Unit 9 – Team Building
In my report. I will be explaining/analysing and justifying team building within my chosen business.
Learning Aim, A – examine the benefits of teams in a business
The difference between a group and a team
A team is a collection of people who share a common team purpose and several challenging goals, without
purpose and goals a team cannon be formed. Whereas a group is a collection of people or objects that are
gathered, categorized, or grouped together.
Types and purposes of Sainsbury’s teams
Who is Sainsbury?
Founded by John James and Mary Ann Sainsbury in 1869. With a market share of 15.3% recorded on May
2021, Sainsbury’s was currently the UK second largest PLC chain of retail food and clothing supermarkets
with over 600 supermarkets and 800 convenience stores, they operate in the retail, grocery store and
convenience store market. They sell a variety of tangible items such as: food, toys, electronics, medications
and more. Additionally, they sell intangible services such as insurance which can consist of car, pet, life,
travel, home and over 50s Life insurance. The previous Sainsbury CEO David Sainsbury, who started in
1992 and retired in 1998 had a net worth of $1.1 Billion.
Different types of team structure
The different types of team’s structure that I will discussing are Formal, Informal, Small, Large, Parallel,
Networked teams, Horizontal and Vertical teams.
Formal and Informal Teams
,Different businesses will have different infrastructures for their team to work in the most effective way,
these are called formal and informal teams. Formal teams are formed on purpose and are tasked with
completing specified objectives to assist the business or a group in achieving their goals. For example,
command groups which is a group of individuals who report directly to the manager, task forces who job is
to protect and guard their appointed country, and committee that works to perfect their nation by amending
the bill or resolution. On the other hand, Informal teams are made up of people who establish them on their
own. Unlike formal teams, it is established by employees or people, and it is not overseen. For example,
when a team of women with families come together for a common interest.
Large and Small Teams
The efficiency of a team can be determined by the number of people on it. The larger the team, the more
work that can be done, resulting in stronger social loafing and less stress on the individual, leading to an
increase in work effort and performance. However, because more workers would be needed to attain this
objective, the company's costs will rise on employing. Furthermore, the addition of more employees will
encourage employee idleness since they would rely on others to take up personalized tasks. Smaller
teams provide more responsibility, autonomy, and flexibility in terms of planning and proposal
improvements. They can encourage team members to have more trust in one another and less fear of
failure, they also have the tendency to outperform bigger teams.
Permanent and Temporary
A team can be either permanent and temporary depending on how essential that group is to the
business, and the responsibilities and duties they execute within the organisation. A permanent team is a
team that perform consistently, and does not dismantle after completing a task. Examples of this will be the
Finance and Marketing teams, as they are pivotal departments that helps the company progress in their
specified market. Temporary teams are the opposite to this as once they accomplish their short-term task,
which can be assisting the permanent team, they lose their importance, resulting to the disassembling. For
example, a paramedic going to an incident and dealing with a patient. Or a group volunteer, volunteering to
work at a charity shop.
Parallel and Networked teams
Remote and virtual teams is a group of people who interact through electronic communications. Members
of a virtual team are often located in different geographical regions; this is done as face-to-face
commutation can be difficult to conduct. For example, networked teams are groups of individuals with
expert knowledge on a certain topic who come together to achieve a common goal. And parallel teams
which are made up of individuals who are all a part of the same company.
Horizontal and Vertical teams
, Horizontal teams are groupings of people with various functional specialties who work together to achieve
a shared goal. Everyone is equal in a horizontal team, yet each member has various tasks and duties to
accomplish. For example, the finance and marketing teams collaborating on a project, with the finance
team focusing on the project's budget and cost and the marketing team focusing on advertising and market
research. Because there is no fixed hierarchy in this organisation, communication between team members
is free. A vertical team, on the other hand, is a group in which the leader, such as a manager, utilises an
authoritarian management style to transfer authority, as they delegate directions, priorities and
responsibilities to the team to meet their goals
Different types of teams within Sainsbury
As Sainsbury's is a unicorn business (with a net worth over $9.5 billion), their teams will be large because
they have the capital to hire many diverse talented workers for certain jobs in many of their branches,
depending on the level of skills and experience required for that job placement. For example, the customer
service team would need good interpersonal skills to effectively communicate with the customers.
Sainsbury can employ many employees for their customer service team with this talent as they collaborate
closely with customers, who are pivotal for any business success.
The Finance Team
Sainsbury have formal teams within their organization as each individual department has specified aims
and objectives, they must achieve for the company to exceed. For example, The Finance Team job is to
keep track of money coming in and out of the business. This may be accomplished by allocating cash to
support their plan, such as growing internationally or diversifying into a new market. This department is
large as financing is an important aspect of a business success as if a company cannot budget
appropriately, then their profit margin will decrease.
Human Resources team
The HR team (Human Resources) who deals with recruiting, training, supervising, and maintaining the
wellbeing of the employees from the moment they have been recruited till the day they leave the business.
This department is large as Sainsbury may need to recruit for a variety of reasons, such as increasing the
work force as it can spread out the responsibility of work throughout the force or gaining new and unique
skilled workers as it can give them a competitive advantage in the market. HR is pivotal for Sainsbury
success as their recruitment process can be effective or ineffective, this refers to the positive or negative
impact that the candidate can have on the business. The impact of Effective recruitment on Sainsbury is
that the applicant can fit into the culture of the business, so they can quickly have a positive impact on
Sainsbury because they are aware of what is expected of them. Whereas the impact of Ineffective
recruitment on Sainsbury is that it is a waste opportunity cost that could have benefitted Sainsbury as no
amount of training, encouragement or even discipline can improve a difficult employee.
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