As a leader and a franchise owner, it's up to you to foster teamwork among your employees in order for everyone to be successful. However, with changing work schedules and working with different co-workers on a daily basis, it's sometimes hard for employees to feel a sense of teamwork.
As the franchise owner and team leader, you should implement different activities and strategies that will encourage your employees to work as a team to achieve the same goals.
Set Team Goals
Instead of focusing on individual goals, set team goals where everyone has to participate to make them happen. It’s crucial you let them know that they each need to put in some effort if they want to achieve this new goal.
You need to create personalized goals. For example:
Job Goals. These are goals that define a task. Achieving these goals will help employees be better at their job. For example, a goal can be for a new employee to learn how to use the cash register.
Project Goals. These are collaborative goals. Ask everyone in your team to be involved. For example, the goal can be to keep pizza boxes organized at all times.
Professional Goals. These are goals that stimulate employees to advance in their careers. For example, ask a distinguished employee to begin reading the Manager's manual to start training for that position.
Performance Goals. These are goals that can tie-in the entire team. For example, do your best (as a team) to bring down the out-the-door time by 5 seconds in 1 month.
Encourage team members by rewarding them once the goal is met. It can be as small of a gesture as a cup of coffee or breakfast.
When you set these goals, make sure you explain the value of teamwork and how working together and helping each other will help everyone reach their individual goals. Eventually, when they start learning how to work together, they will also learn how to achieve their team goals.
Define Team Roles
Your team needs well-defined roles in order to be successful. Roles are assigned to describe what someone is supposed to do, what type of actions are required from certain team members to reach the goals, and how each individual is crucial to the team.
As you talk to your team about teamwork and goals, make sure you define team roles:
Leader. The person who recruits communicates, and keeps track of the goals. This could be you or your Manager.
Critic. The person that sees the weak points in a goal plan and provides constructive feedback. This can be the entire team.
Coordinator. The person who maintains focus keeps track of the schedule, makes sure everyone is doing their part to reach the goals. This could be a Manager or Supervisor.
Implementer. This is basically your team. They are the ones that have to tackle problems and anticipate if any delays will get in the way of reaching the goal.
Inspector. The person that tracks progress, uncovers issues, performs quality control, and oversees the entire operation. This could be you or your Manager.
Educate Them about Teamwork
Sometimes your employees might not know about proper teamwork examples. It's very easy to work solo as a franchise employee. Each one has a specific task to do when they show up to work, not many understand the importance of teamwork.
To educate them about teamwork you can:
- Set up team meetings to discuss current team goals
- Talk about proper teamwork practices
- Promote previous teamwork examples to showcase instances where teamwork helped the business achieve a new goal
Aim to make these educational sessions as interactive and as practical as possible to make sure your staff members stay engaged and interested. Ask them about their views about teamwork to see where your team is standing. That should be your starting point for your educational sessions.
Open Channels of Communications
Keeping the lines of communication open, honest, and respectful will allow your employees to express their feelings to prevent any hidden distrust or anger. Encourage open communications so your team will feel more comfortable about discussing delicate issues.
Asking questions and listening to each other's opinions will build better team dynamics and foster stronger relationships.
Provide Company Insights
Set up team meetings to discuss the business, but most importantly to interact with each other. Schedule a few casual meetings to talk about franchise insights.
Giving staff members a look into the company, newsworthy updates, summary of recent successes, and other important franchise information keeps the team aligned towards the same goals.
In addition, this helps employees feel more entitled to the business itself. When staff members know they need to go above and beyond to meet this week's numbers it creates an urgency, and that in order to achieve those goals they need to work together. It will prompt them to work as a team.
Having employees that know the importance of teamwork will help your business more than you think. A stronger team is much better than having one strong employee. Once you and your team understand this, there is no limit to your potential.
Sources: https://www.benefitnews.com/opinion/6-ways-to-encourage-teamwork-among-e...
http://blog.eskill.com/great-team-work-together/
https://www.getadministrate.com/blog/encouraging-staff-to-be-better-team...
https://www.zoomshift.com/blog/how-to-encourage-teamwork-in-the-workplace
