It might sound like a hassle to switch from the top-down, solitary, or siloed way that work is often done in companies. But the benefits are more than worth it—for the company, the individual, and the bottom line.
Why team buy-in matters
Sure, collaborating on team-based projects sounds warm and fuzzy, but it also benefits the organization, the company, and the individual employees in tangible, measurable ways.
Gives everyone more ownership
Gone are the workplace of old, where a select few managers malaysia telephone number data made all the decisions, and individual employees contributed their small bit to the bigger vision in departmental or project silos. The new workplace is collaborative, communicative, and cross-departmental, allowing employees to contribute to more phases of a project—from strategizing to brainstorming to implementation. This new model allows employees to see the big picture behind their work and appreciate how their individual work contributes to that whole. This in turn inspires employees to be more productive, take bigger risks, and feel more engaged, increasing their loyalty to the company.
Balances strengths and weaknesses
Every workplace has employees who shine in some areas and struggle in others. One employee might excel at organization and strategy but struggle to come up with creative ideas. Another might brainstorm like a pro but feel lost when it comes to implementation. Team buy-in allows managers to match employee strengths and weaknesses in a complementary way, which takes all the responsibility off of one individual and allows teams to pick up each other's slack and build a sum greater than its parts.
Promotes creativity and risk-taking
Even the most innovative, creative employees run out of steam or ideas at some point, and many are reluctant to pitch a risky idea for fear that they will bear the brunt of failure alone. But when teams are set free to make decisions, one person's ideas can spark and inform another's, allowing more creativity and better ideas to emerge.
Team members can also use their different strengths to challenge each other respectfully and point out weaknesses or problems with ideas that might not be clear to one person—or even one department—alone. Similarly, working as a team allows the group to share the burden of risk, allowing more innovative ideas to emerge and helping individual employees to feel inspired and appreciated. But it also benefits the business more broadly, allowing the best, most cutting-edge ideas to rise to the surface.
Team buy-in is important for individual and organizational morale and performance. And it's supported by employers: 75% of whom rated teamwork as very important in a recent study. Additionally, 37% of employees said that working with a great team is their main reason for staying at a company. But there's a gap between these priorities and company performance—and competence. 39% of employees say that their workplaces don't collaborate enough, and ⅘ of leaders said they did not feel prepared to get team buy-in on their projects.
