6 steps to effective collaboration in the workplace

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5. Improves engagement

Engaged employees are the single most important determinant of successful businesses. When we collaborate, the chances of being disengaged are slimmed down to next to nothing. 

You either have to be a part of the conversation or deliver your own individual work in the agreed time frame, in other words, you are constantly engaged in your work.

6. Facilitates learning and skill-sharing

The 70-20-10 Model for learning and development says that we acquire 70% of knowledge from job-related experiences, 20% from interactions with others, and 10% from formal educational events.

Since it is an activity where employees interact intensively, collaboration is often a catalyst for learning new skills - both hard and soft ones. As such, collaboration in the workplace has a twofold benefit: it enables employees to learn and grow while minimizing the risk of losing key knowledge due to its shared nature.

7. Focusing on goals

It’s easy to lose track of why you’re doing something if you’re not reminded of it once in a while. That being said, team collaboration doesn’t automatically mean that the work will be goal-oriented. However, collaborating on a project calls for frequent re-orientation and asking “how will this help to accomplish our goals” every step of the way.

In other words, collaboration in the workplace is a great way to keep everybody aligned and focused on the final outcome.

8. Better end-result

When employees collaborate, they ensure that a single matter has been approached from several different perspectives. This ensures that the outcome of the project is of higher quality. In many cases, employees from different departments engage in cross-functional collaboration to cater to customer needs. When professionals from the product, marketing, sales, development, and customer success collaborate on such products, they ensure that the outcome will be optimal for all the parties involved.

9. Improved customer satisfaction

The ultimate goal of any commercial business is to get more revenue. To achieve this, you need a steady customer base. Sustainable businesses that think long-term know that they need to continuously work on improving their customer satisfaction.

As explained above, customer needs can be met best when people from different departments collaborate to resolve ongoing issues. As such, workplace collaboration is the key to achieving better customer satisfaction scores.

How can you improve workplace collaboration?

Now you know how beneficial collaboration in the workplace is. But, how do you get it right?

Even though 75% of employees believe that collaboration and teamwork are important, a whopping 80% is stressed because of ineffective communication in the workplace.

Here are some of the steps to follow to create a great collaboration experience and get the best results out of it.

Assigning the project leader

As simple as it may sound - many people expect collaboration in the workplace to just happen. Just like any other project, collaboration in the workplace needs to be structured to see the best results.

This means assigning a single person that will be the owner of the task. The project leader should be responsible for managing the collaboration altogether.

Continuous goal alignment

As mentioned before, one of the greatest benefits of collaboration in the workplace is that it has the potential to keep everybody aligned. Therefore, a project manager should always try to keep everybody coordinated in their efforts, and also make sure that every step of the project is carried out with the final goal in mind.

Encouraging team bonding activities

Research shows that social interaction outside of the workplace contributes to 50% of the positive changes in communication patterns in the workplace. This means that communication and collaboration among team members get better when they grow closer.

There is a myriad of team bonding activities you can choose from - even when remote. It can significantly boost motivation and teams’ interconnectedness.

Emphasize the importance of everyone’s contribution

The very essence of workplace collaboration is the involvement of different people. Sometimes it’s just two or three people, but collaboration often includes more than that. Moreover, some people’s contributions are more prominent than others.

That’s why it’s important that leaders clearly communicate the importance of everyone’s contributions - publicly and privately. Social recognition is a powerful motivation and engagement tool.

Diversify communication and collaboration channels

When working remotely or hybrid, it’s important to remember that too much communication could be just as harmful as too little of it. To communicate effectively, it’s important to utilize both synchronous and asynchronous communication channels.

This is easily achieved if teams use collaboration software - check out our list of 17 best tools to skyrocket your collaboration efforts.

📚 Learn more about team communication best practices.

Work on improving communication skills

It’s important to notice that communication skills are always a work in progress. In other words, there is always room for improvement! To facilitate effective workplace collaboration, work on enhancing soft skills for your team members. Let them realize the power of listening and communicating clearly, and empower them to continuously improve.

Workplace collaboration is easy with Rocket.Chat

In the age of digital workplaces, it’s important to have the right technology at your side. As a workplace collaboration solution, Rocket.Chat enables teams to collaborate seamlessly - supporting chat, video, rich media files, voice messages, and more.

Apart from useful features that cater to hybrid and remote teams, Rocket.Chat doubles down on data security protocols. Check out why we are one of the best Slack alternatives on the market and start collaborating effectively today.