No matter what you call your team-based improvement effort - continuous improvement, total quality, lean manufacturing, or work teams, you are striving to improve results for customers. Few organisations, however, are totally pleased with the results their team improvement efforts produce.

Our snap poll last month showed that almost 70% of Reward members believed lack of teamwork was a problem for their business yet only one in three companies had a formal teambuilding process in place.

Research by the Ohio State University suggests that workplace teams may not be the key factor in determining how workers behave on the job.

The study found that basic standards of employment - things like job security and good worker-manager relations - were more important in determining employee behaviour than how the workplace was organised.

“In some settings, workplace teams are instituted almost as a substitute for decent working standards,” according to Sociology Professor Randy Hodson. “In those situations, teams are not going to work very well.”

Hodson also examined what he called citizenship behaviours among workers -- things like helping colleagues, giving extra effort freely, and a commitment to organisational goals.

Results showed these behaviours were more likely in workplaces that offered highly skilled jobs and that gave employees a great deal of autonomy.

“In order to get extra effort from employees, companies need to offer more than just the basic standards,” he said.

“Factors such as job security and non-abusive bosses are sometimes ignored by management experts because they aren’t glamorous or new. But those things are extremely important in daily life at work.”