Groups

A key part of managing staff is to recognise that sometimes employees act collectively and a group dynamic must be taken into consideration. This page looks at what constitutes a group and some of the implications of group behaviour. 

What is a group?

A group is any collection of individuals who perceive themselves to be a group.

 Groups usually have the following characteristics:

There tend to be two main types of group:

• informal groups - these are groups that individuals voluntarily join in order to meet their social or security need - for example employees who sit together to chat at lunch time.
• formal groups - these are groups that are created to carry out specific tasks, communicate and solve problems. Membership is normally determined by the organisation - for example, a project team put together to deliver a new payroll system.

Advantages and disadvantages of groups

Groups usually have several key benefits over individuals. These include:

• mixture of skills and abilities in the group, often improving the number of creative ideas and appreciation of different points of view. This can also aid problem solving.
• synergy - the pooling of ideas and energy within a group may mean greater efficiency than if the workers were acting as individuals.
• increased flexibility, as the team can easily be configured in different ways, with different people taking over different tasks.
• better control, with opportunities for individual performance to be reviewed and controlled by other group members.
• increased motivation, if workers' social needs are being met within their group.
• improved communication between workers.
• healthy competition within the organisation - by splitting the organisation into groups, some rivalry may be created which may help boost organisational performance.

However, placing employees into different groups is not always more efficient. There are a number of problems inherent in group work. These include:

• group decision-making can be slow as discussion is needed to come to any agreement.
• groups tend to produce decisions that are compromises, rather than the decisions that are most beneficial to the organisation.
• group pressure to conform means that members of a close-knit team agree to decisions that they know are wrong because other group members support them and they wish to fit in.
• groups have a lack of individual responsibility which means responsibility for decisions is shared by the entire group. Groups may therefore make riskier decisions that individuals.
• groups risk having too much social interaction - meetings may become social events with little practical work undertaken.
• groups may cause increased competition and conflict which may be destructive. Managers

will need to monitor groups carefully to ensure that corrective action is taken if these problems are noted.

Group behaviour

When dealing with other individuals within a group, people can adopt different types of behaviour. 

Rating :	Ratings & Comments  (Click the stars to rate the page)

Tags:	group;groups;formal groups;informal groups