“Plays well with others” must be one of the most sought after qualities in candidates of all experience levels, across every industry. All work, no matter what you do, is in some way collaborative, and the ability to function as part of a team is a must for all members of a company, from intern to CEO.
Improving team effectiveness within any given business should be an ongoing point of action — companies with synergistic employee bases see increased efficiency, higher productivity, and even a boosted bottom line. So tracking, evaluating, and assessing team member performance on a continuous basis is important.
But how do you measure teamwork and collaboration? For enterprise organizations like logistics heavyweight UPS, the answer to measuring critical soft skills and to empowering leaders is gamified behavioral assessments. Meanwhile, some other companies rely on quantitative metrics, including number of repeat customers, profit margins, hours billed, units sold, etc… If your business is meeting deadlines and making money, that means everything’s working, right?
But if you’re tracking the wrong information, numbers don’t always tell the full story. Quantitative data alone won’t tell you which team members are doing what: who’s dropping the ball, who’s picking up the slack, who isn’t communicating, and who isn’t listening. Qualitative measures implemented via employee assessments can assist in identifying some of these intricacies of employee interaction, and present you with your best opportunities for improvement.
Metrics for Measuring Employee Teamwork and Collaboration
Here are 4 criteria of which organizations can base the qualitative aspects of their team performance assessments.
- Accountability.Are your employees completing projects on time? Are they showing up to meetings well prepared? Are they taking responsibility for mistakes made? Are they putting the needs of the team and business before their individual successes or failures? Members of a successful team create and maintain high standards of performance for themselves and their colleagues, and prioritize the wellness of the group.
- Service.Do your employees “show up” for the task at hand? Do they go above and beyond to make sure a project is done, and done well? Do they make themselves available to other members of their team when they need help? A personal sense of service — to the team and organization, as well as the customer — can facilitate a culture of mutual aid among colleagues, and in employees demonstrates a true prioritization of group performance over individual success.
- Growth and learning.Do your employees show continuous improvement? Desire to improve? Are they open to opportunities to receive feedback, guidance, or instruction? Do they take criticism seriously, and use it as an opportunity to review and develop? Demonstration of sincere efforts to boost individual effectiveness, and therefore the effectiveness of the team at large, indicate a propensity toward quality work, and a greater chance of delivering excellence.
- Sharing and listening.Do your employees speak up in meetings, while also allowing space for their team members to share ideas? Do they demonstrate flexibility when an idea they have is rejected, improved upon, or modified? Do they have honest, but respectful, conversations with their colleagues and supervisors? The strongest teams avoid “group-think”, and understand that the best ideas and courses of action are the result of collective intelligence, and collaboration.
Employee Assessments for Teamwork and Collaboration
The effectiveness of a team hinges upon the performance of the individual players. Employee assessments for teamwork and collaboration can provide valuable insights into team performance by analyzing the working behavior of its members.
Harver’s comprehensive suite of automated talent solutions include a variety of pre-hire and employee assessments. In particular, if you want to have an objective and fuller picture of your workforce’s soft skills, explore our gamified behavioral assessment. Using cognitive science skinned with an engaging game-like interface, your organization can identify critical soft skills and add predictive data support for talent development, internal mobility, and workforce gap analysis.
There are other assessment options available out there, like traditional behavioral assessments that can accurately predict day-one performance in a new role. For instance, Harver’s survey-based traditional behavioral assessment uses self-reporting and decades of I-O psychology to measure an employee’s or candidate’s disposition and behaviors in the workplace.
Beyond assessments, there are also other ways mature talent acquisition teams gain valuable insights into employee teamwork, collaboration, and other “people” skills. One example is Harver Reference, which automates the reference checking process to provider more candid feedback from more references in less time. This way, your recruiters and hiring managers can identify team players early on. During the interview process, references are invited to fill out a custom survey, evaluating the candidate on a number of qualities which you can specify. A report is then generated from all reference feedback submitted, giving you insights into your potential’s propensity for collaborative behavior.
Teamwork and Collaboration – Critical for the Future of Work
Teamwork, collaboration, and other soft skills are poised to become critical for two-thirds of roles by 2030. With predictive, fair, and fast ways to assess your employees and candidates, Harver’s hiring solutions are here to support your workforce goals.
Get our free whitepaper on how soft skills are the future of work. It shares why people skills are so in-demand, how to capture soft skills data with HR tech, and what you can do to improve talent development and management by applying said soft skills data.
Successful HR leaders are finding that digital employee assessment tools are now the gold standard in ensuring remote teams remain synergistic. To learn more how your onsite, hybrid, or remote teams can best work together, schedule a demo of Harver’s gamified behavioral assessments.
