Technology and Teambuilding: A Winning Combination

In construction, teams come in every shape and size, designed to accomplish daily tasks or resolve sudden needs. But it can be difficult to formulate every team into a coherent, cohesive unit while linking them across divisions for peak efficiency.

Technology offers tools for boosting team cohesion and communication through standardization, universal adoption, productive data analysis, and motivating through transparency.

Leveraging technology for teambuilding can elevate contractors into a place of market leadership. And as digital natives enter the construction profession, the companies that embrace technology for career growth and job satisfaction position themselves to attract and retain top talent.

This article explores the barriers to applying technology to build teams, use of data to develop corrective steps, and innovative team-strengthening techniques inspired by technology itself.

Key Challenges in Construction Teambuilding

In construction, teams can encompass multiple entities and roles. There are leadership teams, standing teams, ad hoc teams, field teams, and multidisciplinary teams.

No matter their differences in composition and purpose, each should be configured to keep the company on track to meet goals, mitigate risk, and drive operational efficiencies.

On jobsites, project managers are responsible for funneling the findings and functions of all teams to the ownership team, providing comprehensive updates on the project’s progress and problems.

In this atmosphere, technology promises standardization that brings order to chaos and clarifies the information flowing from teams to PMs to owners.

However, obstacles stand in the way of applying technology to develop teams into their best possible units. Resistance to change rises up to block usage. Workforce shortages leave key positions vacant. Old, familiar processes take precedence over consuming precious time to learn a new procedure.

In addition, the inconsistent use of technology diminishes the efficiencies and insightful data analytics that technology promises for building holistic teams.

And while “old guard” employees can have a reputation for resisting technology, digital natives can also come with preset notions to be managed — specifically, that employers will deploy glitch-free technology to make their work lives easier and more productive.    

Leveraging Data for Team Success

Leveraging technology to build effective teams generates tangible benefits. Solutions are found in a multifaceted approach.

Team members don’t embrace new technologies just because they’re simply dropped into the field or office, and sporadic usage hampers maximization.

Top-down implementation establishes expectations that every person aligned with a tool will use it. Consistent usage contributes to full data sets, for real-time views into project progress and insights into process improvement areas.

Technology saves time and effort, but users have to see it for themselves before they’ll take the time needed to learn it. Demonstrate the ease of voice-to-text for recording daily logs, and busy field leaders will embrace it as a timesaver.

Scrutinizing usage-report data can reveal gaps that diminish teambuilding opportunities. Underperformance can be corrected by examining the tool itself for ease of use, or uncovering problems in the original implementation. A continuous process of questioning uncovers the root causes that demand attention.

Target team training: Data analytics can answer emerging questions about the origins of team strengths and weaknesses. If an entire team seems to misunderstand a tool’s properties, additional training could put them on track. Or, individual super-users showing strong performance metrics could be given additional team leadership, feeding their career ambitions and increasing the odds of retaining them as employees.

Project management, risk mitigation, and profitability data illustrate how and why the company succeeds and wins jobs. Sharing that data motivates office and field teams to help strive for the company’s next big project — and the possibility of remuneration for themselves — by sustaining the gains and improving the shortfalls.

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New Takes on Team Management

Evolving times call for evolving measures. The techniques of digitally driven teambuilding should be as fresh and dynamic as the technology itself:

• Gameify tech use.

  A generation attuned to video games responds to gamification. Levels and points, interactivity, and group challenges create intrigue that shifts mindsets toward acceptance.

• Reward compliance.

  Repercussions for failing to use tools properly do little more than build resentment. Rewards build excitement. Find out what teams value — gift cards, pizza parties, time off — and offer incentives that encourage them to make a habit of technology use.

• Adapt to a tech-savvy workforce

  The generation that has never lived without today’s technology is here. Young workers will choose and stay with the employers who can deliver a digital work experience as seamless and simplified as the lives they lead on social media and as digital media consumers.  

Strong teams are the brains and hearts of every successful enterprise. The classic techniques of teambuilding through relationships and communications remain firmly in place.

Now, technology offers augmented powers to forge teams into strategic assets, adaptable and ready to drive growth that keeps pace with a rapidly changing marketplace.

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