What is the Current State of Company Work Performance?
Did you know that high performing employees have three things in common? These are talent, high engagement, and over ten years of experience at a company. While it makes total sense that talent and engagement play a massive part in work performance, longevity is a bit surprising.
So, what does longevity provide? First, the longer you are at a job, the more likely you are to have social bonds, positive working relationships, and a deep understanding of the company culture. You feel comfortable, secure, and invested in the company.
Well, today’s recent graduate is likely to have almost ten jobs throughout their career. So, what can you do to make up for longevity while still improving engagement, and fostering exceptional working bonds that lead to high performance?
This reason is why collaboration has to be a part of the performance improvement conversation. Collaboration can help employees jump right in and become stellar performers regardless of whether they stay ten months or ten years.
Let’s take a look of some of the reasons that show why collaboration is important.
Are These Issues Impacting Your Company?
There are a variety of roadblocks to the benefits of collaboration. See if some of these problems are negatively impacting your company, and how they are impacting other companies around the world:
Employee turnover – This is a considerable obstacle for collaboration. You cannot create strong bonds, encourage productive working relationships, and keep up the momentum of teamwork if employees don’t stay. According to recent data, for 20 to 30 percent of organizations, poor communication, and unsupportive culture is an employee retention issue.
Poor prioritizing and scheduling – Does it feel like you never have a moment to regroup and prioritize your day? If so, imagine what your employees or team members must feel like. Do employees know what the most important tasks to accomplish for the day are? Does everyone have a shared calendar to schedule events and meetings properly? If there isn’t a policy for task delegation and identifying dependencies, then it will be challenging to implement collaboration effectively.
A lack of streamlined communication – Are you using email for everything? That may not be the best way to go. Today, we have access to platforms that allow instant messaging, which can be beneficial to a team that needs to communicate in real-time. There should be standards for how messaging is delivered, and the platforms used for each circumstance. Many are striking out on communication as 86 percent of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures.
Low levels of engagement – Recent data reveals that 85 percent of global workers are disengaged at work. Disengagement can lead to the issues mentioned in this section, along with absenteeism, a decrease in productivity, and a sense of isolation. Increasing engagement is a significant answer to the question of why collaboration is important. It helps to bring workers back into the fold to feel they are a valuable contributing member to the company.
Costly mistakes and errors – It is challenging to truly realize the benefits of collaboration when mistakes are the norm. A lack of collaboration can lead to a variety of errors, and vice versa. Working together allows everyone to know what other team members are working on. As a result, more eyes on work can ensure mistakes and errors don’t make it to the customer.
All of these factors have been known to send productivity and work performance into a tailspin. Understanding what can go wrong, can help you and your team develop strategies to combat them. This reason is why collaboration is important, as it is a capable remedy for many issues that are keeping you and your team from reaching peak work performance.
Why Collaboration is an Effective Remedy
Your company may be ill with lagging work performance, but the benefits of collaboration are the best remedy. So, before we go into how collaboration should be the tool to help you thrive, let’s discuss the meaning behind collaboration and why collaboration is important.
What is Collaboration? Moreover, why is it Important?
Collaboration is a word we throw around a lot, but understanding its true meaning can help you and your team prepare strategies to implement it better. According to Merriam-Webster, collaboration is “working jointly with others or together, especially in an intellectual endeavor.”
At the heart of collaboration is the opportunity to capitalize on everyone’s strengths to reach a specific goal. It recognizes that everyone has something of value to contribute, and these skills and ideas can help you expand your business, develop new ideas, and see a drastic increase in sales. Collaboration is all about using the individual parts to promote the whole, and this is why collaboration is important.
The Benefits of Collaboration
So, let’s get to why encouraging collaboration should be a top priority for your company. Here are the rewards for investing in robust collaboration strategies:
Improves flexibility – Agile project management is all the rage today. However, it is hard to accomplish this without everyone being on the same page. You have the power to be adaptable when each department and the individuals within these groups know what is happening and how they fit
Helps to re-engage employees – As stated above, a lack of work cohesion and collaboration is a primary reason individuals decide to leave a company. Most work professionals want to do well, and your high performers are going to be frustrated when they cannot get work done efficiently. Exceptional collaboration strategies can help bring your employees back into the game.
Diminishes isolation and siloes – As the saying goes, “no man (or woman) is an island.” This statement is even truer when it comes to the workplace. When employees know their role and the part they play, it is easier to break down the barriers between departments.
Improves communication – Communication and collaboration go hand-in-hand. Both facilitate the other. When employees have to work with each other, and truly understand how their roles intertwine, it is naturally going to spur better communication. This reason is why collaboration platforms like flujo and others are essential to encouraging collaboration.
So, now that you have an idea of the benefits of collaboration let’s take a look at the collaboration platform strategies you should have.
Five Collaboration Platform Strategies You Must Have:
- Set expectations and goals for collaboration
- Set goals for asynchronous and synchronous communications
- Have consistent collaboration platform training
- Create times for brainstorming and the use of platforms to schedule them
- Understand your team strengths, and build teams based on it
See if FLUJO is the Answer…
Collaboration tool is the glue that can hold your company together. It makes producing a high-performing team much more possible. It can positively impact sales, work environment, and your reputation as a company. While collaboration is important, it is crucial to have the right tools. Flujo can help you realize the benefits of collaboration. It can help facilitate many of the practices and strategies on this list. So, be sure to stop by our products page, for more information on how we can help!
