Why is Collaboration Important in the Workplace
What do you think about film production? Is it a result of teamwork or collaboration? To get the answer, you have to go over the end.
Well, you may think of why we're pulling film while talking about business. It's because you can perceive the significance of collaboration in a film production effectively.
However, in business, collaboration greatly impacts achieving the desired success. What is more beneficial if a collaborative team knows its responsibilities, performs as needed, and completes milestones within time?
Yes, you can achieve such a team with collaboration. To get the details, let's have a dive below.
What is collaboration in the workplace?
The collaboration combines individual efficiency to a certain direction for achieving common objectives, targets, or bounded goals. When two or more individuals with diverse intelligence act more interdependently, they share their views, ideas, resources, and responsibilities.
If you think about it more practically, collaboration is an intentional partnership or relationship built to gain a shared goal.
For example, the collaboration will create buzz if you run a campaign, crowdsourcing, brand promotion, or marketing. Also, inside your company, team collaboration and cross-functional collaboration increase productivity.
For a more practical example, let's see Jim Tamm's demonstration in a TEDx Talk that a Genetics Professor at Purdue University research showed a 260% increase in egg production from a group of chickens living in a collaborative environment.
Pretty interesting, isn't it?
The importance of collaboration for employers and employees
You may notice many statistics showing how collaboration affects individual and team performance, productivity, and success. A recent study by Zippia shows that individuals working in a collaborative environment are 50% more effective than an independent one.
A good collaboration helps you decentralize the project goals among the members and creates a shared sense of responsibility.
This would result in very high employee engagement, morale, and satisfaction.
Employees would feel more attached to their jobs. The advantage and importance of collaboration in the workplace is extensive. It helps both employers and employees, too.
The benefits of collaboration for the organization
Better conflict management
Conflict in the workplace is a very unwanted but undeniable action. Collaboration and group communication improve the bonding and understanding among the employees. A collaborative team always has better views and adaptability. So, a team can respond positively to any changes in the inner and outer sides of the organization.
A healthy and sustainable working environment
Poor communication among personnel, less control over their work, and lack of recognition cause exhaustion and employee burnout. All these problems can be minimized or even eliminated if the admins and employees exercise collaboration. It allows the employers to have a better observation of each of the employee's caliber. It improves trust, psychological safety, and employee retention.
Higher rate of employee engagement
Collaboration helps employees willingly move forward to solve problems and feel comfortable and enthusiastic. People will be more dedicated to their jobs, resulting in high performance and productivity.
Faster growth
Collaboration ensures maximum employee engagement and productivity. Teams get more functional and push each other to perform towards the target. So the company can easily achieve success.
The benefits of collaboration for employees
Scope of expanding skill
Now, one question may arise in your mind: What is one benefit of working collaboratively on a team?
Collaboration provides a gateway for learning from each other and exchanging experiences, ideas, and knowledge. Thus, you can analyze your strong and weak points. It helps you to be more efficient and capable. This skill-building may not be directly related to your arena. But with the mixed-up of distinct personalities, you will be more resourceful and competent.
Interpersonal relationship improvement
Collaboration allows team members to feel each other, bring them closer, and create a sense of loyalty. This enhances teamwork efficiency, performing more intimately without any doubt of asking for advice or help.
If you know one is lagging behind his target, others will help him to overcome it. So you can feel friendly and belong to your team. Thus, everyone will be well aware of individual roles and responsibilities.
Increase in employee productivity.
Working within a collaborative environment gives you a positive vibe. Employees are more intent to feel independent about their work. So they can properly dedicate their mind to the work. Also, team members motivate each other to be productive and efficient.
Space of innovation
The key result of the collaboration is to unify diverse talent to achieve a certain goal. This helps team members explore multi-talented people, their ideas, and how each other conducts and brainstorms to solve problems.
Collaboration and teamwork: What is more beneficial for your business?
People often mix the terms' Collaboration' and 'teamwork.' They look alike but seem to be fraternal twins. Both are crucial for companies to succeed and employees to work in harmony.
What makes the difference between collaboration and teamwork culture lies in the implementation. If you are a project manager or HR, you should know the similarities and differences for better team and employee management.
Similarities:
Collaboration and teamwork need a group of people working for common objectives. Communication, coordination, and cooperation are the fundamentals of building a collaborative environment or successful teamwork.
The ultimate goal is to gain employee productivity, retention, and company success. But collaboration gives you more than teamwork, which will be clear below.
Dissimilarities:
The difference between teamwork and collaboration will be clear if you observe the dissimilarities. In most cases, teamwork includes a group working together for a common purpose. A leader must maintain the board and guide them in a certain direction. Teamwork is more effective when the purpose is straightforward and has to be achieved quickly.
Inversely, collaboration is established when team members can solve problems with their scheme, and multi-skilled persons come together and brainstorm. You need very little interruption and guidance from the leader. It is a long-term process, and a small group can combine problem-solving, creativity, and innovation.
Collaboration encourages people to get motivation for self-improvement, skill improvement,
How to deploy an effective collaborative working environment
Clear the company's mission.
The first thing to create an effective collaborative working environment is to ensure that every employee knows the mission and vision of the company. They should have a proper concept of their job.
The company should represent its objectives simply and definitely. It would help your team to connect with the same objectives. It also makes it easier to build a community to work together.
Convey the expectations and goals.
Employees must be aware of their responsibilities and the team's goals for collaboration. You have to reach everyone and ensure that they have a proper understanding of the responsibilities.
It's better to define it in the job responsibility in the recruitment process. It will help you prepare your newbies and give a sense of the work culture you expect to set up.
Encourage the horizontal hierarchy.
The horizontal hierarchy refers to the process where few leaders must manage the team. The employees can make decisions without the approval of managers. This would encourage employees to become more efficient, skilled, and creative.
Run team-building activities
Collaboration is not a natural process. Rather, you have to bring certain policies that can initiate collaboration. For example, you can do some skill tests among the employees or some other activities like playing icebreaker games focusing on highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the employees.
Also, you have to foster open communication for synergy.
Conduct meetings meaningful
Meetings are one of the vital parts of collaboration. It speeds up the process of decision-making, sharing ideas, and cooperation. But it gets overrated if the outcome turns a little effective. To get more output from meetings, you can implement steps like preparing meeting agendas, keeping the time short but effective, scheduling the meetings, etc.
Use some collaboration tools.
As the work culture is going out of the office and you have to deal with the remote and hybrid teams, you must invest in collaboration tools & find out what to look for in them. These tools can boost collaboration. But before installing any random tool, you must figure out the spaces your team needs.
Allow individual work and autonomy.
Collaboration needs flexibility and independence. Your employees need to feel amenable so that they can focus more on creativity, problem-solving, and innovation. At the same time, employers need to keep a closer look at how the employees perform at the office time, concerning time theft and covering fake productivity, etc. For that, you can use any employee monitoring tool like Apploye.
The challenges for collaboration
You've already known the advantages of collaboration and how important it is.
However, several problems arise when you implement the collaboration process.
- Managing hybrid, office, or remote team
- Balancing the individual and team priority
- Breaking the traditional work culture
- Missguide and poor flow
- Lack of motivation
- Distrust and dishonor
- Misuse of resources
Why collaboration is important?
In this new era of business, where your company can easily form a remote or hybrid team, most employees can connect and collaborate subconsciously. This article will be a bonus for those who want to keep most employees productive through collaboration.
Now, you might be pretty convinced if we say the film is the net result of collaborative teamwork that the actor Lewis B. Ergen has asserted- "The ratio of We's to I's is the best indicator of the development of a team."