A new survey by Bayt.com, the Middle East's leading career site, revealed a variety of insights about the effect of teamwork and motivation as crucial factors for achieving organizational success. Nearly two thirds of MENA professionals (62.4%) prefer jobs that require teamwork while only7% prefer jobs that allow them to work independently.
The findings show that both teamwork and motivation are essential to improve performance of not just individual employees but the larger organization, as it expands the output of individuals through collaboration. A whopping94% of respondents say that teamwork positively impacts their productivity,70% of respondents find it more motivating to work in a team and84% say that they enjoy teamwork to a great extent. On the other hand, only11% of the respondents find it more motivating to work independently and only2% said they do not enjoy teamwork at all.
“Motivation is an important element of employee engagement and organizational success. Teamwork boost motivation by creating a collaborative culture within workplaces where employees are able to contribute their best work,” said Ola Haddad, Director of Human Resources at Bayt.com. “Bayt.com’s latest poll provides an overview of teamwork, and the positive influence of teamwork on various aspects of the workplace, such as job satisfaction, productivity and the learning environment.”
In addition to increasing organizational productivity, teamwork gives employees an opportunity to strengthen their knowledge and develop their skills. The Bayt.com poll respondents gave a variety of insights about why they find it more motivating to work in a team – including working with different people and being inspired by diverse perspectives (49%), sharing ideas with other people for validation and support (20%), being able to divide workload for higher efficiency (13%) and taking a leadership role when working with others (17%).
Companies across the Middle East are now focusing on creating a workforce that is not just happy, but engaged and motivated through teamwork. According to60% of respondents, their companies encourage team building to a great extent and24% of respondents say that their companies encourage team building to some extent. Only6% say their companies do not encourage teamwork.
Through team building, employees feel more responsible towards a common goal.66% of survey respondents say that they feel more responsible when they are working in a team. Only3% say they feel less responsible when working in a team while28% say that working in a team does not affect their level of responsibility.
Taking a close look at their company’s hiring practices can also help employers shape teams that are highly motivated to work together. And employees agree,75% say it is extremely important to choose candidates based on their ability to work with others,16% consider it to be somewhat important, while less than2% consider it to be unimportant.
Respondents also shared their opinions about their ideal team sizes to optimize teamwork: Between two and five people is the ideal size (according to32% of respondents), followed by teams of six to ten people (29% of respondents).
Companies that develop teams that are highly engaged and motivated can facilitate an increase in production, elevated customer satisfaction, and worker competency to be at an all-time high. According to MENA professionals, there are several factors that positively impact team dynamics: open communication is the most important factor (according to41% of respondents), followed by diversity of team members (21%), support from management (19%) as well as accountability and rewards (15%).
In terms of challenges that might impact the efficiency of teams, unequal work distribution (29%) and lack of accountability (29%) take the top spots, followed by personal disagreements (20%), and group think [adopting the popular opinion] (15%).
Data for the2019 Team building and Motivation survey was collected online from October13th,2019 to December22nd,2019. Results are based on a sample of7,301 respondents from countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan among others.