important and if they are enhanced by effective communication and leadership, they are can achieve very high and quality productivity. Teams create environment that enables members to contribute towards the activity of the organisation with vigour and by challenging each other, they contribute to efficient services in the company (Meads et al, 2005, p. 7). Teamwork has advantages over individual effort that people put in activities that the organisation management assigns them. Teams in an organisation enable the collaboration of different employees so that they can achieve their mandate efficiently and effectively. This achievement happens because teams in an organisation have people with different specialisation so that the time the various individuals need to accomplish specific duties is shorter compared to that which they could use if teams never existed. The teams enable the different employees in an organisation to have a friendly environment for delivering services because they are able to interact on many occasions during activities. The environment that teams in an organisation create helps members to have freedom to express their ideas and implement them during activities, which contributes to high performance (Fraser and Matthews, 2008, p. 21-23). Teams in an organisation help to improve the rate of participation of employees because they have goals that they need to fulfil at the team level and others that they will fulfil at the organisational level. Teams keep employees conscious of their duties because through their leaders, members are close to administration because they are always with someone who will offer supervisory roles in the organisation. Employees in teams are challenged to outperform their colleagues during their performance of their duties and therefore, there remain active all the time they are in the organisation. Through this kind of participation of individuals in the organisation, they are able to achieve high profit because team members exploit their potential to the fullest (Schyns and Hansbrough, 2010, p. 64). Teamwork in an organisation enhances communication in the organisation considering the fact that team leaders are near the management they make constant meeting. This contact enhances the flow of information from the organisational management to the employees, which has advantages in updating them on the progress of the organisation. Frequent team meetings are necessary for they enhance sharing of concerns of employees, which helps the management to come up with plans to address the issues. Through such ways, employees are able to develop a sense of belonging to the organisation and therefore, in delivery of services they are committed to their duties (Lingard and Espin, 2004, p. 332). Teams in an organisation combine employees from different ranks and specialisation in the organisation, which creates a sense that leaders are friendly individuals. Teams are strategies that the leaders use to disseminate power and authority because team leaders are not necessarily the highest ranked individuals in the organisation. For that reason, leadership and management of employees is made easy by the participation of all the employees in leading teams whose some members are the leaders of the organisation. Teamwork enhances leadership development because the leaders delegate responsibilities to other employees lead and therefore, help them to develop into responsible role players (Barr et al, 2005, p. 42). When compared, people who participate in teams are able to achieve high results than them that work as individuals. In working as an individual, there is no competitive environment in the organisation that can encourage an employee to participate actively. The employees in organisations that have no teams are less exposed to the activities that happen in other departments. Working as individuals makes the process of making consultation long so that employees are inefficient in implementing their mandate as per the organisation. The leadership of an organisation takes a long time to communicate to employees that work at individual capacity because there are no forums that bring them together. Due to the much time that is required to communicate to individuals, consult and to monitor different employees, individual work is less profitable than teamwork (Baker, 2010, p. 3-6). Teamwork is important to different organisations in the world because teams facilitate creation of environments that help different people to work together and shorten the process of consultation. Teams are very important and are needed in healthcare profession because they facilitate the transfer of information about patients into different departments so that care services are of high quality. If a healthcare institution supports teamwork, it is able to achieve quality patients’ care, reduce the workload on professionals as well as enhance safety of patients. These achievements are possible because all the healthcare professionals in an institution are able to work together to improve the services they offer to the patients (Lichtenstein, Alexander, McCarthy and Wells, 2004, p. 329). In an institution that has limited healthcare professionals, teamwork is important to ensure that all the employees can be assigned duties in such ways that they reduce workload. This reduction is achieved because professionals take specific roles instead of doing more than one kind of job that can cause a lot of movements in different sections of the institution and therefore, cause fatigue (Beckerman, Roelofsen, Knol and Lankhorst, 2004, p. 394). In teamwork kind of service delivery, the healthcare professionals are able to achieve job satisfaction and the institution for which they work can be able to retain them. The satisfaction and retention happens because professionals specialise in different areas of duty, which they like and for which they have good knowledge. On the side of patients, teamwork is needed because it reduces their morbidity because they are likely to achieve care from well organised team of professionals in the institution (Bailey, Jones and Way, 2006, p. 383). Team members in healthcare organisations offer high quality services in such a way that they are able to ensure safety of patients because they cannot afford to carry the blame for poor services (Salas and Frush, 2013, p. 39). References Bailey, P. H., Jones, L., & Way, D. (2006). Family physician/nurse practitioner: Stories of collaboration. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 53(1), 381-391. Baker, A. C. (2010). Catalytic conversations: Organizational communication and innovation. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe. Barr, H., Koppel, I., Reeves, S., Hammick, M. & Freeth, D., (2005). Effective Interprofessional Education – Argument, Assumption and Evidence. CAIPE London, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing. Beckerman, H., Roelofsen, E. E., Knol, D. L., & Lankhorst, G. J. (2004). The value of the Rehabilitation Activities Profile (RAP) as a quality sub-system in rehabilitation medicine. Disability and Rehabilitation, 26 (1), 387-400. Fraser, S., & Matthews, S. (2008). The critical practitioner in social work and health care. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University. Lichtenstein, R., Alexander, J., McCarthy, J., & Wells, R. (2004). Participation and influence in interdisciplinary treatment teams: Effects on job satisfaction and intention to quit. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 45(3), 322-335. Lingard, L. & Espin, S., (2004). Communication failures in the operating room: An observational classification of recurrent types and effects. Quality & Safety in Health Care, 13(5), 330-334 Meads, G., Ashcroft, J., Barr, H., Scott, R., & Wild, A. (2005). The case for Inter-professional Collaboration : In health and social care. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Salas, E., & Frush, K. (2013). Improving patient safety through teamwork and team training. New York: Oxford University Press. Schyns, B., & Hansbrough, T. (2010). When leadership goes wrong: Destructive leadership, mistakes, and ethical failures. Charlotte, N.C: Information Age Pub. Read More