The Information Age has allowed workforces to collaborate at a scale that’s never been seen in the workplace. Some actually describe it as a “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” a testament to the monumental productivity increase that was made possible by all this connectivity.
It’s even shaped the way we look at the future of the workplace - in their report,The Future of Jobs, Switzerland-based World Economic Forum has asserted collaboration as one of the skills that students should have to prepare them for 21st-century success.
And businesses are definitely catching on. An entire industry of workplace collaboration software and suites has propped up in the past decade and a half, while new tools make it easier than ever for anyone to work together on just about anything, whether it’s spreadsheets or schoolwork.
So how does modern collaboration work as a powerful productivity multiplier?
Today’s tasks are more complex
Remember that classic arithmetic problem of people working together to complete jobs in less time? For simple tasks that don’t involve a lot of interaction between project participants, the math holds up. At the end of the day, all it takes to fill up a swimming pool is a bunch of hands and buckets, and you can get things done faster with more help.
But today, companies work with a huge array of people from different backgrounds and skillsets, and tackle problems that feature a whole host of bottlenecks and interacting needs. Just throwing more people at a project won’t solve anything, just like nine pregnant women won’t make a baby in a month.
Being able to collaborate with multiple stakeholders, each with their own special part to play in a project, is a big part of the modern workplace. And it’s not just about the collaborative skills, but having the right tools for the job too.
Modern collaboration tools allow information to travel faster
For decades, email has been the gold standard of digital communication. And sure, back in its glory days, it definitely did revolutionize the way businesses exchanged information, both internally and externally. But with how fast things happen in the modern workplace, email is just too unwieldy to keep up.
You probably wouldn’t use snail mail to tell your date that you can’t meet her tomorrow, just as you wouldn’t use email to coordinate a large-scale project that needs real-time input from many employees at the same time (unless you’re a masochist). That’s where modern collaboration tools come into play, and they allow companies to work together at an unprecedented scale!
Effective tools enable superior organisation
One understated problem with big projects is that there’s such a huge amount of comms traffic among everyone involved. And when your company uses a standard messaging tool or email to coordinate these projects, tracing back messages often involves idly staring at endless nested threads until your eyes start watering.
With a highly organized chat solution like Campgrounds, all that interaction is automatically organised, and project participants can filter or search through conversations rather than sift through mind-numbingly-long chat archives or email threads.
How do you improve collaboration in your workplace?
So collaboration is important, that much is obvious. But how do you actually make it work for you and your team? Let’s lay it out.
Identify everyone’s strengths and weaknesses
One of the key reasons why collaboration is so powerful is that it allows people with complementary skills to fill in each other’s gaps. To get this ball rolling, you’ll need to find out what people are good at - and just as importantly, what they suck at.
One good way of doing this is to conduct simulations of real-world challenges that your company would face. Wargaming, hackathons, and other team-building activities can reveal what everyone’s good at, with leaders rising up to take the reins and everyone’s skills being harnessed, all in a controlled environment. On the other hand, you’ll get to observe people’s weaknesses come out in a way that won’t affect their company performance.
That said, team building activities, while a common trope in corporate environments, are about as effective as homeopathy if they’re not given the proper support. Which leads us to…
Employ team-building activities with concrete goals and plenty of follow-up
Many leaders say that team-building activities are a waste of time and money. Doug Staneart of the Texas-based Leaders Institute says, “Most of the time, people asking for these activities aren’t interested in real teamwork building. What they really want is entertainment—something they can use either to break the monotony of more serious meetings or to reward employees.”
Amazing Race weekends, paintball matches, and days spent in mystery rooms are lovely, but they often end up being nothing more than stress relief and fun times had on company dime. While that’s all well and good, they don’t serve the purpose they set out to do.
The key here is not to have these team building sessions in isolation. The lessons learned during these activities require reinforcement and follow-up for them to become effective. Hold additional team-building seminars back at the office, and convene the original teams regularly to establish a working dynamic. Have sessions where people talk about their experiences and expose what they enjoyed and what didn’t work.
It’s also important to set goals for these. Do you want people to work on their communication skills? Do you want people from different fields and company branches to learn how to collaborate? The kind of activities you have and the lessons you ingrain in your employees will be different depending on the outcome you want to achieve!
Use the right tools for the job - and if possible, get them tailored to your needs!
Many companies have adopted social media and chat apps to streamline and update their communication. Certainly an upgrade over email - but there are still better chat solutions out there that are specifically designed for business needs!
Of course, no single tool can ever fulfill everything you’d want it to - unless you had it made for you. Whether you want a feature-packed chat solution or a lean, mean, streamlined machine, having a bespoke piece of software designed to fit your company’s collaboration requirements might just be your ticket to a more cohesive workplace.