Building better teams

Team culture is critical for an industry like pharmaceuticals, in which people need to closely work together and deliver within the deadline. Sushmi Dey writes about the challenges that come up while engaging pharma employees in team-building initiatives.

Once upon a time, there lived an old man. He had three sons who used to fight among themselves all the time. One day, the worried old man thought of a trick. He called his sons and gave them three separate sticks to break. All of them broke the sticks at once. Then the old man gathered all the sticks and made them into a bunch. He gave the bunch to his sons again and asked them to try their individual strength on it. All his three sons failed to break the bunch of sticks. Moral of the story: United we stand, divided we fall.

With changing times the story might have changed its shape, but the moral remains the same. It is no more restricted to households, instead it has spread its wings to organisational work culture as well. Employers today realise that team synergies significantly impacts organisational productivity and ultimately the bottom line. The concept of team-building has consequently acquired a prominent role in the training calendars of many organisations.

Over the last decade, with increasing competition and attrition, the Indian pharma industry, along with CROs and biotech companies, have understood the need to have the right approach to building teams. Many pharma companies have not just started organising team-building events, and have become cautious about the right approach at every stage. For instance, recruiters while hiring try their best to find out whether the candidate has the correct attitude and will turn out to be a good team player.

Effective teams

"Team-building brings joy and develops a sense of belongingness, leading to improvement, creativity and innovation' - Beena Handa Vice-President HRM Claris Lifesciences

It is a proven fact that a team which has the right blend of skills, is well bonded and well balanced, can be effective in bringing about a turnaround in the organisation. "Team-building brings joy and develops a sense of belongingness, leading to improvement, creativity and innovation, which once again creates positive cycles of better performance, rewards and recognition," says Beena Handa, Vice-President, HRM, Claris Lifesciences.

Pharmaceutical companies are characterised by research and development work. In such an environment, team-building acquires great significance to bring about positive results, quickly. "Team-building is important in a typical R&D environment as the results are dependent on sustained team effort over a period of time where each member's outcomes are partially determined by the other members of the team. Thus it becomes important to mesh together the abilities and skills of each team member," says Deependra Singh Sengar, CEO, TMI First.

Although, India has a huge pool of young pharma professionals and it is relatively easy here to recruit associates at the bachelor and masters degree levels, increasing rate of attrition is a constant problem for pharma companies. Since research is an integral part of this industry, a team of scientists with relevant experience and capacity is essential and cannot be easily replaced. "A deep understanding of disease biology and all practical issues associated with drug R&D is needed in pharma research. Such scientists cannot be trained during a short period, but usually require sustained exposure to latest research methodologies to reach their full potential. Novel drug development takes about 10-14 years from the idea to market, and teamwork is a must during every stage," states Sengar.

The best practice

"Sense of team spirit should be instilled into an individual from the first day he steps into the company" - Abraham T M Head-Human Resources Veeda Clinical Research

Team-building is a purpose-driven process. While a well chosen team-building exercise will deliver benefits to the organisation and its employees; on the contrary a mismatched intervention can have just the opposite impact. Sengar believes that team-building process should be developed according to a systematic plan, to create, maintain and enrich the development of a group of people into a cohesive unit.

Team-building initiatives are much talked about in terms of brain storming, problem analysis and consensus building. But HR managers often complain that these techniques are not practical to develop an effective team. Making teams more productive is a constant issue for most managers.

According to Abraham T M, Head-Human Resources, Veeda Clinical Research, all HR practices are targeted towards developing team spirit among the employees. "Sense of team spirit should be instilled into an individual from the first day he steps into the company," suggests Abraham. Agrees Sengar, "Team-building is not a one-time pursuit, but a series of events or activities that shapes a team and unifies them. Only this can result in achievement of targets and synergies at a sustained level," says Sengar.

However, many pharma companies take a step in this direction right from the beginning. While recruiting candidates they not only judge their knowledge skills but also their attitude. According to Sengar, employers must use elimination factors to screen out those who could hinder teamwork.

Besides recruiting the right people to create teams, developing good teams is also important. Handa identifies four essential steps for team building— forming, storming, norming and performing. Handa explains that the first step is to analyse the skill sets required to perform the tasks or bring out the required output and hence bring together persons having requisite skills. "In the second stage who will do what, when, where, why, how (the process), and how much is debated. The alignment decides the effectiveness," he adds. The standard operating procedures for operations and do's and don'ts of behaviour are established in the third stage, which is called norming. "It is done with the objectives of generating clarity and avoiding conflicts," asserts Handa. However, the last stage which she calls performing ascertains that the team performs depending on the skills, attitudes and behaviour of its members.

"Teams should be structured with members having complimentary skills. A team need not have all leaders but a mix of detail workers, influencers, coaches, and even cheerleaders," opines Sengar.

Abraham believes that freedom, an open culture, highly conducive working environment and respect for each other are the main ingredients for developing team spirit. "However, employee involvement and participation are also important techniques for cultivating team-building," adds Abraham. Veeda CR has formed various committees, like the suggestions committees, cultural committee and food committee, to ensure employee involvement in the day-to-day affairs of the company.

Some of the popular interventions for team-building, according to Handa are— competency mapping and matching, role clarification, vision and values workshops, business process mapping and elimination of non-value adding activities, allocation of improvement projects, team suggestions programmes, team rewards and recognition, team outings and outward bound programmes.

Many of the companies periodically organise employee family visits to the company, get-togethers, cultural programmes, competitions and sports events to encourage and strengthen mutual relationships and a sense of belonging.

The loopholes

Since pharma organisations, biotech companies and CROs are knowledge-based industries, the focus during recruitment and in performance management is mainly on knowledge and skills. "There is a tendency to focus on the positive side of technical expertise and neglecting the soft skills," says Sengar. The industry is also project based and hence time is a major factor since employees work under deadline pressures. Any team-building activity involves time and employee participation and hence often takes a back seat on the priority list of employers. "Organising team-building activities on a continuous basis by involving people without affecting work and business could be considered as a challenge," says Abraham.

However, a consensus is required between HR managers and other head of the departments to organise healthy exercises and build strong teams without adversely affecting the work. "Employees should be convinced on the need to attend team-building activities on holidays and off-duty time as far as possible," suggests Abraham.

Besides cultural diversity, the workforce in pharma companies is also diversified in skills. "In a typical pharma company, the range of qualifications and skills would vary from highly qualified research scientist to a relatively lesser skilled manufacturing worker. This creates its own set of complexities in the organisational context," states Sengar. The common goals, interlinked work, frequency of interactions and information flow are, therefore, important considerations while designing team-building initiatives. However, while offering solutions, it is important to note that team-building is not appropriate to solve technical problems, administrative goof-ups, and small conflicts between two members.

Another big challenge in management of teams often occurs when a new member is added to an already existing team. "In any team, adding a new member means redefining the task and relationships and helping people to settle down and also be productive members, as fast as one can," points out Handa, adding that in such situations, HR team members must act as process owners who help people to settle down in the organisation with their role. Business process mapping also help team members at the functional level to understand how they are linked to each other.

Budget for building teams

Budget allocation is a very important aspect of any HR initiative. Any team-building activity has a cost attached to it. The HR budget albeit depends on the focus of the top management. "HR budget is decided and allocated based on not only the needs of business and organisation, but also priorities and how much time the people can invest in development of self and team vis-à-vis operations," says Handa. A management with a long-term view of things always has a focus on team-building since it helps the organisation in not just retention of employees but also creates positive multiplier effect on quality, cost and delivery time, which in-turn affects output, profitability, customer delight, goodwill and also gains to employees. "Though team-building activities bring intangible results, it plays a major role in organisational effectiveness. Therefore, budget should not be a constraint and HR should have a major say on it," opines Abraham.

The last word

An organisation is a group of people, working together for the achievement of common goals. Team work enables an individual to look beyond himself and work for the larger organisational objectives. Team-building helps because it brings in a feeling of belonging to something larger than yourself. "Though the responsibilities of team members are different, they are inter-linked. A cohesive approach and synergy among the members is required to bring desired results," says Abraham.

The deeper the connection between team members, the higher the level of commitment, loyalty, and accountability team members experience with each other. Strong and effective team-building can make a difference to productivity, employee morale, retention of employees and overall performance of the company.

editorial.ep@expressindia.com