An important element of the corporate culture of any company is its team. When a team is a real unity of professionals and associates, loyal to each other and to the common cause, it achieves outstanding results. Therefore, organization of team building and training requires special attention.
Formation of an effective team in a company is the main goal of its corporate culture, which is made up of several important factors: characteristics of the organization of work and interaction between employees, their relationship to customers and partners. It manifests itself in a set of values, rules, regulations and norms governing business relationships and company policy.
The main criterion of the project team success is customer satisfaction with results of its work. Therefore, upon completion of the work it is necessary to assess the results of each employee activity (based on KPI indicators) and the team as a whole.
Team formation occurs when a few people get a common goal and understanding that success of every one of them depends on the effort of others. It is important to express personal initiative and dedication for all the team members. Each project participant brings his original and valuable contribution in terms of both the legal knowledge and analytical work to the overall result.
In order to achieve consistency of interaction, improve engagement and motivation of the project team, it is necessary to reach cohesion and, in general, the atmosphere of mutual support in the whole team. That is why the role of corporate activities that strengthen team spirit are very important. Among them there are: training session; sport and entertainment events, team building; general meetings; corporate events and awarding employees; contests.
Training of various kinds, confirming a company’s serious attitude to learning and development of people is an effective motivating and organizing approach, which is why it is reasonable to spend time and money on it. One of the possible effective practices is establishment of a corporate university. In the framework of regular seminars and trainings teachers or heads of legal practices are invited as mentors, passing on their professional expertise to others.
Besides, business trainings are held with trips to country hotels, where colleagues can obtain useful knowledge, develop skills and in their spare time together relax in nature during the barbecue, bowling or interesting contests. Such team trainings create an overall communicative and emotional space, reduce the level of conflict, normalize the social-psychological atmosphere that reveals the personal and professional qualities of people, developing their creativity.
As a result of such events, identification of each employee with the team and the company takes place, recruits get acquainted with the others, which helps more rapid adaptation, colleagues communicate with each other, motivation is enhanced, atmosphere of respect and mutual support is established and, of course, everyone gets new impressions and positive emotions (Pike, 2003).
It is a good idea to evaluate their effectiveness of training through a questionnaire. But it is possible to see the benefits of training by improvement in the overall positive emotional attitude in the team, when people begin to communicate more easily with each other and often ask to organize similar events.
Another way to develop a "sense of team" is to awaken the pride for the company, and awareness of each person’s involvement in it. It is better to promote such a form of pride when people focus not on financial factors of efficiency, but rather on customer satisfaction, approval of colleagues and mentors, improvement of capacity and quality of results. This gives rise to emotional recovery and expectations of future success that motivate people to work effectively. Building pride nurtures self-esteem, the sense of belonging to a group of professionals and the satisfaction from personal development.
Participation of colleagues in the process of pursuing high efficiency contributes to their self-realization, which, along with the efficiency of the company, serves as a constant source of pride and commitment to employees. When important events take place in the company, after which it goes to a new, higher, professional level, it is important to talk about it in an informal setting.
It is a good tradition for an organization to hold various competitions, making working life more vivid. Photo contests can be held every year. Photos can be posted at the corporate website, and the best of them should be determined by majority vote. The winners are awarded with valuable gifts. The works can also be used for marketing purposes - printed in corporate brochures or on a folding calendar, placed in a special section of a company website (Bersin, 2008). Such methods, along with the application of the logo on business gifts, bags, clothing and other useful items, which are presented to colleagues, remind employees that they belong to the team.
Team-building can also be achieved in the following ways: developed system of adaptation; monthly internal corporate newsletter (or newspaper) with news from each division; united celebration of general and professional holidays; Intranet (internal site for colleagues, where they can learn more about the life of the company); organization of sports events (football, joint fishing).
Corporate events create atmosphere of mutual trust and establish productive communication that enable to realize participation in a common deal, solve problems and disputes before they get out of control. All these factors contribute to the formation of an effective team.
As for the eLearning in terms of corporate team training, it can be a perfect option for some theoretical courses, and even for some practices of team-building, but to be effective they should be combined with regular meetings. Still, eLearning, which is gaining more and more popularity in different spheres of education and life owing to fast-developing technologies, can be with time more adapted for the team-building and corporate training purposes, which means that after some time it can also be a good substitute for the team-building practice we have today.
References
Bersin, J. (2008). The Training Measurement Book: Best Practices, Proven Methodologies, and Practical Approaches. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Pike,R. W. (2003). Creative Training Techniques Handbook: Tips, Tactics, and How-To's for Delivering Effective Training. New York: Human Resource Development.
