Introduction
Team engagement is a concept and strategy used by a company or organization to achieve a collective effort from employees, management or both. Normally, a team can be permanent or temporary depending on the task or project duration. Team engagement is characterized by aspects such as growing trust and transparency, reduced friction among the workers, and accountability ( Schaufeli and Salanova, 2007) . It is referred as a way of harnessing the organizations’ workforce with the aim of producing better results for the company. The engaged team performance helps to reshape the way the company operates on projects. In this case, the company’s notes a chance to create modification and leadership performance within the teams hence improving the levels of responsibilities ( Starbird and Cavanagh, 2010) . In the past, several companies and businesses have tried the same and succeeded. The paper will focus on the case example of companies that applied the term engagement s an avenue of finding success and contrast with one company that attempted the same strategy but failed. Moreover, it will address the specific factors that created a difference in the results of the company’s performances despite taking a similar approach.
Team engagement involves engaging people with the goal of gaining a better position in market performance. Starbucks Corporation, Google and AGT offer a good example of successful firms. Kodak provides an example of a company that failed after using the team engagement strategy.
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Starbucks Corporation
Starbucks Corporation is a prominent coffee shop that operates as a chain around the globe. It has enjoyed high growth and success particularly in the US. It majors its marketing strategy on the provision of high-quality coffee, cozy environment, and good customer service. With over 4000 branches, the Company enjoys successful market domination. Despite the other efforts, its employee and management motivation is a vital factor in its successful campaign. The company engages the employees though teamwork projects to ensure its continued success over many years ( Geereddy, 2013) . Interestingly, each of the outlet shop opened was based on the creation of a team of 3-6 employees who would work and operate in it together for the benefit of the Firm. Each of the team in a particular outlet is mandated to handle the local issues including marketing, sales gathering customer-related information.
With the engagement of team operating on its own, it remains involved on the terms of work which included equal treatment, welfare, and good communication low. Starbucks Corporation treats the employee’s business partners on an equal measure. As a result, the team of workers in different outlet performs together to their best level. Also, the firm has established a strong corporate team environment where the members can easily share their ideas that are treated as important input as a result; Starbucks enjoys success in its service s flow through its different outlets in both the USA and world. It sets a good model example for a successful firm in the use of employee engagement which often leads to their motivation.
International Game Technology (IGT)
IGT is a multinational example of gambling companies IGT operate in such way that operates a leading market firm in the gaming industry where it designs, manufacture, develops, sales and distributes gaming equipment’s that are computers. The company adopted a different approach in its operations and decided to use team engagement to boost performance. In this case, it divided the employees into groups that would operate as teams with the aim of succeeding in the market. With team engagement, emergenetics helped it to manage to offer its services by giving the teams several different engagement factors (Emelo, 2012). For instance, it created a powerful relationship of the team working at IGT with the overall leadership, allowed direct communication with the top management, in addition to offering a responsive form of problem-solving. IGT became successful at the end and has so far been able to create more projects with the team due to the increased trust level. Thus, it continues to enjoy the successive development in the gaming equipment.
Google employs team engagement in ensuring its performance. Google is an international company that specializes in offering the services that are connected with internet including search engine, online adverts, and cloud computing, hardware and software development. To ensure team performance, Google has ensured a high level of transparency across its organizational structure. Thus, transparency has been part of its culture making it possible to have a good flow of communication and operations in the organization. Furthermore, the move enabled it to engage the workers through teamwork as free communication flow enables a good working environment. As a result, the employees can feel like part of the organization.
Kodak
Kodak majors in photography and has existed and dominated the market for many years in the past. Its leadership stance was highly contributed by the uniqueness and quality of products it had that time. For Kodak to remain competitive, it sought a team engagement performance strategy that aimed at helping it come up with better options that would help it remain at the top of completion. The team engagement led to the empowerment of individuals who developed a desire to digitize the products. Through the designated tams, one of the company engineers invented new product information of the digital camera. Using the technology by then back in 1975 allowed him to achieve 0.01 megapixels. ( Lucas and Goh, 2009) Unfortunately, Kodak never adopted the new proposed product and instead continued with mass production of the analog cameras. As technology changed, the company remained in the past development patterns and methods making it difficult to find a new market. By 2011, Kodak faced bankruptcy issues as it had already become irrelevant.
The contrast of failed Kodak with the Starbuck Corporation and IGT
The IGT, Google and the Starbucks Corporation remained successful as they embraced the changes coming from the team effort. Unfortunately, Kodak did not take give a full team engagement performance since the member's proposal was not accepted ( Torrente et al., 2012) . It was unfortunate that it ignored technology proposal that would have otherwise helped the company to remain on to embark on digital production of its cameras. However, by the time it decided to adopt technology, it was too late since most of its investment was spent on the film production. As a result, it faced huge losses.
Compared to Kodak, Google’s team engagement efforts enabled it in achieved the best capability from its employees with a high margin. First, the company was able to create a high workers satisfaction level. Hus boosted the image of Google in the market making it rank to go on top of the competitors. Also, the employees were able to output their creativity through the ultimate Google’s culture hence improving its operations and customer’s experience. Unlike in Kodak where the workers' creativity was not embraced, Google continues to support the employees' experience and input.
Unlike Kodak, the Starbucks’s teamwork engagement efforts helped in ensuring that each of the outlet shops performs well in addition to giving the workers a chance to collaborate in team nature. Moreover, the team members can contribute and the message moves top higher level through the team leader. Interestingly, the top management considers as to whether to take the proposals or not ( Katzenbach and Smith, 2015) . Similarly, the AGT also favors employee empowerment and innovativeness. The AGT allows for a collective decision making where the ideas of the members of the team are joined. The company uses direct communication between the team’s members at the top management. Thus, views on of any members of the team are considered and can be the candidate of implementation through the decisions making. Effective teamwork is also illustrated in the biblical story of Peter writes that every man is blessed differently and by ministering to one another, the results would be significant (1 Peter 4:10).
Conclusion
Employees working as a team’s create a strong workforce that helps the company in achieving its goals and objectives. However, it depends on the way the engagement is implemented for the determination of results. Availability of engaged team in the firm allows it to come up with an inclusive strategy that faces every employee involved in the general focus of the company. It also requires to properly utilize and realize the unique capabilities of the employees. It is clear that employees in the designated team engagements will offer better performance since they sand a better position to understand the firm’s mission. Moreover, it gives an avenue for recognition as individual team members can offer their ideas to the company s well as participate in achieving its goals and objectives. Moreover, the teams get to handle different uses together hence making a collaborative effort rather than having individuals struggling with work. With its provision for the team members to articulate their views to the leaders of a specific team, information is guaranteed to pass to the top management. Consequently, engagement of employees in teams is highly recommendable.
References
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Emelo, R. A. N. D. Y. (2012). Mentoring: Bridging the competency divide. Chief Learning Officer , 11 (8), 26-62.
Geereddy, N. (2013). Strategic analysis of Starbucks Corporation.
Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (2015). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization . Harvard Business Review Press.
Lucas Jr, H. C., & Goh, J. M. (2009). Disruptive technology: How Kodak missed the digital photography revolution. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems , 18 (1), 46-55.
Schaufeli, W., & Salanova, M. (2007). Work engagement. Managing social and ethical issues in organizations , 135 , 177.
Starbird, D., & Cavanagh, R. R. (2010). Building engaged team performance: Align your processes and people to achieve game-changing business results . McGraw Hill Professional.
Torrente, P., Salanova, M., Llorens, S., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2012). Teams make it work: How team work engagement mediates between social resources and performance in teams. Psicothema , 24 (1), 106-112.
