Learn about the benefits of taking part in World Day for Safety and Health at Work.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) World Day for Safety and Health at Work will take place on 28 April. This day aims to create and promote a culture of occupational health and safety at work, to achieve more pleasant, safer, optimised processes, relationships and working environments.

So, for 2017, INDITEX would like to stress the importance of teamwork to improving our work conditions in the labour area and achieve our occupational health and safety targets in our routine work. That’s why, this year’s motto is:

“Health and safety is teamwork”

We would also like to remind you of the many health benefits of working together to achieve a common goal. As children, we learn to play in groups and, through this play, we learn values such as solidarity, respect, and tolerance. As we grow up, we take these skills to school, and later, to the workplace.

Working as part of a group is one of the most important challenges in a company. Not only because it improves the atmosphere at work, through trust, productivity, and a feeling of belonging, but also because it enables us to grow and develop as people.

5 Health benefits of teamwork

1. It promotes learning

When two or more people work together, creativity flows. This shower of common ideas avoids egocentric opinions and allows more different ideas to appear. What’s more, mixing and combining different points of view helps people to share knowledge, and stimulates individual and group learning.

2. Better results

When we put our heads together and coordinate our ideas, we find more effective solutions to numerous problems. When playing music as a group, for example, the drums, guitar, and base play together to the same rhythm, to form a melody. The resulting music would not exist without the contributions of all three, and a sole instrument would be unable to compose the final melody. This shows that when we all pull together, we are all stronger, get things done more quickly and the results are more efficient.

3. Stress relief

Often, when the job is assigned to a single person, the workload and burden are greater, increasing the feeling of stress. Working with another person, sharing tasks, and even delegating certain tasks, reduces anxiety, and makes us feel calmer.

4. Growing confidence

When we work in a team, with support from our colleagues: everyone can concentrate on what they do best, and we can allocate tasks in areas where we do not have so much expertise to others. When we work together, we achieve better quality results and our self-confidence and trust in the group members improves.

5. More job satisfaction

Humans are social creatures, so the feeling of being part of a group (family, friends, and work colleagues) makes us feel more satisfied with life. When we are part of a team, we establish interpersonal relationships, which promotes commitment to the company and causes us to redouble our efforts to achieve a common goal. We give our best, and the effort has meaning for us.

As you can see, when we work as a team, we all win. The best thing you can do is abandon individualism and give an opportunity to group power. Your daily work will improve, and so will your wellbeing.

“We can each do a little, but together we can do a lot”.

This post is also available in: Italian