Groups aren’t the answer to every kind of work. In fact, there are many tasks at which one person can outperform a group, for instance, where talent or experience is the critical performance factor. Who ever heard of group writing a novel, for example?

But groups can be particularly good at combining talents and providing creative solutions to unfamiliar problems. Whenever there is no established approach or solution to a task, a well-developed group’s wider range of knowledge, skills, and behaviors provides a distinct advantage over individuals working separately.

How Groups Help Organizations

The main advantage of group-based work to organizations is that it more fully utilizes the workforce. Most people tend to be less productive when working alone. Being in a group, whether it’s a loose or structured one, seems to be motivating in and of itself. Even people in jobs with high autonomy (e.g., teachers) are more effective in schools that have good staff cohesion. And when it comes to ethics, research shows that the collective self-monitoring in groups makes them a safer place to delegate responsibility than to individuals.

Even when one person could make a decision or solve a problem alone, there often are benefits to involving a group:

• Group participation reduces implementation time and energy.
• Group members usually understand implementation factors better than a single decision-maker or higher-up can.
• Groups that understand the organization’s strategy can solve work-related problems on the fly, saving time and money.

How Groups Help Individuals

Most people consider work-group membership an incentive. That’s because it lets them achieve things no one person could do alone. Healthy groups enhance self-esteem, since responsibility and accountability are shared, which also puts less stress on each individual.

All in all, group relationships satisfy people’s innate social and emotional needs, such as for belonging, recognition, contribution, and influence. Studies show that when work groups are constantly broken up, work-life satisfaction falls and group turnover rises. On the flip side, when time is taken to form, develop, and maintain working groups, job satisfaction, productivity, and retention all improve.