5 Ways to Encourage Employees to Work More Cooperatively

As a business owner, manager, or team leader, you’ll already know that encouraging employees to work more cooperatively with each other on their daily tasks can help to improve workplace productivity, morale, and even your profits.

A team that works well together is more likely to be satisfied in the workplace. Along with this, the positive effects of excellent teamwork will show in the type of service that they deliver and help to improve standards of customer and client satisfaction. However, encouraging good communication and cooperation between employees can be easier said than done, especially for those who work in highly stressful environments.

As a workplace authority figure, here are some of the best things that you can do to help your employees work more cooperatively and harmoniously together.

#1. Team Building Days

Attending team building days sounds like a nightmare for many employees. In general, this type of activity can have a bit of a reputation for being a little bit mundane and often forced. However, it doesn’t have to be this way – arranging fun corporate team building events with the help from sites such as Team Tactics can be one of the best ways to help your employees get to know one another and strengthen their relationships in the workplace.

Bear in mind that the main aim of a team building event should be to give employees the opportunity to get to know one another in an organic and natural setting. They can then build good relationships with one another that can be transferred over to the workplace.

#2. Employee Voice

Numerous studies have shown that happy employees who feel that they are valued and have a voice within the company are more likely to be productive, cooperative, and motivated at work. Simply ensuring that each of your employees is listened to and their opinion is valued can go a long way when it comes to improving team cooperation and the quality of work standards when employees are working together.

Along with giving employees the chance to voice their concerns, opinions, and suggestions, regular focus groups, for example, can be a good way to encourage employees to talk between themselves and develop stronger relationships.

#3. Positive Workplace Attitude

As a manager or team leader, you can have a huge effect when it comes to the overall attitude and morale in the workplace. Workplaces that suffer from negative attitudes towards work are more likely to have a poor morale. In turn, employees are much more likely to be demotivated in work and productivity levels are more likely to drop. A negative attitude in the workplace can also affect the way that employees work with one another. Just one negative employee can bring everybody down for the whole day or even week!

As a workplace authority, there are several things that you can do to try and rectify this, including communicating with employees to determine what you can do to change the situation and ensuring a positive attitude of your own at all times.

#4. Conflict Resolution

When people are working together in one space for lengthy periods of time, it’s often difficult to avoid conflicts and disagreements. However, if a conflict arises between members of staff or between the staff and the management, then it’s important to deal with it in a healthy manner to ensure that it does not escalate. Things such as spreading rumours about other employees or offhand remarks at work should not be tolerated since these things can get out of hand and cause issues with teamwork and cooperation.

Would you like to add your own advice? Let us know in the comments.

Charlotte Giver

Charlotte is the founder and editor-in-chief at Your Coffee Break magazine. She studied English Literature at Fairfield University in Connecticut whilst taking evening classes in journalism at MediaBistro in NYC. She then pursued a BA degree in Public Relations at Bournemouth University in the UK. With a background working in the PR industry in Los Angeles, Barcelona and London, Charlotte then moved on to launching Your Coffee Break from the YCB HQ in London’s Covent Garden and has been running the online magazine for the past 10 years. She is a mother, an avid reader, runner and puts a bit too much effort into perfecting her morning brew.