Abolishing supervisory jobs may also result in the loss of a significant body of expertise. This is a difficult situation for the ATO, which while championing the concept of the 'learning organisation', is likely to lose a range of scheduling, work flow management, people management and training skills. In a low promotion environment in which there is limited access to higher duties the maintenance and development of such skills is particularly problematic. There is often not a great deal of commonality between the procedures and paperwork of different sections. When these areas are combined, as has happened in the ATO, the ability of team members to develop competencies across revenue lines is hampered by there being different forms and different procedures for even simple tasks such as registering a tax payer.
Participation is a key element in the introduction of teams.
However it should not be assumed that everyone is able to participate equally. There may be cultural, gender and physical attributes which make participation difficult for some team members. Teams have become a major staff issue, and a focus of job and work design. The development of effective teams is a corporate objective with an expectation, at least from senior management, that teams will result in increases in productivity as well as the achievement of certain human resource management objectives. The team would also have a client focus, and involve a reduced and changed role for management.