Stop, collaborate and listen *insert bouffant hairdo + stars-and-stripes sweatsuit here*. Yeah, you best be knowing we’d start a piece on workplace collaboration with a bit of Vanilla Ice. It was 100% unavoidable. So now that the party is jumping (sorry, sorry!), let’s get to the good part.
We’ve known for a while now that humans are wired to connect, and not just anecdotally, it’s been proven by neuroscience and the evolution of our brains. As such, it only makes sense that collaboration is essential in spaces where group of people work together towards a common goal (i.e. pretty much any office anywhere). It’s good for business when everyone plays nice.
But more than that, successful workplace collaborative initiatives are important if you want your company to stay nimble and remain relevant as we hurtle into the future.
In this blog post, we take a look at 5 reasons why we believe that workplace collaboration is the only way forward:
1. Encouraging collaboration pools talents and strengths
When teams work closely together, the pooling of their combined talents and strengths result in a cross-pollination of knowledge and experience. This allows each member to play to their strengths and contribute in a way that utilises their know-how optimally, which positively impacts morale as well as business outcomes. However, it won’t just naturally happen this way. Successful collaborative teamwork requires an empathetic leader who knows each team member and can position them in the best possible way.
2. Peer mentoring develops employee skills
Peer mentoring doesn’t always have to mean one-on-one training sessions. It can also take the form of sharing ideas, working together and interacting over the course of a project. The more your employees are exposed to other ways of thinking, working, negotiating and operating, the more effective they become at their jobs. Workplace collaboration lays the groundwork for new perspectives, on-the-go recalibration and all sorts of other wonderful personal improvements.
You can read more here: Your 8-step guide to creating a company culture that boosts motivation today!
3. Tight teams find solutions fast
Many hands make light work, and when the many hands are operated by many brains who are in sync, things tend to happen even quicker. If you want to fast-track progress in your company, focus on the way people work and make a point of improving collaborative efforts throughout the enterprise. You’ll quickly find that a problem that would have taken one person a few months to solve, could very well be cleared up in a matter of a week when multiple people come at it from different angles.
4. Happy team members stick around
The increased efficiency that is a direct result of workplace collaboration means work can be divided equally between those who have the expertise and capacity to handle certain tasks. I.e. everyone contributes in a way that they find most enjoyable and comfortable, and no-one is overtaxed. Well, it’s not Disneyland, so there will definitely be some moments that are less awesome than others (that’s life), but overall every employee gets to do something they’re good at and contribute to the good of the whole. This here is what we call employee retention gold.
Read more here: How to calculate employee retention for your business.
5. Collaborative teams = satisfied customers
Collaborative teams develop a very useful, extremely efficient hive mind that allows them to access information quickly. It’s like Google, but only in real life. When this happens, customer satisfaction tends to go through the roof, because queries, requests and concerns can be sorted out quickly and efficiently. Just imagine how great it would be if, next time you call a customer care line to ask for advice about a product or service, you wouldn’t need to call back multiple times to get the answer you need. This is possible in companies in which colleagues are in tune, and any unusual request doesn’t necessarily need to run up the flagpole to find a solution. It’s a truly joyous thing to behold.
We don’t know about you, but anything that pools talents and strengths, develops employee skills, fast-tracks problem solving, boosts employee retention and leads to happier customers all in one go is pretty nifty in our book.
See why we’re making such a big deal about fostering a collaborative environment?
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