3 Ways Team Competitions Improve Your Business

Teams in the workplace have existed as long as workplaces themselves. Chances are your employees are structured into some form of team as well. Team’s are great because they build strong relationships between colleagues. They enhance collaboration to achieve big goals. However, keeping all your staff in a single team misses out on one of the best uses of team structure: Competition.
By creating  smaller sub-groups of your larger team, you have all you need for some healthy, performance boosting workplace competition. Everyone loves a fun, friendly competition, and so do your business results. Introducing competitive elements to your workplace has a number of benefits. Here’s 3 ways team competitions can improve your business:

1. Increased Output

The obvious benefit of creating some competition between teams of your staff is an increase in productivity. This comes about from an individual’s desire to perform ahead of their colleagues. To do so they will  put more effort into improving activities and output. You are even likely to see team members help and encourage each other to improve even further. What more could you really ask from your team?
A single employee improving a small percentage might seem insignificant, but apply this to every member of your team and you’ll easily see how quickly those small improvements stack up to genuine, measurable business results.

2. Individual Self-Improvement

Beyond improvement in quantitative performance, a competitive environment can also push staff into sustained self-improvement. This can mean anything from being more punctual at work, leading to increased engagement and productivity, to an increase in overall quality of work, and not just immediate results. Particularly in sales environments, improved work quality can manifest in the form of better customer interactions, making them more likely to buy from you again, leading to more repeatable and predictable revenue for your business.
Never underestimate the value of your staff improving at a personal level, not just at a measurable business level.

3. Teamwork

A Harvard psychology study on flight crew performance showed that a newly formed team experienced a collective learning curve. Once the crew were more familiar and socially inducted with each other, their performance grew rapidly and significantly. This occurs because the team improves in a fundamental aspect of team performance. Do you know the best thing every team can improve on? That’s right. Teamwork!
Beyond just calling a group of staff a ‘team’ for the sake of it, providing employees the opportunity to benefit from teamwork and really helping each other perform better, by utilizing team competitions, can improve the efficiency of all operations within the team. Numerous studies have proven that most people are significantly happier at work if they have the opportunity to help a colleague, and be helped by a colleague, and also that one of the leading factors in workplace happiness and satisfaction is good colleagues. And as colleagues get more familiar with each other, their teamwork improves, leading to better performance and results for your company.

Conclusion

Team competitions present a number of benefits for your staff and your business. They also avoid the pitfall of competition between individuals: inadvertently frustrating lower performing staff by highlighting their performance against your superstar staff members who consistently outperform everyone else. By using teams, your superstar gets to benefit from what they do best, and lower performing staff still get to contribute to a larger goal as an equal member.

So what are you waiting for? Start a free trial with Spinify today, and get your teams competing!

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