Teamwork is crucial within any organization and good collaboration means knowing how to share important information with all teams in order to improve productivity. Since knowledge is the core of any business, it should be widely available and accessible to everyone, whenever and wherever. Collaboration not only reduces the barriers of productivity and encourages continuous learning, but it also leads to a thriving workplace where employees can come together, share ideas, and efficiently move towards the business goal.
To successfully foster collaboration in your company, you should reconsider your way of working and prioritize these 6 steps.
1. Encourage freedom of expression
Creativity is stimulated in environments where people can freely express their opinions, without being afraid to be wrong, even if they are in a lower hierarchical position.
2. Appreciate the collective performance
The valuation and performance recognition systems often focus on individual performance. Although individuals want to be recognized for their personal contribution, a balance taking into account the collective performance should exist as well.
3. Facilitate the collaborative work
Sharing attachments in emails, as well as searching for documents throughout the desktop, cloud, and enterprise servers can undermine collaboration between employees. Fostering collaboration in your company entails giving the right tools to your employees. Technology has evolved existing specialized tools nowadays that enable us to structure, centralize, and share information more easily.
4. Don't overuse emails and choose a more advanced solution
Those who think that email could foster collaboration have it wrong. Email does not rhyme with collaboration, it is just a tool for communication. Technologies are evolving and there are many tools that take into account this collaborative aspect. It is now possible to exchange information in a specific context and not to waste time in finding information related to specific points of the discussion.
5. Break the silos in order to allow the collaborative work
The use of new collaborative and social tools can break the information silos, improve productivity, and develop collective intelligence. Employees can create communities that are dedicated to their work and exchange around common issues while creating links with content produced by other entities.
6. Boost cohesion
It is very important to involve everyone in the team in decision-making processes. Not only can they share their ideas, but they could also be more inclined and motivated to implement them afterward. Furthermore, it nurtures communication regarding the workflow in order to avoid getting stuck in situations where efforts are duplicated.
