The Effect of Team Work on Employees’ Productivity in an Organization
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The main objective of the study is to examine the Effect of teamwork on organizational productivity. The specific objectives are;
- To identify the relationship between teamwork and productivity.
- To identify the sources militating against teamwork in workplace
- To proffer recommendation to the identified problem as reviewed in the literature.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEWED OF RELATED LITERATURE
Team
The term team is very crucial to goal attainment as it brings together people with a common mission to work interdependently to perform a specific job. Teams are made up of three or more people who are voluntarily or strategically grouped and dependent on each other to work together to solve a problem and achieve a common goal through a process of adaptation, tolerance, and understanding with a positive attitude toward the overall goals and objectives of coming together. Boakye (2015) opined a team is a formal group of members who interact at a high level and work together intensely to achieve a common group goal. Shared efforts and activities that are coordinated are a pointer for the success of any team. A team is more organized than a group; a team has a leader, and it involves several people working together to achieve a common objective such as to create a product or deliver a service (Low, 2003).
Davis (2007) opined that business owners emphasized more on engaging employees that can work in a team thereby giving credence to having a quality and qualified workforce in each team that can work together to deliver the group task. The organizations, however, coordinate the employees into different teams with the view to each of them tapping from the skills, knowledge, experiences, and abilities of respective human resources employed by an organization. Using their collective strengths, the team members set out to do their assigned tasks, and activities, and execute them well (Low, 2011, p. 103) as the team members understand organizational issues better and hence rally around themselves to help solve the observed problem for collective recognition rather than self-glory.
Teamwork
Oludare (2020, p. 30) opined that teamwork can be regarded as one of the factors of survival and a top priority of any organization to attain market efficiency. The team is set up to support others, for the activities of each unit to be easily coordinated, solving possible conflict arising from poor interaction, exchanging of information, cooperation of activities, easy connection of workforce, and efforts complementing to influence performance. The work of Salas et al. (2005) explained five core components of teamwork which include team leadership, mutual performance monitoring, backup behavior, adaptability, and team orientation. Understanding the component will help the organization and the team members to be guided on their actions for cooperation for the achievement of the bigger goals.
The ant may be sluggard or small and slow-moving knows the importance of working together with a common interest hence they are always in a group called a colony and they are known for working together for a common goal therefore, the workforce in any organization needs to consider and foster team spirit to succeed. It is indeed the industriousness and the teamwork of ants that have helped them to build their magnificent nests (Low, 2011). By resourcefully combining the leaves, the weaver ants can form nests over a few trees, thus supporting a much larger population (Yahya, 2000).
Ruth (2007) claimed that employee teamwork is seen as constituting a larger group of people than what the job position describes. Every position in an organization has attached individual role which forms the basis for assessment but managers looking at the bigger picture which is organizational goals and objective tends to group personnel with common goals to achieve result faster and more efficiently. Alan (2003) defined teamwork as a grouping of professionals whose members work intensely on a specific, common goal using their positive synergy, individual and mutual accountability, and complementary skills. This greatly impacts positively on the organization due to the cross-fertilization of ideas and skills with common interests and drive.
Importance of Teamwork
The essence of teamwork is to ensure that the gigantic workload is reduced for individuals in the team to contribute their quota bit by bit hence the study by Padhi, (2019) stated eight key benefits of teamwork in every organization which include improvement of communication of ideas, promotion problem solving, increase in the speed of workflow, easy learning from other team members, having a feeling of belonging to a group, increase on productivity, promotes better employee relations and lastly shared accountability and also boredom at the workplace will remain a thing of the past.
The finding of Oludare (2020), showed that teamwork cohesion is a positive and significant impact on organizational performance and concluded that the performance of the organization is a subset of operating performance while teamwork is a subset of unit performance.
Wanyeki et al. (2019), studied how teamwork influences the performance of workers in Kenyatta University. They used a questionnaire and interview method to garner information from the respondents and submitted that teamwork has proven to be closely related to the performance of the individual employee, therefore, the organization and others within Kenyatta and beyond should encourage the workforce to work as a team due to the benefits it has not only to the team members but also the organization at large.
Agarwal and Adjirackor (2016), studied the impact of organizational productivity on the staff members of Kwashieman Anglican Basic School of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly using quantitative techniques showing that teamwork is very essential and hence recommended that teamwork activities must be adopted to enhance Organizational Productivity.
Organization
Oludare (2020) opined that the organization is a mechanism that integrates the work that groups or individuals will perform with the resources required to carry out the work. The organization is a social unit comprising people structured to pursue a particular goal hence has three elements which include the goal, the system, and the people to drive both hence, Caroline (2008) opined that an organization is a social entity that is goal-directed, deliberately structured activity systems with a preamble boundary. Every organization, either large or small, struggles to acquire productivity to achieve success and maintain a valuable image in this present world of organizational competition (Agarwal & Adjirackor 2016).It occurs when the workforce collaborates to ensure the aims and objectives are achieved hence no organization cannot survive alone without having a good workforce and to improve the productivity level, the introduction of teamwork is essential to augment organizational productivity (Oludare, 2020).
Productivity
Productivity is how the human resource in an organization combine other resources like raw materials, machines, finance, and others to produce goods and services. Alan (2008) claimed that productivity is the rate at which an employer, company, or country produces goods, and the amount produced, compared with how much time, work, and money is needed to produce them. Productivity cannot be achieved without the workforce striving together to achieve a common goal which in turn will help the organization to attain the target. To improve manpower utilization and to raise the performance of individuals, employees need to work as a team in any organization (Oludare, 2020). Agarwal and Adjirackor’s (2016) studied explicitly the external (political, economic, social, and technological) and internal (leadership style, diversity (culture, talent, and personalities) communication, and cohesiveness) factors that might affect teamwork results therefore managers will ensure the internal factors are well scrutinized to ensure they are carefully addressed to benefit from the gains associated to teamwork.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, we described the research procedure for this study. A research methodology is a research process adopted or employed to systematically and scientifically present the results of a study to the research audience viz. a vis, the study beneficiaries.
RESEARCH DESIGN
Research designs are perceived to be an overall strategy adopted by the researcher whereby different components of the study are integrated in a logical manner to effectively address a research problem. In this study, the researcher employed the survey research design. This is due to the nature of the study whereby the opinion and views of people are sampled. According to Singleton & Straits, (2009), Survey research can use quantitative research strategies (e.g., using questionnaires with numerically rated items), qualitative research strategies (e.g., using open-ended questions), or both strategies (i.e., mixed methods). As it is often used to describe and explore human behaviour, surveys are therefore frequently used in social and psychological research.
POPULATION OF THE STUDY
According to Udoyen (2019), a study population is a group of elements or individuals as the case may be, who share similar characteristics. These similar features can include location, gender, age, sex or specific interest. The emphasis on study population is that it constitutes of individuals or elements that are homogeneous in description.
This study was carried to The Effect of Team Work on Employees Productivity in an Organization .UBA, Lagos forms the population of the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the analysis of data derived through the questionnaire and key informant interview administered on the respondents in the study area. The analysis and interpretation were derived from the findings of the study. The data analysis depicts the simple frequency and percentage of the respondents as well as interpretation of the information gathered. A total of eighty (80) questionnaires were administered to respondents of which only seventy-seven (77) were returned and validated. This was due to irregular, incomplete and inappropriate responses to some questionnaire. For this study a total of 77 was validated for the analysis.
DATA PRESENTATION
Table 4.2: Demographic profile of the respondents
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
It is important to ascertain that the objective of this study was to ascertain the Effect of Team Work on Employees Productivity in an Organization.. In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of benefits in addressing the Effect of Team Work on Employees Productivity in an Organization.
Summary
This study was on the Effect of Team Work on Employees Productivity in an Organization.. Three objectives were raised which included; To identify the relationship between teamwork and productivity, to identify the sources militating against teamwork in workplace and to proffer recommendation to the identified problem as reviewed in the literature.. A total of 77 responses were received and validated from the enrolled participants where all respondents were drawn from UBA. Hypothesis was tested using Chi-Square statistical tool (SPSS).
Conclusion
The work of Silas et al. (2005, p. 555), gave three key areas that can affect the success of a team which include poor planning, a lack of support by their creators, or a breakdown in internal team processes (e.g. communication). Therefore, to leverage the gains of the team, business owners must ensure there is adequate support to the team members from time to time and ensure the efficient organizational communication within the team and the creator are optimized and the planning is gotten right from the onset such that all team members set their eyes on the achievement of the goal. Communication through an exchange of experience, ideas, and thought tends to be difficult when the workforce at working individually hence teamwork help to break the earlier stated barrier with proper coordination and cohesion by the team leader which gives employees a sense of possession and promotes cooperation (Oludare, 2020). Hence, the work of Padhi (2019) stated that two people working together could also be more emboldened to ask a third party for advice orfeedback and not turn their wheels into anything that doesn’t fit. Conti and Kleiner (2003) reported that teams offer greater participation, challenges, and feelings of accomplishment due to the synergy of the team which will boost the pace of the workflow in the work environment
Recommendation
The management of Nairobi bottlers should ensure that the communication structure is well aligned to all the staff this creates quality leadership that are able to control their team and grow the team productivity. Employees’ compensation should be well managed by the human resources as the staff are motivated by the compensation that they get which leads to productivity. The company has systems in place on how to mitigate against internal environmental changes through enhancing the right culture, this leads to the team cohesiveness. Thus the management should continue assessing the team cohensiveness in order to grow the productivity.
References
- Afshan, S., Sobia, I., Kamran, A., & Nasir, M. (2012). Impact of training on employee performance: a study of telecommunication sector in Pakistan. . Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business 4, 6-21. Aguinis, H. (2009). Performance Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
- Prentice Hall. Aguinis, H., & Kraiger, K. (2009). Benefits of Training and Development for Individuals and Teams, Organizations, and Society. Annual Rev. Psychol (9)60, 451-474.
- Alipour, M., Salehi, M., & Shahnavaz, A. (2009). A Study of on the Job Training Effectiveness: Empirical Evidence of Iran. International journal of business and management Vol.4, No.11, 63-68.
- Allison, B. (2006). Research Skills for Students, 7th Edition. London: Kogan Page. 51 Anderson, N., & West, M. (2008). The personality of teamworking. Journal of Personal Managent, 4(3), 81-91.
- Armstrong, M. (2010). A Handbook of Performance Management, 4th edition. New Delhi: Kogan Page Limited.
- Armstrong, M. (2010). Armstrong’s Essential Human Resource Management Practice: A Guide to People Management. London: Kogan Page Limited.
- Babatunde, O. (2015). The Impact of Leadership Style on Employee’s Performance in an Organization. Public Policy and Administration Research, 5 (1), 193-205.
- Borg, W., J.P, G., & M.D, G. (2009). Research in Education: An introduction . London: Longman.
- Brinkerhoff, R. O. (2006). Increasing impact of training investments: an evaluation strategy for building organizational learning capability. Human Resource Management Journal Vol. 38 No. 6, 302-307.
- Butt, F., Waseem,M., Rafiq,T., Nawab, S., & Ahmad B. (2014). The Impact of Leadership on the Productivity of Employees: An Evidence from Pakistan. Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, 7(24) 5221-5226.
- Carmines, E. G., & Zeller, R. A. (2007). Reliability and Validity Assessment. Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences series . Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
