Workplace collaboration can be tricky business. Employees and workplaces that are spread over diverse geographical locations or even in the same location can suffer from siloed ways of working without the right tools. Technology is a great enabler of collaboration, in both an output and communication way.
If you are keen to understand how using tech can better develop workplace collaboration in your business, consider these potential solutions.
One-stop shop.
Arguably one of the biggest challenges for any business is managing multiple vendors who all claim to solve the big problem of collaboration. Instead of implementing ten different solutions to solve the challenges in your business, implement one unified communications solution. Encompassing all of the tools and systems your staff need to collaborate, including video conferencing and chat, unified systems make collaboration easier than working alone. Interacting with one enterprise-wide solution means staff can focus time and effort on outcomes, not learning how to use a system or finding a workaround to the ones they don’t like.
Introduce some fun.
Collaboration shouldn’t be a chore, it should be something that staff enjoy. Implementing a solution that offers a way for staff to interact with some sense of fun should be very high on the priority list. Technologies that offer features which encourage fun in collaboration are the type of solution that staff are more likely to adopt. Think GIF’s and emojis, these are the kinds of unique functions that staff will interact with and encourage more fun collaboration across functional business areas.
Align with current tools.
Empathy is a great way to design and decide upon the tech solution that will help drive better collaboration in your workplace. Before deciding on a solution, check what platforms and devices it can integrate with. If employees can’t use the platform on their preferred device that they use every day, you will find it difficult to get adoption more broadly. Integration is also very important for traceability and accountability. Collaboration is all about trust, without the visibility that integration allows, staff may struggle to see the value in the tech. Do your due diligence on the ability to integrate with your existing platforms and devices, then watch how much quicker employees are willing to give it a try.
Create clear workflows.
Workflows are at the heart of any collaboration technology. Be sure to examine carefully the functionality of any system as it relates to building and managing workflows. A good tech solution should be intuitive and help staff identify breakdowns in their workflow with other teams, giving them a clear area for focus moving forward. These workflows should make it very clear to everyone involved, where the work is, who has an account of the tasks and when delivery can be expected. That kind of visibility and accountability will not only improve collaboration in your workplace but the efficiency of output as well.
Get feedback.
Feedback is the key to closing the loop on the tech you should use in your workplace and will allow you to succeed faster. Staff are great at finding workarounds, so if you don’t have any collaboration tech in place at the moment it’s likely they are finding a way to collaborate now. Get some feedback on their current processes and use that to help choose your tech solution.
Collaboration seems like a fairly straight forward concept, but in a lot of workplaces, it’s not a given of teams who work closely. Often people struggle to define what good collaboration looks like. Technology can be the enabler your workplace needs. Use these simple solutions to help you drive better collaboration in your workplace.
