6 Best Practices to Foster Teamwork in IT Teams

Information Technology business leaders can all agree there's little more important than establishing a teamwork spirit within teams. Teamwork fosters collaboration. Collaboration leads to insights that drive innovation and creativity and help companies work efficiently with a high level of productivity.

Instilling a spirit of teamwork within teams isn't easy, however. It requires consistency and providing your teams with the tools, resources, and best practices to want to work together for the long-haul.

Proven IT Teamwork Best Practices

Encouraging teamwork can't be a patchwork, haphazard effort. Following best practices ensures teams understand why teamwork is important in the workplace, and do their part to work together toward common goals and outcomes.

Here are six proven teamwork best practices that IT organizations worldwide use to build teams that love to work together:

1. Establish communication standards and collaboration expectations
2. Provide teams with powerful resources and training to use them effectively
3. Encourage creativity and tolerate failures
4. Implement security and privacy policies that protect teams
5. Migrate workflows to the cloud for better resource management
6. Develop an award and reward system for high-performer

Let's take a look at each of these a little more closely.

Set Standards for Communication and Collaboration

Everyone communicates differently. Some people prefer to use email, some prefer to meet face-to-face, and others are visual learners and communicators who prefer to use project management tools.

IT leaders need to set standards for communication that drive collaboration and teamwork, regardless of communication preferences.

Multiple platforms may be needed. That's fine as long as these platforms aren't identical, and there are unique features that make having more than one necessary or beneficial.

Communication is empty without the right tools and resources, however.

Provide Teams With Powerful Resources and Training

Effective IT team management is grounded in being a servant leader. Team leaders must be responsible for ensuring their teams have the resources and training necessary to improve continuously.

No one can do their work to a high standard without the right tools. There's a mutual responsibility here. Team members are responsible for letting leadership know what tools they need. Leadership is accountable for providing those tools promptly, so there isn't a lag in workflows and production.

The same is true of employee training. IT team goals and objectives should be grounded in an expectation of continuous improvement. For everyone to get better, and for the skills gap to be closed, it's vital for leaders to set a personalized training schedule for each employee.

Personalized training is vital. So is encouraging creativity in your teams and tolerating failures, which are an essential part of learning.

Encourage Creativity and Tolerate Failures

One of the best ways to encourage teamwork in your IT teams is to promote creativity and tolerate failures. When talented people don't feel like they can be creative and think outside of the box, they're less likely to work together on important issues or solutions to problems.

Instead, they will turn inward and protect themselves against criticism. This defensive mechanism is the opposite of what you want for teamwork!

When people can take risks and be creative with how problems are solved, you'll be surprised at how they work together! It's even better if they know this creativity can end in failure without reprimand.

Failure is a great teacher; allow it to be one!

It's also vital to consider the role security and privacy policies play in protecting teams from data breaches and other harmful situations.

Implement Security and Privacy Policies That Protect Teams

Raising your team's awareness of the importance of privacy and security policies is central to good teamwork. A secure staff is one that can do their work with confidence, and collaborate without fears. After all, if any team member doesn't have the proper safety standards, they could be putting everyone at risk.

There are four things to consider to make security and privacy a part of teamwork:

1. Make one person responsible for data security and privacy. When a point person is assigned to a team's data security and privacy efforts, it's much easier to identify the root cause of issues and have those issues addressed.
2. Make sure, however, the security and privacy effort don't exist in silos. It's everyone's responsibility. Everyone needs to be responsible and adhere to some basic rules.
3. Ongoing security training is a must, but it doesn't have to be boring. Get creative with how you train your team on security standards and best practices. While this training is essential, it doesn't have to be bland and boring.
4. Tailor security and privacy training around your staff's priorities. There's no way you'll reasonably be able to train your staff on security and privacy at once. It's more digestible for your team to learn in small bites. Set up recurring classes or workshops that consider your team's schedules. Each lesson should be about a single subject to make it memorable and a part of the bigger picture.

Previously, teams would have to work through these scenarios in disparate tools and rudimentary networks. With the advent of cloud computing, resource management and workflow management have become much more manageable.

Migrate Workflows to the Cloud for Better Resource Management

Migrating resource management infrastructure to the cloud makes it much easier for a company to anticipate increased demand and address it. When this increased demand is addressed naturally, it's much easier for teams to continue workflows without interruption.

In general, with the adoption of cloud computing methods, teams can focus on teamwork and less on distractions that come with unpredictable interruptions or anomalies.

Finally, there's nothing more important than developing a reward and award system for high-performers.

Developing a Reward and Award System for High-Performers

Your high-performing team members need and deserve praise for a job well-done whether or not they ask for it specifically. This need is why it's essential to develop a reward and award system for high-performers.

Teamwork, by itself, is a worthwhile endeavor. Teamwork pointed toward a collective goal that, when reached, will be rewarded is even better.

Teams made up of motivated individuals become productive teams. When you reward people for a job well done and recognize their achievements, success fosters success. Conversely, if you don't appreciate good work, people will be less motivated to do well, and may even believe they're doing poorly.

In simplest terms: Why wouldn't you want to recognize good work? How could it possibly be a negative? Fostering an atmosphere of teamwork as an IT leader isn't easy. If it were, teams would work together seamlessly without any training, or the infrastructure required to do so.

IT team leaders who take it on themselves to provide teams with the tools, resources, and structure necessary to work together and do great things, will be rewarded with creative and unique solutions to their toughest problems.

To learn how QuickStart can prepare your teams to work together to create robust solutions to the toughest IT problems, click here!