You cannot avoid the issue any longer: your team is broken. The fact that Rupinder is not speaking to Jasmine is the least of your problems – productivity has gone out of the window, alienation hangs thick in the air and at this rate, you are going to be the last person left in the office to turn out the lights. So what are you going to do now?

Simple, let your staff go down to the pub – or perhaps go-karting, the de-facto team building response of UK companies. Competitive racing will surely knit the IT organisation back together.

But experts in people motivation warn that if drinking and go-karting are your only tools for repairing a malfunctioning team, you may be in for some problems.

‘If the team is broken because there has been an awful lot of organisational change, or the members do not know what it is they are supposed to be doing, fun activities are just going to be a superficial and temporary fix,’ says Chris Howe, a senior member of human resources (HR) consultancy ChangeMaker.

‘You are more likely to create resentment about being dragged off needlessly than get anything moving again.’

Claire Ketteridge, an independent HR specialist, says that it might not work if you take people off mountain climbing in a period of change management. ‘You will only cause resentment,’ she says.

Resentment, when you are paying them, what is wrong with your employees? Howe says remembering the context of the team and how it is working is vital.

‘If the team is broken, but that is not getting in the way of any deliverables, why spend a penny on fixing it? What would be the return on investment here?’ he asks.

IT should, however, deliver value to the business, says John Whiting, UK managing director of recruitment firm Harvey Nash’s technology division. ‘If you are getting business value, then the team being dysfunctional is irrelevant,’ he says.

‘But of course, more often than not problems such as skills gaps or poor communication do interfere – and that is when intervention from the managerial level has to happen.’

To make such intervention effective, the manager has to understand the underlying problems, says Rob Chapman, managing director of training firm The Training Camp.

‘OK, the team is broken – but why?’ he says. ‘Is it a lack of key skills? Is there a problem with the processes of getting the work done? Is there a lack of team spirit? Having a great bloke on board who cannot do the job is as bad as having a terrible person no one likes who can do the job.’

For Chapman, along with many other experienced managers, the number-one job has to be to set clear definitions about what your people are supposed to be doing.

‘If you give people responsibility and empower them, they will achieve so much more,’ he says.

Mike Amos, head of coaching at HR adviser Chiumento, says most team breakdowns are due to a lack of clarity in members’ minds – and can be attributed to problems with purpose and direction. ‘If your people are not clear about what it is they are doing and why, you are in trouble,’ he says.

Such issues are particularly true in IT, Amos believes. ‘This department interfaces with so many other parts that it is difficult sometimes to know what is expected,’ he says. ‘The team must know – or be told – what the business expects so they can coalesce around owning that knowledge, not just around technical solutions.’

Sandra Buckley, a consultant with HR firm Berkshire Consultancy, says IT is often looked down on. ‘IT staff tend to feel a bit put-upon and only brought in to firefight,’ she says. ‘Technical people can also be a bit impatient. You have to be sensitive to this as a manager and learn how to work with the culture.’