Discussions about teamwork in the workplace often revolve around a few central topics: effective communication, sharing a common goal, and solving problems. While each of these are absolutely essential in strong teams, one key often seems to be missing – Leadership.

We think of teams as highly democratic entities where everyone contributes equally to complete a project. However, just like the Presidents and Prime Ministers that guide the world’s great democracies, a leader is essential to team success. In fact, the team at Eagle’s Flight considers leadership one of the seven cornerstones of teamwork. Without a clearly defined leader, the whole team foundation will crumble. Here’s why teamwork in the workplace must start with strong leadership:

1. Team Leaders Keep the Team Accountable

It’s far too easy to dodge responsibility in a team setting, since you can “hide” among your sea of colleagues. That’s where a leader comes in. In a team setting, a true team leader takes full responsibility for the team’s final results. Since a leader has so much on the line, he or she is extremely motivated to keep team members accountable for the work.

2. Team Leaders Empower Team Members

Being a leader on a team isn’t about concentrating power — it’s about giving away power. Yes, team leaders are responsible for assigning tasks to the team. Even more importantly, leaders must trust the skills and expertise of other team members. Through trust, leaders empower teams to carry out assigned tasks in the way that they see fit.

Why is trust so important? When other team members see that the leader has put his or her trust in a colleague, they won’t try to undermine or question that colleague. Plus, studies show that employee engagement is closely tied to the level of freedom and ownership that individuals are given. If you want team members to be engaged and excited about the project, leaders must empower members by easing up the reins.

3. Team Leaders Simplify and Streamline the Decision-making Process

Teams can avoid the power struggles commonly found in “equitable” teams with leaders in place. In these “equitable” or “leaderless” teams, members actually compete to gain authority and assert dominance.
Team leaders also make the decision-making process far more streamlined, since they have the final say. Leaderless teams may get stuck on making tough calls when members can’t come to a consensus and there’s no “tie-breaker” to turn to. In the meantime, the entire project — and even teamwork in the workplace overall — stalls. Having a clear-headed colleague who’s clearly in charge simply makes teams simpler.

4. Team Leaders Keep Projects Moving Forward

It’s hard to keep a group of people focused, so having someone make it their mission to do so is crucial to team success. A designated leader will move past any hiccups by initiating conversations about potential problems and steering the team back on track during meetings that start to go off the rails.

How do leaders keep projects moving forward? They will:

• Ensure all team members understand the project goal
• Establish clear deadlines
• Clearly define roles within the team
• Describe how each role contributes to the project goal
• Remind the team of the shared goal to keep the project on task

When members understand that the part they play on the team is critical to achieving the goal, they’re more motivated and engaged.

Team leaders are typically individuals who know the most about the project — which means they might not have extensive experience with leading. They might not even be the person with the most “senior” rank in the room. That’s why building in leadership skills exercises into your training on teamwork in the workplace is so important.

Employee retention is a concern in every industry because employee turnover is costly and disruptive for organizations, teams, and clients. According to a report compiled by Nursing Solutions, Inc., the turnover rate in hospitals right now is 16.2%, with the average cost of turnover for a bedside RN ranging from $38,900 to $59,700, costing hospitals an average of $5.13M to $7.86M each year. When you consider that each percent change in turnover will cost or save a hospital $410,500 annually, it’s clear that employee retention strategies in healthcare are worthy of serious consideration.

However, the healthcare industry as a whole is not sufficiently addressing employee retention. The same report indicates that 85.7% of hospitals see employee retention as a key strategic imperative, but only 43.4% have a formal retention strategy. Additionally, a Leaders for Today survey showed that 37% of healthcare professionals plan to leave their current hospital within the next two years, and 68.6% plan to leave within five years, reinforcing the seriousness of this continuing problem.

5 Employee Retention Strategies in Healthcare

That being said, addressing employee retention with an ongoing strategy can help reduce turnover, increase patient satisfaction, and improve the overall experience of your employees. Consider these five approaches as you develop or update your retention strategy.

1. Improve Engagement

Low employee engagement in the healthcare industry can be the result of many factors, including unpredictable schedules, excessive overtime, heavy workloads, and a lack of flexibility in the workplace. Though some of these contributing factors may be unavoidable, leadership has the power to play a role in improving hospital staff engagement. Some examples of specific actions leadership can take include:

• Recognizing excellence in patient care
• Celebrating teamwork
• Conducting surveys to learn about the most pressing issues to employees
• Taking action on the results of the surveys
• Doing informal check-ins with staff
• Communicating and managing change effectively and in a timely manner

2. Foster Teamwork and Communication

Teamwork among healthcare workers is an essential element in creating a positive patient experience. Rarely do individual healthcare providers deliver service entirely on their own. Most of the time they operate in teams, and providing excellent patient service requires having the skills to do this effectively. Developing communication skills among team members is essential for reducing errors, resolving conflicts, and creating clarity around task assignments. Good communication between leadership and teams is also important. When leadership is able to clearly communicate expectations and organizational goals, teams are better able to prioritize tasks and understand how their roles fit into the larger hospital strategy. Clear lines of communication also give employees points of contact, where they know they can get answers to their questions.

3. Provide Competitive Compensation

Retaining good employees requires maintaining job satisfaction and engagement among your staff, and compensation is a primary driver in this area. As the healthcare industry continues to grow and the demand for quality employees increases, competitive salaries, bonuses, and other benefits are becoming more important for staff retention.  Given the high cost of turnover, it is the responsibility of leadership to weigh it against the cost of competitive compensation.

4. Give Recognition Where Recognition Is Due

In addition to competitive compensation, there are other ways to reward healthcare professionals for the valuable work they do. Although they may receive positive feedback from patients, it’s also important for them to feel appreciated by their leaders and peers. Ideas for recognizing good work include:

• Annual recognition dinners
• Awards for exceptional service
• Extra time off
• “Shout-outs” or other informal but public communications that recognize exceptional efforts and explain why they are worthy of recognition

Reward and recognition can help drive engagement and contribute to better staff retention. However, rewards can only go so far, especially when an employee feels that they are already compensated appropriately and performing at their highest level. Healthcare professionals want to feel that they are making a difference. For many, this is why they chose this particular career path. Recognizing healthcare staff for their contributions to the patient experience and the organizational goals can go a long way toward keeping them engaged and motivated.

5. Invest in Education and Continual Learning

Ongoing education and professional development can help healthcare professionals improve both their technical and people skills, both of which are essential for providing an exceptional patient experience, improving productivity, and increasing employee satisfaction. Here are two ways to promote continual learning at your organization:

1. Demonstrate a clear growth path: According to the Leaders for Today survey, the lowest-ranked parameter for workplace satisfaction is having the opportunity for career advancement. Having an employee development plan will help keep valuable staff engaged with your organization because they know there will be opportunities for growth in their future.
2. Provide training opportunities: The second-lowest-ranked parameter is having the opportunity to learn and develop new skills. Having a training program in place ensures that employees are being given the tools to help them achieve their career goals, improve the patient experience, and support the organization as a whole.

Healthcare employee retention is a significant challenge to the industry, and employee turnover is not good for anyone involved. It is expensive for organizations, worrying for employees who want a stable work environment, and does not create a positive environment for patients. Addressing some of the largest gaps with these five recommended strategies can help your hospital or healthcare organization reduce employee turnover and attract new, qualified candidates, because your employees, current and potential, will feel valued and excited about being part of the organization. It’s also important to include all employees in these opportunities—encourage everyone in the organization equally to seek improvement opportunities, and ensure they know they have your support.

Teamwork and collaboration positively impact individual and overall company performance. One study found that companies that promote collaborative work activities are five times as likely to be high-performing as those that don’t. Collaboration within and between teams ensures that information, time, and other resources are shared for the benefit of everyone involved. When individuals collaborate, each person has an opportunity to contribute their best ideas and efforts, ultimately making each team more productive. Here are five strategies to increase teamwork and collaboration in your organization.

Promote Frequent Communication

For any team to function properly and work productively with other teams, frequent communication is a necessity. Frequent communication helps to answer individual questions, overcome obstacles, and resolve conflicts. It also reduces the potential for confusion and duplicated efforts. Some of the ways you can ensure frequent communication in support of collaboration and teamwork include:

• Establishing different forums for employees to communicate and share ideas, including in-person meetings, brainstorming sessions, and email or other virtual communication means
• Providing interpersonal communication skills training to help employees at all levels learn how to achieve complete and accurate understanding when communicating with others
• Offering training that helps leaders solidify their ability to manage internal communications within departments and teams and build skills that will help them develop their leadership presence

Ensure Leadership Support

To achieve any kind of change in the workforce, company leaders must be enthusiastic champions of the effort to do so. Company leaders set the tone for teamwork and collaboration through their own example and by delivering clear expectations and feedback to the individuals on their team. When leaders reach across functional lines to share information and resources and recognize those on their team who also collaborate well with others, other members of the team will be more likely to engage in activities that support positive team functioning.

Leverage Collaboration Technology

Many digital solutions facilitate easier and more streamlined collaboration between individuals, no matter where they’re based. As new platforms and solutions become available, employees increasingly rely on collaboration technology to make progress on projects, get input on next steps, and share ideas to boost creativity. In fact, an Alfresco survey found that 83 percent of professionals depend on technology to collaborate, and 82 percent said they would be impacted by the loss of it. Examples of collaboration technology include:

• Internal social networks that improve communication and information-sharing among the workforce
• Project management software that includes file-sharing and chat capability.
• Virtual whiteboard platforms

Develop Collaboration and Teamwork Skills

Collaboration doesn’t always come naturally to everyone. Therefore, the best way to increase collaborative behavior in the workplace is to teach employees what successful teamwork looks like and what actions they can take to support it. When people understand all the benefits of effective teamwork, they’re more likely to develop a collaborative mindset and engage in desired behaviors. Teamwork and collaboration training teaches employees how to:

• Productively share resources, assign tasks, and maintain quality standards
• Communicate effectively and frequently with team members
• Build team focus on objectives and their outcomes

Reinforce Collaborative Behavior

Any behavior you’re trying to establish in the workplace will require regular reinforcement over time so that individuals don’t revert to old ways of doing things. When you reinforce collaborative behavior, there is less opportunity for silos to form, and the organization is able to develop a culture of openness and transparency. Some of the key ways you can reinforce collaborative behavior include:

• Tying promotion and developmental opportunities to collaborative behavior
• Leveraging training reinforcement tools, such as assessments, quizzes, and mobile boost learning, to help employees retain newly learned collaboration knowledge and behaviors
• Recognizing and rewarding individuals who practice and promote collaboration

Conclusion: Implement These Strategies to Improve Teamwork and Collaboration

Teamwork and collaboration in the workplace don’t happen on their own; they must be cultivated. When individuals have support from leaders and understand how they can work collaboratively, silos break down and teams become more productive. You can make it easier for leaders to cultivate teamwork and collaboration at work through corporate culture, training and development, coaching, and so on.

Everyone experiences some kind of conflict in the workplace at some point. Something which Covid has added a realm of complexity to, to not only detect, but also resolve. Conflict can arise in many situations, but disagreements with coworkers commonly cause interpersonal strife. In fact, in an 18-month research study, nearly 100 percent of respondents cited interactions with coworkers as the primary cause of conflict at work. Conflict in the workplace also impacts employee productivity. According to one study, a single employee spends nearly three hours every workweek trying to resolve some kind of conflict. Even worse, unresolved conflicts can impact employee engagement and have negative implications for company culture.

Even with the right strategy, the necessary budget, and the most efficient systems in place, achieving the desired results comes down to a company’s most important resource: people. Keeping a team engaged and excited about their work can be a challenge for leadership at every level, which is why having a motivation strategy is so important.

Even when people are passionate about their work, it’s easy to get bogged down in the daily grind and lose motivation. Understanding why individuals lose motivation and how to overcome those hurdles will help you develop a motivation strategy that keeps employees enthusiastic and engaged. Use these six strategies to inspire your team to go the extra mile.

1. Communicate the “why”

Understanding what is required to complete a certain task or project is just part of the equation. In order for employees to stay motivated, they must also understand why they are doing it. When leaders clearly communicate the overall vision and keep it at the forefront through consistent communication, employees will have a deeper appreciation for the work they are being asked to do. Even the most mundane task can take on new importance when the reasons behind it are understood and embraced.

2. Create a culture of collaboration

People are much more motivated to complete a task or project if they feel that they have some ownership of it. One way to accomplish this is by inviting participation through a culture of collaboration. When employees know that their ideas and opinions are welcome, expected, and heard, they will become more engaged. Individuals who are able to provide input in the earlier stages of development and throughout the course of a project are more likely to be motivated to see it through to the end and do their best work because they have a sense of ownership and pride in the outcomes.

3. Show your appreciation

Although rewards and incentives can be great motivators, sometimes a few words of gratitude can have a much deeper and longer-lasting impact. Individuals want to know that their efforts are appreciated. When leadership acknowledges their accomplishments, both publicly and privately, this genuine praise can go a long way. Don’t wait until a project is finished to show your gratitude and give credit. Acknowledge the late nights, clever ideas, and other positive moments as they happen.

4. Set challenging but realistic goals

Give teams a challenge that will help them grow as individuals and as a team, offering people an opportunity to do work that extends beyond what they have always done. The occasional special project or urgent push to meet a deadline can help recharge a team that feels stuck in the daily routine. They might find different ways to work together, discover a new sense of camaraderie, or develop new skills that they can use to improve other projects. Make sure the goal is realistic and achievable so that the experience is motivating and not discouraging.

5. Provide development opportunities

People get excited when they learn something new, especially when it helps them do their jobs better. Provide ongoing training and development opportunities for both teams and individuals that enable people to continually improve and hone their skill sets. When teams learn something new together, it helps them bond and build new connections. When individuals bring new skills back to the team environment, it can lift everybody up.

6. Create a positive working environment

No matter what motivation strategy you execute, if the daily working environment is unpleasant, it’s difficult for people to get excited about going to work. Think about how each employee spends their day. Do they have the opportunity to take a break in a comfortable, welcoming space? How do coworkers treat each other? It’s up to leadership to create the type of working environment that sparks inspiration and keeps people motivated. This means that leadership has to create an inviting workspace and model the types of behaviors that contribute to this type of culture.

Conclusion

These are just a few examples of the many ways you can motivate and inspire your team. Think about strategies that will be most effective for your teams and make a plan for executing them. Some approaches, such as expressing appreciation and gratitude, can be implemented immediately and become part of the culture. Others, such as implementing a training and development program, will take more time to fully execute. Remember that people are your organization’s most valuable resource and that investing in them can provide invaluable returns.

Training employees to become better managers or executives is an important part of maintaining a strong leadership pipeline. Without this type of development, an organization can be left with leadership gaps that result in decreased productivity, unintentional shifts in the company culture, and potentially lost profits. That is why it is crucial to address certain leadership topics throughout an employee’s development, in order to improve communication skills and team dynamics.

The types of leadership topics that are most relevant will depend on factors like where an individual is on their development path and the foundation of skills that has already been created. Consider including these ideas as you develop your leadership development program.

1. Communication

For those individuals who are early in their journey to becoming a leader, learning how to effectively communicate is critical. Learning and implementing techniques for active listening is the first step in avoiding misunderstandings and overcoming roadblocks. As they continue to grow into leadership positions that require managing people, they can achieve greater impact by learning how to solicit and provide feedback to improve performance. Senior leaders benefit from learning how to create and deliver the consistent messages that will promote a unified culture.

Why do leaders find this topic engaging? Everybody faces challenges that can be resolved using strong communication skills. Leaders in training want to know how they can be better at communicating effectively so that they can generate the results they expect from their teams.

2. Execution

One of the many strengths that makes an individual a great leader is the talent for developing brilliant strategies. However, in order to be effective, this skill must be paired with the ability to execute. Learning how to implement smart strategies through creating plans, tracking milestones, and leveraging innovation enables leaders to demonstrate that their strategies are valid by delivering results.

Why do leaders find this topic engaging? Teaching leaders how to put their strategies into action empowers them to develop new initiatives and gives them confidence in their ability to bring them to reality.

3. Change Management

One of the most challenging times for any organization is a period of transition. Whether it is a change in leadership, a merger, or opening a new branch office, employees crave structure, knowledge, and security in their roles. With the right approach and change management best practices in place, leaders can drive productivity during transitional times, provide stability and vision, and adapt as roadblocks or challenges arise.

Why do leaders find this topic engaging? This type of training is always relevant but is particularly powerful before a planned transition. Having a clear approach allows executives to respond to change with confidence and poise.

4. Empowerment

All leaders must delegate tasks, both large and small. In addition to knowing which tasks are appropriate for the right people, a good leader also has the skills to engage individuals in the decision-making process so that they feel empowered to do whatever is required to produce the best results. Leaders who know how to empower others unleash the full potential of their teams.

Why do leaders find this topic engaging? Leaders who focus on optimizing results want to learn how to get the most from their teams. Although they might know how to maximize their own productivity, they might not yet know how to encourage the same in others.

5. Team Performance

By its very nature, a leadership role requires an individual to guide other people. Different personalities, work ethics, skill sets, and other factors contribute to the many challenges a leader might face when trying to improve team performance. Having the practical skills to overcome these various hurdles enables a leader to both help individuals grow and foster higher levels of collaboration.

Why do leaders find this topic engaging? Effectively leading teams is an ongoing process that requires a broad but refined skill set in order to handle the wide range of situations that will arise.

Development programs for emerging leaders, managers, and executives can include many types of leadership topics. Select the ones that make the most sense for everyone depending on their career level, the challenges they currently face, and the journey you expect them to take as they continue to grow as leaders.