HR’s Role in the Development of a High-Performance Work Team

The issue of employee collaboration bothers many organizations, but far from all pay attention to the performance these employees demonstrate when working in teams. And it’s a huge mistake because effective teamwork is super critical when it comes to business results:

The ways employees work together can boost productivity and influence performance. Properly organized work processes, healthy company culture, clear goals, open communication, and a fair reward system — all this motivates teams to create and deliver great things to their organization.

And the first step to creating such high-performing teams is, of course, finding and hiring the right people. The role of HR is evident here, also considering that human resource departments actively participate in further nurturing and managing those people to grow a human capital that would help their organization flourish.

That’s what HR specialists do to influence employee performance and their teamwork effectiveness:

Facilitating Team Cohesiveness and Different Communication Styles

Recruiters know that organizations can benefit from employee diversity: Research and surveys say that it impacts productivity and helps with building a high-performance culture. But with diversity come different cultural backgrounds and communication styles for HR teams to embrace and manage.

Such skills allow recruiters to influence team performance because:

• They enhance effective team collaboration.
• They help get on the right side of all team members, making them feel valued and developing proper conflict resolution strategies.
• They serve to facilitate team cohesiveness, empowering them to contribute.

HR representatives are the very people who can help each team member know their communication style, identify the communication style of their diverse teammates, and understand others, appreciating the strengths and weaknesses of every person.

HR teams give tools for understanding each person’s value despite their differences, leading employees to more effective communication and teamwork. And, as we know, with effective communication come harmony and better productivity for higher performance.

Getting Involved in Teams Organization

HRs directly support and develop team performance by getting involved in how well those teams are organized and motivated. Specifically, human resource departments:

• help team members define and set clear goals;
• work on measuring team performance and developing strategies for its improvement;
• build appropriate recognition and reward frameworks.

Involving team members in goal setting, HRs make employees feel more engaged with a company’s current plans and overall purpose. Such engagement influences motivation, encouraging teams to work towards a shared goal.

Establishing and developing effective metrics for measuring team performance, HR specialists help team leaders set directions, enable employees to understand what they do, see what goes wrong, and decide on action plans how to fix it.

When planning and implementing employee rewards and recognition strategies, recruiters help motivate individual workers and teams to perform better.

Encouraging Collaboration Through Team-Building Activities

For some HR specialists, team-building activities seem cliche or irrelevant in today’s era of remote work. And yet, they are still among sure-fire ways to develop teams, encourage their collaboration, improve interpersonal relations, and help team members define their roles in overall business results.

Initiating different types of team-building activities, HRs participate in nurturing higher-performance work teams. Thus, problem-solving activities motivate team members to work together to achieve a shared goal; role-based activities encourage focusing on one’s input into a team goal; communication-based activities emphasize the importance of interpersonal skills for team effectiveness.

Developing Conflict Resolution Systems

Conflicts are challenging to avoid in teams that aim to perform high. Still, the ways of resolving those conflicts do matter because they help employees find constructive solutions to a problem and depersonalize it so it wouldn’t impact the team performance negatively.

The role of HRs here is to develop a conflict resolution system that would do good, not harm.

HR specialists understand that team conflicts can lead to further improvements: new ideas, collaborative decision making, methodological approaches, productive brainstorming, etc. So they implement a corresponding policy framework to enforce positive conflict resolution and encourage team members to learn how to cooperate for better effectiveness.

Organizing Team Training

HR departments are not only about recruiting but also nurturing motivated and high-performing employees. They understand that hired talents need to develop their skills to be productive and continue working effectively. With that in mind, HRs encourage learning at work, organizing training programs for teams to build skills and perform well.

It can be training on effective team communication, leadership, conflict resolutions, negotiation skills, problem-solving techniques, or some hard skills an employee needs to improve their performance and career growth.

Besides, HRs play an essential role in team communication and cohesiveness when training newbies on their company’s structure and policies, introducing them to a team, and organizing the whole onboarding process.

Conclusion

HR professionals are like stewards of company culture and goals for employees. Their role is to integrate new talents, assure them that the company will meet their needs, and create conditions for their comfort and motivation to achieve bigger goals. They understand the importance of teamwork for overall business results, and they know that recruiting and nurturing suitable candidates is critical for how they’ll perform in teams later.

Team cohesiveness, organization, effective collaboration, performance measurement, conflict resolution styles, professional training, rewards system — all matter for team effectiveness in high-performing organizations. It’s HR departments that help these factors flourish, so we shouldn’t underestimate their role here.