6 Benefits of Team Assessments for Your Business and Productivity

In recent years, Google executives believed that building good teams meant joining the best people. They spent millions of dollars studying its employees trying to come up with the right mix necessary to form a stellar team. They ran a project called Aristotle in 2012 that involved interviewing 100 of its employees who were in different teams.

The result of the data collected from the interviews proved what they knew all along. When employees work in groups, they show sensitivity and they listen to each other. Team assessment is a management technique in which an exercise is conducted to evaluate an organization’s team’s strengths and weaknesses.

The task uncovers issues and shortcomings within groups. The idea of team assessment began in the 1970s for the first time, when teamwork was emphasized as a primary key to success by some business organizations, especially professional sports.

Team assessments can help you ensure that your team is competent and productive. Here are the benefits of team assessments that you need to know.

1. Identify and Mitigate Challenges

Good teamwork is based on team members compensating for each other’s weakness and working with their strengths. But team member development also requires improving in areas of weakness. Team assessment will identify those with weak teamwork skills and help you focus on strengthening them.

Not everyone likes working in a team. Some of the employees may need a little push in order to collaborate with the other employees effectively. By conducting a team assessment on the team’s work practices, you can strengthen the employees who need attention. Most business organizations conduct team assessment only after things go wrong.

Team assessment provides more value at certain times over others. Performing team assessment exercise before problems arise can prevent and minimize them. Team assessment before problems can also save organizations time and money. It is therefore advisable to conduct team assessment early in the team cycle.

It is easier to identify employees with difficulty working with others and as a part of ongoing team development.

2. Team Assessment Enhances an Organization’s Vision

A business organization’s vision summarizes what the team is working to achieve. It serves as a basis in which team members draw their strengths. For a team to ensure the success of a business, they should develop a team vision that will represent the team purpose. When the team members work together with the team vision in mind, they will guarantee an organization’s success.

To assess the performance of each member, teams can also recognize the use of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). These KPIs track the total assignment costs and missed targets, among others. These assessments ensure that members of a team purpose to achieve the organization’s vision.

They use key performance indicators to pinpoint their mistakes and what they are doing right

3. Team Assessment Aids in Managing Conflict

When employees work together in a team, team conflict is inevitable. Since individuals vary in beliefs, values, and methods of solving work issues. Bruce Tuckman’s four-stage team development mode warns that when the conflict is not resolved, things can get worse.

Team assessment, therefore, detects conflict and differences among team members. Business administrators and team leads can thus suggest conflict resolution. It can be achieved by treating members fairly and equally and advocating for mutual respect when they are working together to achieve the organization’s goals.

As a business leader, you should encourage your employees to work together harmoniously. For example, ask your team members to regularly take time to talk to one another and help each other. Helpfulness between team members is essential for promoting a culture of cooperation.

It also gives your team an environment to perform better when tackling heavy responsibilities.

4. Team Assessment Give Room for Team Building Opportunities

Team assessment exercises pinpoint the areas that need teamwork and where team productivity is not established. Encourage your staff to concentrate on the areas that you think can get addressed by teams. An assessment conducted on teams can help you as a leader identify areas for new opportunities.

It also motivates the employees to work on them to find solutions.

5. Identify Leaders

Team assessments will help you identify the natural leaders in a team. When a team member request for work and offers to help, it shows initiative, which is an excellent characteristic of a leader. Any employee that takes action is proof that a business is headed in the right direction.

It is therefore essential for you as a business leader to note the teamwork styles in the organization. See who is taking initiatives so that you can focus on pinpointing the leaders among the team’s members,

6. Quality of the Output

Assessing your team members can give you an insight into the organization’s performance. You see the quality of the work from the team. Team members who identify with the organization’s visions and goals will strive to achieve the desired output.

For members to deliver quality outputs successfully, they must be encouraged to work together.

Team Assessments Benefits Your Organization

Team assessment is an exercise that uncovers strengths and shortcomings within teams in an organization. It also identifies fault lines where problems might occur, giving you a chance to mitigate them. When individuals in an organization work in teams, they share goals and become accountable to each other. This is while they pursue the organization’s interests.

It is important to note that the sum effort of a team is far greater than individual effort. The success of any organization is dependent on the collective efforts of each in a group. Clear communication and honesty define good teamwork. When proper teamwork is not cultivated well among members, then difficulties arise. Since teams are the glue that holds an organization together, team assessment deals with their problems

The assessment also gives room for managing conflict between members of a team. There are some individuals who find it hard to work with other people. It is imperative to conduct a team assessment in an organization to ensure productivity.

Read more tips on how to increase your organizations’ productivity on our blog.