ALGI is an auditing firm that conducts social compliance audits worldwide using a team-based approach. Team leaders are responsible for guiding audit teams and ensuring tasks are completed effectively. They establish a vision, share it with team members, and coordinate to balance interests. Using teamwork, ALGI is able to complete audits on time, maximize strengths and reduce weaknesses, and build a better workplace environment.

1. The role of a Team Leader in ALGI- using Teamwork to
build a better workplace
MD ATAUR RAHMAN
NORTH SOUTH UNIVERSITY, DHAKA, BANGLADESH
Literature Review
ALGI’s work, as a responsible third party auditing firm, is dedicated to evaluating
production sites against social compliance benchmarks and facilitating communication,
to bring buyers, producers, workers and consumers closer together. ALGI, founded in
1994, is dedicated to providing its customers with the most accurate information
regarding social compliance on the supply chain. We sponsor sustainability through the
promotion of ethical social practices. Our best contribution is to empower our
stakeholders to improve working conditions, by deeply understanding sustainability and
implementing responsible management systems. Headquartered in the United States,
ALGI conducts social responsibility assessments worldwide, provides risk management
tools and encourages continual improvement. Our Mission is to provide supply chain
management solutions to our global clients, thereby measurably enhancing their ability
to build value, manage risk and strengthen sustainability within their organizations.
ALGI performs social audits, offers social compliance certifications, and provides tools
for continual improvement. We are committed to impartiality in our management
system certification activities., understanding the importance of impartiality in carrying
out our management system certification activities, managing conflict of interest and
ensuring the objectivity of our management system certification activities.,
Executive Briefing
ALGI conducts different types of social compliance audit where the main activities are
done by the Team leader as a Lead Auditor & Teamwork with Auditors. A team leader

2. or A Lead Auditor is someone who provides direction, instructions and guidance to a
group of individuals, who can also be known as a part of the team, for the purpose of
achieving a certain goal which is to conducted the Audit and up to submitting the report
depending on the scheme/ Code of Conduct of the supplier. An effective Team leader
will know his/her team members strengths, weaknesses and motivations. Team Work is
“The process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal
or a group whose individual efforts result in performance that is greater than the sum of
individual inputs”. Teamwork is often a crucial part of a business, as it is often necessary
for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance. Teamwork
means that people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing
constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals.
During Audit time, ALGI’s Team leader’s characteristics are to establish a clear vision,
to share that vision with the team members so that they will follow willingly and provide
the information, knowledge and methods to realize that vision, and lastly to Coordinate
and balance the conflicting interests of all members and the interested parties. A Team
leader steps up in times of crisis, and is able to think and act creatively in difficult
situations. The act of inspiring sub ordinates is to perform and engage in achieving a
goal. Team work involves some characteristics and those are: teamwork multiplies
success, teamwork makes the job easier, teamwork maximizes strengths and reduces
weaknesses, and teamwork makes work fun. All of those are to be done in favor of
building a better work place and successfully finishing the Audit.
Management Tools
The main task of ALGI is to complete the assigned Audit, given by the supplier following
few Steps like, Pre- Audit which is to Gathering information of the Company where the
Audit would be conducted, selecting the Team Leader and he would choose his Team,
then make the schedule for that Audit. Audit time- Team Leader would discuss with his
Team who would do which part of the Audit procedure that are Documentation
checking, Facility visit, Worker interview, management interview and others. Final step
is to submit the report- Team leader would make the Full report of the Audited company
in suppliers format which would be checked by the QC team and submit that to the

3. client. For doing the above tasks, ALGI Teams in the workplace often meet to discuss
how to solve company issues, when a team works well together, it allows staff members
to feel more comfortable in offering suggestions. Team members become accustomed to
processing brainstorming information and the company benefits from the variety of
suggestions that come from effective teams. There are challenges each day in any
workplace, and a strong team environment can act as a support mechanism for staff
members. Work group members can help each other improve their performance and
work together toward improving their professional development. Team members also
come to rely on each other and trust each other and these bonds can be important when
the team faces a particularly difficult challenge or if the group is forced to deal with the
loss of a team member while still trying to maintain productivity. Leadership is a
process of social influence which maximizes efforts of others towards achievement of a
goal”.
Technology: Teamwork and Team Leader
ALGI’s strategies include advanced auditor trainings and assessments and continual
internal audits of all elements of ALGI's management system. With this we determine
the continuing suitability of the processes and its effectiveness in meeting the
requirements of our Service Policy and external requirements. Regarding quality
control, all reports are reviewed by the Quality Assurance Division upon completion of
each assessment. They are thoroughly checked for any possible errors, omissions, etc. If
necessary, in conjunction with the auditing team, correction may be made prior
submission to the client.
In order to ensure independent and impartial audits and reports, the services provided
by ALGI are overseen by an Impartiality Committee. This Committee consists of an
ALGI management representative and regional expertise from the private sector as well
as NGO's, to ensure that services are provided in a professional, consistent and relevant
manner for our clients and the broader stakeholder community.
Team Work is always better to get the big task done within a short period of time and
the Team Leader always try to guide the whole Team. As, researchers have confirmed
that performing teamwork generally works better when members of the team have prior

4. experience working together due to enhanced coordination and communication. This
appears partly due to a chemical called serotonin (5-Hydroxytryptamine (5-HT)) which
helps an individual to communicate better and think more positively. Serotonin is
produced when an individual is in a situation where he/she is in comfortable
environment. Team leader always guide the whole team to work together and to satisfy
the need of each members by helping, motivating, solving problems, developing
relations with each another and to fight for a healthy competition.
Inbound and Outbound
ALGI is a Social Compliance Audit Firm, the total responsibilities of the firm is to
conduct Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in multi nations. It mainly focuses on the
export oriented industries to check their legal and ethical behavior towards their
workers and employees. A team from a region conduct an audit to a facility where a
team leader lead the whole audit and coordinate with his/her Team members to finish
the job perfectly. From ALGI Bangladesh, we cover south Asian region and the countries
are India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Laos. Our Audit group directly
conducts those audits.
Currently in ALGI Bangladesh, We have 20 Auditors and 10 Lead Auditors to conduct
audits in different areas of Bangladesh along with the above countries and the whole
procedure has done by a team effort.
ALGI is centrally controlled from our USA Headquarters in Florida and monitored
through managements systems implemented globally. Our offices are located in
strategic areas around the world: China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Egypt, USA and
Peru, enabling us to provide rapid and cost-effective services.
We provide services in the following areas, BSCI for whole European clients, Sedex for
UK based clients, WRAP & C-TPAT for USA & Canada based clients and we also do
some buyers Code of Conduct Audits based on their demands and most of the clients
from Germany who worked for Renowned brands of entire Europe.

5. Legal Trends
Team leaders serve various roles in an organization. Their job is to get tasks done by
using all of the resources available to them, including other employees or team
members. Some important roles a team leader must often take on: develop a strategy
the team will use to reach its goal, provide any training that team members need,
communicate clear instructions to team members, listen to team members' feedback,
monitor team members' participation to ensure the training they providing is being put
into use, and also to see if any additional training is needed, manage the flow of day-to-
day operations.
The legal rights of achieving the service permission and outbound countries
authorization year to run the ALGI are given bellow in a chart-
Future Focus
Teamwork may have an "unintended effect of fermenting hostility toward the
managerial goal of making the teams fully self-managing." In one case study of
a clothing manufacturer, a switch from production line work (with bonuses given for
individual performance) to teamwork (in which an individual's earnings depended on
team performance) caused workers to resent having to monitor each other.
There is a potential of "social loafing" (i.e., an individual's doing less work in a team
than what he/she would normally do working individually). In order to minimize social
loafing, management can make individual performance more visible while in a team
setting. This can be done by forming smaller teams, specializing specific tasks to certain

6. individuals, and measuring individual performance. Social loafing can also be reduced
by increasing employee motivation, by selecting employees who have previously shown
themselves to be motivated, and increasing job enrichment. In experiments conducted
in the 1990s, an increase in group cohesiveness appeared to decrease social loafing.
Demerits and Solution
Now we have found some outcomes of our Group Leading and group works like-
i) Quality control staff is finding fewer mistakes in auditing process and report writing,
ii) 5-7% of our report delivery timing is still 2-3 days late of the submission timing,
iii) Work load is little much for each and every employees,
iv) Some mismanagement of coordinating is also found.
We are trying to solve the above problems by the internal auditing of ALGI and already
made the corrective action to solve those problems. ALGI recognizes its talents and
strives to strengthen staff retention through implementation of best practices within our
own organization. Our business model and profit sharing distribution program is aimed
at cultivating enhanced integrity, loyalty, job satisfaction and empowerment by
incentivizing a sense of ownership in each one of our team members.
Management and auditors from different backgrounds are recruited under the ideal of
having team members with diverse, yet complimentary skills. Currently we have in our
staff attorneys, sociologists, linguists, accountants, former government employees,
business degree graduates, engineers and agriculture specialists.
Our personnel are provided with continuous training and education, which we know is
fundamental to keeping up-to-date with the latest techniques, trends, and current
issues.

7. References:
 Stephen P. Robbins, Timothy A. Judge & Neharika Vohra - Pearson’s
Organizational Behavior, 15/E
 http://algi.net/who-we-are
 smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-leadership-teamwork-10193.html
 www.businessdictionary.com/definition/leadership.html
 www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/04/09/what-is-leadership/
 smallbusiness.chron.com/describe-importance-teamwork-17901.html
 businesscasestudies.co.uk/cmi/using-teamwork-to-build-a-better-
workplace/the-role-of-a-team-leader.html#axzz3jLd0v32d
 idl.isead.edu.es:8080/jspui/bitstream/10954/1789/1/CS_02_2011.pdf
 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork