Team disengagement can cause serious issues for any company. Disengaged employees are less productive, less innovative and more likely to leave. This is where online teams training can play a vital role.

Is your team feeling a bit unmotivated lately? Perhaps productivity has started to drop? These are all signs that your team could benefit from some skills-based training focused on areas like communication, collaboration and motivation. Read further below to understand more about team disengagement, its common signs, and what you can do to redirect affected employees back towards peak performance.

Understanding Disengagement in the Workplace

A disengaged team can take on many forms. Employees may seem bored, uninterested or frustrated. They may start slacking off on projects and missing deadlines. Communication flows decrease and employees start working more independently.

It can also look like decreased creativity and innovation from team members. As team members become disengaged, they are less motivated to think outside the box and come up with new ideas. They may start just doing the bare minimum required to complete tasks.

Signs of Team Disengagement

So how do you know that a poor performance is due to disengagement rather than other issues? Here are some common signs to look out for:

• Decreased productivity and efficiency. Team members take longer to complete tasks and produce fewer results.
• Increased absenteeism and tardiness. Disengaged employees start missing days of work more frequently.
• Lack of motivation and enthusiasm. Team members seem unhappy, frustrated and uninterested in their work.
• Fewer ideas and suggestions. Creativity and innovation decrease as employees lose motivation.
• Poor communication. Team members communicate less with each other and with management.

If you notice several of these signs within your team, it's likely disengagement is playing a role. Sadly, when neglected, these signs can turn into full-blown employee turnover.

How Does it Affect Productivity?

An organization works when its employees work together as a cohesive unit, motivated to achieve common goals. When team members become disengaged, productivity suffers in several ways:

Lost productivity

Disengaged employees are less efficient and effective in their work. They take longer to complete tasks, make more mistakes and miss deadlines. This directly impacts an organization's ability to hit targets and goals.

Diminished innovation and creativity

As motivation decreases, so does employees' willingness to think outside the box and come up with new ideas. Teams become stuck in a rut, unable to innovate and adapt to change.

Interpersonal issues

When team members are disengaged, communication suffers. Employees are less willing to collaborate and help each other, causing interpersonal tensions that further decrease productivity.

Higher turnover

When left unchecked, disengagement can lead to employees quitting their jobs. This constant churn is disruptive and expensive for organizations.

Getting Employees Back on Track

To reverse disengagement within your team and boost productivity, focus on:

• Encouraging participation: Give employees opportunities to contribute and have input. Ask for their ideas, suggestions and feedback regularly. When they feel involved and that their voices matter, motivation increases.
• Providing recognition: Make sure to acknowledge employees' accomplishments, no matter how small. Praise them publicly and reward good work whenever possible. People want to feel valued and appreciated for their efforts.
• Offering development opportunities: Provide training, mentoring and growth prospects so employees feel they are continually learning and developing new skills. This keeps work interesting and fresh.
• Setting challenges: Give team members opportunities to take on new responsibilities, projects or initiatives that stretch their skills. Achieving meaningful challenges can re-energize motivation.
• Improving work processes: Review your workflows, systems and procedures to remove inefficiencies that frustrate employees. Making work easier and more streamlined can boost enthusiasm.

Online team training programs are a great place to start. They equip employees with the skills and mindsets to re-engage with their work and each other.

Online Teams Training to Boost Engagement

Online training programs for Teams can play a vital role in reversing employee disengagement and promoting better teamwork. By teaching employees how to use Microsoft Teams effectively, your team can reap a lot of benefits, such as:

Enhancing Communication

Effective use of Microsoft Teams can greatly improve communication within a dispersed team. Team members can use the chat function to connect instantly and ask questions of their colleagues. They can also create channels for different topics or projects, allowing everyone to stay up to date on discussions and announcements.

Teams also integrates with apps like SharePoint in Microsoft 365, enabling team members to share and collaborate on documents in real time. This prevents miscommunications and confusion that can arise from emailing document attachments back and forth. Employees can see edits being made live and ask clarifying questions directly to the author through Teams.

Promoting Collaboration Through Teams Features

Teams’ features like channels, meetings, and shared files enable collaboration within a team. Channels allow team members to organize conversations by topic or project. Team members can collaborate on shared files like Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations within Teams.

This allows for real-time collaboration where team members can view edits being made live and provide immediate feedback. Shared files in Teams are stored within Microsoft 365 so team members have access to the latest version from any device.

Keeping Remote and Hybrid Teams Engaged

Online Teams training is especially valuable for remote and hybrid teams who rarely interact in person. For these teams, tools like Microsoft Teams become the main avenue for communication, collaboration and building relationships. Without proper training on how to use these tools effectively, remote and hybrid team members can become disengaged and isolated from their colleagues.

For example, many remote workers miss out on the informal chats around the water cooler that help build camaraderie and trust among colleagues. Without proper training on using tools like Teams to replicate these types of casual interactions, remote workers can feel left out.

Personalizing Training for Specific Team Needs

Depending on your team's particular needs and working styles, the training should be customized to cover the features and functionalities that will benefit the team the most. Take some time to observe how the different members of the team currently communicate and collaborate. Then identify which tools and features within Microsoft Teams can help improve and streamline these existing workflows.

For example, if team members tend to send numerous individual emails about the same topic, training on using channels within Teams could help consolidate these conversations in a single place. Or if remote workers report feeling isolated, training on using the chat and audio/video calling features could help team members connect in a more personal way.

Tailoring the training content to your team's specific pain points and opportunities for improvement will ensure team members actually adopt and utilize the new tools and workflows after the training. Consider doing follow-up training and sending helpful tip sheets to reinforce key learnings and troubleshoot any issues team members have along the way.

How to Get Started

Familiarizing your team with the various features of Teams is crucial for effective communication, collaboration and engagement. Here are the steps to ensure your organization is using the right strategies for Teams training:

• Identify the Team's features that will be most useful based on your team's specific needs. Tailor your training content accordingly.
• Start by teaching the basic features like channels, chats, calls and file sharing. These lay the foundation for more advanced use.
• Demonstrate how features can improve existing workflows. For remote teams, show how chats and calls can recreate water cooler conversations.
• Assign experts as "feature champions" to provide ongoing guidance and troubleshooting support.
• Send helpful tip sheets and conduct refresher training periodically to reinforce key learnings.

Moreover, finding the best training provider should be part of your plan. Organizing a comprehensive training program that covers all the basics and highlights specific use cases for your team will ensure your team members get the most value out of Microsoft Teams.

Intellezy is an award-winning provider of video Teams training programs. Our team of experts designs engaging training modules that cover all the fundamentals of Teams in an easy-to-understand manner. Our videos are available in 20 languages as well to ensure that no matter the team members' native tongue, they can access the training.

Time to Re-Engage Your Disengaged Employees

As you can see, it's apparent that a disengaged team is a poor-performing team. But by implementing the right strategies for online Teams training, you can effectively reengage your employees and boost team motivation.

Don't wait till your team gets to that point of disengagement. Take action now and start building a culture of effective communication, collaboration and motivation through proper training. Request a free trial today and see how we can help improve engagement across your remote and hybrid teams.