Self-managed work teams represent the highest level of staff member empowerment and usually consist of a group of staff members who have responsibility for managing themselves and the work they do with minimal or no direct supervision. Team members handle job assignments, plan and schedule work, make decisions and act on problems.

Self-managed teams that are very self directed often may recruit, hire, evaluate, and terminate staff members, as necessary, They can even be capable of developing, monitoring and altering their own budgets and design cost effective proposals after appropriate study and evaluation. They can further be found to involve themselves in strategic planning measures and productivity improvement efforts.

            The five key components to self-managed teams are: 

Many managers may be threatened and afraid of the idea of self-management. If this becomes an issue in your organization, then another option is to go with a participative, but more traditional approach.

However, for managers wishing to try out something that has the potential for dramatic leaps in productivity and morale, self-management is a concept that is likely to lead to entirely new assumptions about what people are capable of doing and achieving. 

Maintaining the Team

            One way to keep team members happy is to make sure that teams have adequate opportunities to build relationships and adequate time and support to work on team tasks. In other words, there must be a balance of time spent on team tasks and team maintenance. Below are listed some suggestions to satisfy the needs in order to maintain the team.

Success Ingredients for Self-Managed Teams

            Certain ingredients will help facilitate the success of self-managed teams. Initially, they must begin with a fundamental philosophy or belief in human beings is necessary. This philosophy entails being optimistic about the capacity of staff members to respond to forming self-managed teams as a challenge and opportunity!

            Teams will also require a change in the management information system of the organization. The increase in staff member responsibility and empowerment require a great deal of information for teams to make effective decisions and to perform successfully. In fact, teams will demand information systems and design their own if they need to.

            Continuous training is required. The training requirements for teams cannot be overestimated. Moreover, the training must include technical and task training as well as interpersonal and social training.

             Outside facilitation may be extremely helpful. Often, this outside resource can provide an object viewpoint that will help to overcome the bump and challenges that invariably arise.