Question

) How does Whole Foods promote team cohesiveness? What else can it do?   

Answer 1

Whole food has a unique approach to employee engagement. They motivate individuals to make their own decisions, choose the tasks or the department they best believe would fit their skills or style, and therefore, enable them to join and become part of another team that they believe is more inclined with their goals. They practice this as a cultural value, where teamwork, training, and development is highly nuanced and based on the team's approach to complete their tasks. The consideration for task-specific training is also present but is not pushed on the team members, the team is allowed to make its own decisions and collectively agree to the factors they believe are lacking. This is essentially empowering for the members because everybody’s opinions are heard and respected. As a result, a team that comes together in this manner is often highly synergistic, the members know their roles and what is expected of them and have a clear sense of structure and function, that translates to effective collaboration and accountability, all of which are factors of a strong and national team.

While this method of engagement and empowerment is highly motivational for the employees, the consideration for specific development might further improve upon this drive. The company can include task-specific payouts and bonuses tied to the performance of the group to provide another source of external motivation. It is inevitable that some individuals will slack, no matter the effectiveness of the entire team and thus, the company can target the weakest link with an external motivation to further improve their drive and engagement into the task at hand.

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