Fostering Teamwork: 12 Successful Initiatives from Various Workplaces
Fostering teamwork and collaboration is essential in any workplace, so we’ve gathered insights from CEOs and founders on successful initiatives to unite employees. From implementing a “Tech Swap” Program to introducing workplace soundscaping, explore these twelve diverse strategies that have proven to encourage a collaborative environment.
- Implement a ‘Tech Swap’ Program
- Promote Autonomy and Cross-Team Demos
- Host Snack-Filled Casual Meetings
- Set Collaborative Goals
- Organize Collaborative Innovation Days
- Conduct Weekly Brainstorming Sessions
- Pair Engineers for On-Site Client Visits
- Sponsor Team-Building Company Outings
- Create Cross-Departmental Project Teams
- Start the Day with Team Huddles
- Encourage Co-Created Project Work
- Introduce Workplace Soundscaping
Implement a ‘Tech Swap’ Program
One initiative in our tech company has been the “Tech Swap.” For a week, employees switched roles, allowing them to gain an understanding of the tasks and challenges their colleagues face. An engineer might step into marketing, while a financial analyst could dive into IT. This fostered a vibrant exchange of perspectives, enhancing innovation in our work. The Tech Swap not only boosted camaraderie and empathy across various departments but also broadened our employees’ skill sets, enriching their personal growth and team spirit.
Abid Salahi
Co-Founder & CEO, FinlyWealth
Promote Autonomy and Cross-Team Demos
We’ve found that fostering teamwork and collaboration starts with giving employees autonomy. From day one, we encourage team members to take ownership of their work, which naturally leads to more open collaboration across the company. When people have the freedom to drive their projects, they’re more inclined to seek out input from others and work together to find creative solutions. For instance, it’s common to see our customer success team collaborating directly with engineers to optimize client experiences, bridging the gap between departments to achieve shared goals.
A great example of how we foster collaboration is through our Demo Day for the product development team. While it’s primarily for them to showcase progress and innovations, it serves a bigger purpose—bringing everyone across the company into the conversation. By sharing challenges, successes, and new features, Demo Day allows other departments to provide feedback and insights, creating a real sense of unity and shared vision. This open cross-team interaction ensures that even though each department has its own focus, we’re all working toward the same goals.
We’ve also made it easy for team members from different departments to collaborate on various projects. Whether it’s an engineer reaching out to marketing for a fresh perspective or customer success working with a product to improve user experience, our culture of openness allows employees to easily connect and share ideas. This approach ensures that teamwork is seamless and innovation flows freely across the organization.
Jamie Frew
CEO, Carepatron
Host Snack-Filled Casual Meetings
To encourage teamwork and collaboration among our employees, we hold regular meetings three times a week, where everyone is encouraged to bring different snacks to create a more relaxed and casual atmosphere. This simple initiative helps break the ice and fosters open communication, making discussions more open and collaborative.
Zeyuan Gu
Founder, Adzviser LLC
Set Collaborative Goals
We encourage teamwork and collaboration among employees through collaborative goal-setting. Unlike a top-down goal-setting approach, collaborative goal-setting involves setting mutual objectives and ensuring each team member’s input is considered in defining success metrics.
Using this approach, we’ve noted that employees become more invested in the goals they helped set. In this way, their sense of ownership and accountability is fostered, which contributes to better collaboration and teamwork to help achieve them.
We also facilitate teamwork and collaboration on these mutual goals by working through Google Workspace. This productivity suite allows every team member to keep track of their deliverables and monitor progress toward the realization of set objectives.
Clooney Wang
CEO, TrackingMore
Organize Collaborative Innovation Days
To encourage teamwork and collaboration among employees, I emphasize creating an inclusive environment where open communication is the norm. One successful initiative we’ve implemented is a monthly “Collaborative Innovation Day.” On these days, employees from different departments come together to work on cross-functional projects or brainstorm ideas for improving processes and products.
During these sessions, we focus on diverse perspectives and skill sets, which not only fosters collaboration but also sparks creativity. For example, one of our Collaborative Innovation Days led to the development of a new feature for our software that significantly improved user experience, as it combined insights from marketing, development, and customer support teams. This initiative has strengthened relationships among employees and cultivated a culture of shared ownership and collective problem-solving, ultimately enhancing overall team dynamics and productivity.
Shehar Yar
CEO, Software House
Conduct Weekly Brainstorming Sessions
We have a small team, so fostering collaboration can be more personal and direct. One successful initiative is having weekly collaborative brainstorming sessions where everyone is encouraged to contribute ideas and provide feedback on ongoing projects. This creates an open environment for communication and teamwork.
Benjamin Alford
Environmental Consultant, Aerem
Pair Engineers for On-Site Client Visits
Teamwork and collaboration are a big part of our success. One of the most effective ways we’ve encouraged this is through consistent on-site appointments. Having our IT engineers physically present at client locations builds stronger connections with clients and within the team. It’s a chance for our engineers to collaborate on projects, troubleshoot issues together, and share ideas in real time.
We are pairing newer engineers with more experienced ones during on-site visits. The experienced engineers act as mentors, sharing their knowledge and problem-solving techniques. It’s a win-win: the newer team members gain valuable insights, and the experienced ones stay sharp by teaching.
I’ve also seen the value of regular check-ins with our in-house help desk team. They have remote support responsibilities, but we make sure they’re constantly in touch with the onsite engineers. It keeps communication flowing, ensures we’re all on the same page, and allows us to deliver the best service to our clients.
Elmo Taddeo
CEO, Parachute
Sponsor Team-Building Company Outings
Teams are more inclined to collaborate when they have created quality relationships with one another. During the hiring process, you more than likely considered company fit when interviewing candidates. Your team at this point should be like-minded in that they all align with the company culture, so all they need is the opportunity to get to know one another. Sponsor company outings or set up events where you and your team can hang out and get to know each other outside of the work realm. This will help your team get to know each other and be able to work with one another effectively.
Rubens Basso
Chief Technology Officer, FieldRoutes
Create Cross-Departmental Project Teams
Cross-departmental projects. I create small teams made up of colleagues from different departments and have them work on a project or brainstorm business solutions. It allows workers with different skill sets to work together on a common goal.
These types of projects boost employee engagement and create fresh perspectives. I’ve found it effective for promoting teamwork, as these types of projects tend to boost employee engagement and generate fresh perspectives.
Basically, you get people together with colleagues from separate departments in the organization, giving them the chance to share new ideas.
Dan Brown
CEO & Founder, Textun
Start the Day with Team Huddles
We prioritize open communication and a strong sense of community among our team. One initiative that has been particularly successful is our “Team Huddle” at the start of each workday. During these quick meetings, everyone shares tasks of the day and any challenges they foresee, which encourages collaboration and problem-solving from the get-go. This practice not only helps streamline operations but also strengthens team bonds. When everyone is on the same page, we see better efficiency and higher morale.
Amaury Ponce
Business Owner, Ponce Tree Services
Encourage Co-Created Project Work
One initiative that we put in place that increased teamwork was putting a premium on co-created projects. We found that projects on which multiple people worked together were more successful, had fewer errors, and were completed more efficiently.
To encourage our team to work this way, I modeled this type of work with some of my own projects. I also made sure to praise co-created projects in team meetings. By modeling the values I wanted to see, I showed my team that their contributions to teamwork would be valued as well.
David Holman
CMO, Textun
Introduce Workplace Soundscaping
With workplace occupancy at lower levels compared to pre-pandemic, office spaces can often be too quiet for people to comfortably share ideas. People are more conscious of being overheard and disrupting those around them.
Silence isn’t actually the objective for a productive workplace; it’s not the most beneficial sound for individual focus, it makes people feel uneasy, and, as mentioned, inhibits idea-sharing and collaboration.
We use a process called “soundscaping,” which introduces ambient background sounds into a workplace. These sounds are drawn from the natural world because natural sounds have a variety of scientific benefits that are highly applicable to the workplace and collaboration.
Firstly, certain natural sounds, like a babbling brook, can “mask” or cover up speech and improve privacy for those speaking. This means that we can use these sounds to improve acoustic comfort and encourage people to collaborate with one another. (We’ve seen increases of 19% in collaboration using this approach.) In addition, natural sounds can aid with a range of tasks relevant to collaboration, including creative problem-solving (+12%) and decision-making (+10%).
Please don’t take this as carte blanche to play loops of natural sound into a workplace, though. You will cause more problems than you solve! Soundscaping requires specific practices and technology to be beneficial and not cause annoyance. But, done thoughtfully and intelligently, soundscaping can measurably improve people’s ability to collaborate in the physical workplace.
Fran Board
Marketing and Research Director, Moodsonic