Page 158 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

The Power of “We” to Magnify Engagement C145

sure on companies to coordinate better horizontally to stay nimble,
customer responsive, and competitive. As discussed in earlier chapters,
another complicating factor is that workplaces are becoming more diverse,
reflecting population changes and the emergence of new generations that
bring different expectations into the workplace, creating new tensions
and making smooth teamwork more difficult to achieve. Add to this the
emergence of new communication technologies that enable employees to
work more collaboratively in virtual teams of people throughout the na-
tion and the world. For these and other reasons, there is unquestionably a
new focus and premium on teamwork. At last check, we found more than
100,000 books on teamwork and team building on Amazon.com. That is
why we were not surprised to see this theme rise to the top-most rung of
employee engagement drivers.

: KEY DRIVER: TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Two of the top ten survey statements that most distinguished Best-
Places-to-Work winners from nonwinning competitors were team re-
lated (Figures 6.1 and 6.2): “My team effectively collaborates, leveraging
individual strengths” was ranked #3 as a differentiating item, and “I feel
loyal to my immediate team or work group” ranked #10.
To underscore the power of teamwork in driving engagement, we
need only to point out that the statement that ranked #12 as a dis-
tinguishing item was also representative of this theme: “The people I
work with most closely are committed to producing top-quality work.”
We believe this aspect—the ability to depend on the performance
of coworkers—as reflected in this last statement, represents an impor-