TEAMWORK AT SAINSBURY

Teamwork at Sainsbury

Teamwork at Sainsbury

Introduction

The world in which we live today is moving at a fast and rapid pace. In this fast and rapidly changing world organizations and brands compete fiercely and the existence of the competition is of cut throat level. In this extremely competitive world there are a number of factors that the organizations and brands adopt so that they can retain their organisational positions. Teamwork effectiveness is one of the major factors for accomplishment of this task.

Teamwork effectiveness brings in a large number of benefits for organisation, the teams and the team members as well. The way people perform their tasks in the team is just as significant as their individual performances, including their capacity to not only perform in their teams but to maintain good inter team relationships. Working in team improves the organisational performance as it improves the employees' morale. At present, we can observe flatter and linear structures in several organizations. The organisations have been stripping out the management layers which have led to the situation where employees are more willing to assume additional responsibilities and accountability, which is achieved by effective teamwork (Fernie & Sparks, 2009, pp. 30-32).

In this scenario, Sainsbury's is not an exceptional case, on one hand, they have competitors like Tesco, ASDA, and Morrison's etc., and on the other hand, in times of recession it is hard to maintain the profitability of the company and retain their valuable customers at the same time. In this paper we will discuss how the strengths and weaknesses of effective team work have achieved effective organisational performance of Sainsbury Plc. This paper will discuss the limitation san benefits of teamwork with respect to organisational performance of Sainsbury.

Discussion

Organisational Background

Sainsbury has more than 153,00 employees, in which 68% employees are part-time and 32% are full time employees. 60% of the organisational workforce is comprised of women, which shows the organisation follows equal employment opportunity practices. For the achievement of the organisational mission, Sainsbury serves a customer base containing 14 million customers in a week. The organisation owns 727 stores throughout United Kingdom.

Sainsbury believes that the quality of service determined the number of units of sales. Although organisation encourage team work, but it values individual responsibility in delivery of teamwork. Every team member is responsible to achieve his/her individual targets to meet service standards. In addition, the organisation values every team member (Newman & Cullen, 2002, pp. 398-400).

Strengths of Team work

Internal Control

The team work fosters internal control over business processes. At Sainsbury, the board is responsible to maintain internal controls and review of effectiveness of this control. It is considered that internal control in the organisation is effective to manage business operations instead of elimination of risk of failures. The board's internal control is helpful in the achievement of business objectives and it provides the assurance against loss of material. The board determines the financial, compliance, operational and risk management (Wilson, et al., 2012, pp. n.d).

Better Organisational Results

Effective teamwork generates better organisational ...