Influences of teamwork on development of Employment and Labour Department in a Provincial Government: A case study, KwaZulu-Natal.
For organizations to improve performance, teamwork is often cited as important across all departments. However, according to Cheruvelil, Sorrono, Weathers, Hanson, Goring, Filstrup and Read (2014), many organizations struggle to enhance teamwork amongst employees in their operation because employees do not feel as though their colleagues contribute equally which leads to promoting competitiveness instead of mutual support .The main objective of this study was to investigate the influences of teamwork on organizational development using one of the governments department, that is the Department of Employment and Labour in the Southern KwaZulu-Natal Provinces as a case study because of the benefits of teamwork such as improving employee relations, interpersonal skills, organizational effectiveness growth, flexibility and quality of work life. The specific objectives of this study were to assess the influence of teamwork on the success of department development, to explore the influence of teamwork structure, productivity in the department, to determine the main factors contributing to team performance and department development with specific reference to factors such as, goals setting, roles, processes, trust and interpersonal relationships and finally to assess the role played by management in team development. In this study, different theories were applied throughout, such as GRPI, the T7 Model of team Effectiveness, Team Basics, the Hackman Model of Team Effectiveness, and Understanding Team Dysfunction because they assisted in help businesses and leaders understand how well their teams function and improve team building, management, and training to ultimately boost performance and accomplish shared goals. Each theory informed the study as follows, the efficient collaboration of high-performing teams to thrive. The GRPI model inform the study by helps leaders guide their teams toward success, identify operational issues, and work with team members to rectify them. The T7 Model of Team Effectiveness inform the study by assessing team members on their behavior and skills and measures the team itself against cohesion and performance goals. The Team Basics inform the study how the team works together and what work the team accomplishes. The Hackman model, inform the study by effective processes that enable information sharing, feedback, problem solving, and learning by team members. The Understanding dysfunctions of teamwork inform the study through absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment and avoidance of team accountability. The study adopted the mixed methods philosophy approach whereby using qualitative and quantitative approaches were followed. The design of the study was sequential exploratory design because is used when there is a need to further explain a set of quantitative data with additional qualitative information, for example if employees are questioned about their satisfaction with their job and then conducted interviews to gain more information about why they responded the way they did. The sample of the study was four labour centres out of 16 from KwaZulu- Natal in which the employees at management level and non-management level (junior and senior management) were targeted because that will lead to large sampling and will be time-consuming, and it will be able to provide adequate information for generalization. A total of 143 team members participated in the study. The sampling method adopted was convenience sampling technique because it was implementable, definitely easy and accessible to collecting data from participants and low cost. Data collection in the quantitative phase was the questionnaires because they are convenient to collect demographic information, personal opinions, facts, or attitudes from respondents and it also making the analysis process more efficient and less time-consuming to collect primary data. Data collection in qualitative phase was interviews because to explore the research subject and provide a more in-depth understanding of the phenomenon at hand and more broad and actionable insights. In the quantitative phase, data was analysed using descriptive statistical methods like mean, averages and percentages. In the qualitative phase, data was analysed using thematic coding and Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) Miner software. Data were presented using tables and figures. The results indicated that the outstanding and common challenges in teamwork are poor communication, leadership and conflicts arising from team members. Communication and trust were critical to teamwork efforts. Ultimately, there was a strong relationship between leadership and communication toward organizational performance of the Employment and Labour Department. This study also revealed that employees’ performance depended much on the presence of job assistance at the organization. In other words, given the required support, the employees would perform their duty and would also plan for the development of the Department of government organization. The study found that for improvement in teamwork, roles and responsibilities should be clearly defined for every team member. It was recommended that the Department of Employment and Labour should build trust and respect within among team members and encourage clear, frequent communication, while giving teams autonomy in decision-making. Building a strong team, setting clear goals and showing appreciation are among the main actions necessary for improvement along with keeping employees informed of impending changes to their workplace.
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