Working in diverse teams

Why then are employers still citing this as one of the skills most job applicants lack? Being able to understand and articulate your experience of working in teams is crucial in terms of job seeking and job progression. We all know this, yet many of us are guilty of being able to say little more than ‘I work well as part of a team or can motivate to work alone’ when applying for jobs. Does this sound like you?

This course will help you consider your experience of working in teams and the different roles you play in them. It will increase your confidence in marketing this key skill to employers as well improve your ability to perform well in teams you are currently part of.

The world we live and work in continues to change at a great rate and this impacts on the teams we work in today. In this course you will consider why diversity has increased and consider both the benefits and difficulties of working in teams of an increasingly diverse character and teams that operate at a distance.

Enrolling on this course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they are a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your career, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development.

Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn Statement of Participation - which also displays your Open University badge.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey . Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our optional end-of-course survey . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

Anyone wishing to provide evidence of their enrolment on this course is able to do so by sharing their Activity Record on their OpenLearn Profile, which is available before completion of the course and earning of the Statement of Participation.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• Understand why employers value working in teams as a key employability skill
• Identify different team roles and articulate experiences of working in teams to employers with more confidence
• Identify different stages of team development and understand why this helps team performance
• Understand the benefits of increased team diversity and some of the issues this brings to team performance
• Consider how a virtual team differs from other teams and the challenges of working in virtual teams.