Here’s How The Collaborative Workplace Is Taking Over The Competitive One

A collaborative environment is the future. And millennials would vouch for that. 88 percent of this workforce says they prefer a collaborative over a competitive workplace. And by 2030, millennials will comprise 75% of the workforce. You connect the dots.

With social media ruling their lives, millennials have this need to always stay “connected.” As a result, they expect the same things from their organisations and peers. They feel good when peers share their work and their team supports their actions.

Working with a group of people gives them a sense of unity and fulfils their need for “being connected.” You might call this a need for constant validation, but it can be used to cause great wonders in business.

Why A Collaborative Workforce Is Better Than A Competitive One

When employees work solo, they have access to limited sources and resources to finish a task. But, with collaborative teams, employees can have a well of ideas, resources and perspectives that they can pool together to achieve targets.

In a competitive workplace, employees try to hoard off each other's ideas and win credits. But a collaborative workplace will nine out of ten times positively impact the company's bottom line. Collaboration makes employees better engaged with their work and makes them more focused.

Here’s how it’s precisely better than a competitive workplace or workforce-

People Trust Each Other

Building trust among employees is essential and a collaborative workplace paves the way for this trust to nurture. Trust is “reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.” This means that when people work together as a team, they trust each other with actions and decisions.

When people trust each other, they open up. The Journal For Knowledge Management says that people are more likely to share ideas and plans if they trust their team members. When employees trust each other, they discuss and arrive at decisions together.This means that encouraging collaboration can bring employees closer and improve workplace communication.

Enhances Communication

If you want a group of people to achieve the same goal, they need to communicate. And cloud-based communication tools make it easy to successfully collaborate.

Remote working and the gig economy is on the rise because of cloud-based technology. This new-age tech has allowed remote workers to work from anywhere around the globe.

Features like instant messaging, video conferencing, allow for easy and instant communication.Real-time communication features help teams stay connected and in the loop of the progress of their work.

When employees communicate with each other regularly, new ideas and perspectives flourish. Communication saves time that otherwise could have been lost in misinterpretation. It gives room for dialogue,discussions, and causes an exchange of better ideas. When team members back each other’s ideas, it boosts that employee’s confidence and makes him feel a part of his team.

Lowers Fatigue Levels

Working as a team means that when sharing the workload when it becomes too much. Too much pressure can lead to increased stress levels, anxiety, and even occupational burnout.

When you're in a team, it’s not an individual's responsibility to develop all the strategies and ideas. Instead, the whole team pitches in to come up with an action plan that can work. For collaboration to run smoothly, the manager should assign tasks equally and fairly.

In a collaborative workplace, teams share the blame when something goes wrong. Instead of blaming one person for the loss, they work together on their shortcomings.

Efficient Problem Solving

Working together increases every employee's increases efficiency and saves time. When different people are involved in fulfilling the same goal, other minds focus on the same problem and develop diverse solutions. As a result, a wide range of possible solutions come up for the problem. All that the team now has to do is decide collectively on the best approach to target the problem.

In addition, employees can learn great problem solving and decision-making skills from their peers.

How Can You Create A Collaborative Workplace

Establish Your Goals

Give your team a purpose bigger than themselves to bring their A-game and achieve the goals. You need to align your vision and drive to convince your employees to join and work as a team. Explain to them the “why” of the work they will be doing and what they will achieve as a team if they achieve their targets.

You can also share and discuss your purpose with your team. Before the project starts, you can have a rundown with the team and discuss the goals of the work. You can ask the team to come up with ideas and possible loopholes in the purpose.

Set Clear Expectations

If team members are unsure of the goals and expectations, they can become clueless and lose direction. This will make the project time-consuming and reduce productivity.

To avoid this, set the objectives early. Set and delegate individual and tasks collectively, which they will be responsible for. When employees know what their goal is, they will use their skills to work more efficiently.

Converting this individual goal-setting into a team is a great way to build collaborative workplaces. Peers share the responsibility of helping each other reach their targets. This builds camaraderie, boosts morale, and helps in building a collaborative workplace.

Setting expectations beforehand ensures that everyone is aware of each other's objectives. Doing this makes sure that employees won’t try to take credit for work the other has done. It also ensures that teams don’t waste time by accidentally doing each other’s work.

Embrace The Cloud

Workplaces are moving from traditional to become digital workplaces. Work-life balance has been replaced by work-life integration. New age employees like remote workers, digital nomads, and millennials are taking over the workforce.

To stay afloat with the fast-changing workplace, employers need to accept cloud-based technology. Cloud-based collaboration tools are the glue that’s going to keep this dynamic workforce together.

To create a collaborative environment where employees can always stay connected, you can use-

• project management tools like Basecamp
• communication tools like Snapcomms, Slack
• video conferencing, instant messaging mobile apps like Skype

Share Accountability And Responsibility

Brian Tracy said, “Don’t aspire to be the best on the team. Aspire to be the best for the team.”

Working in a team means sticking with each other through good and bad times. Every team member is responsible for the success or defeat of the group. Since it’s a team effort and everyone is putting in the same amount of effort, everyone is accountable for their actions.

For a collaborative workplace to thrive, peers should hold responsibility for their actions instead of blaming others. When teams share accountability, it builds trust and respect among them.

Reward Collaborative Behaviour

Give recognition where it’s due. When teams deliver, which takes the business closer towards its goals, celebrate them. Let them know that it was because of every one of them that the objective was fulfilled. Recognize their achievements which enabled the business to reach its desired outcome. This will make them feel valued and will motivate them to work harder the next time.

You can do it by documenting their time spent on the project through pictures and videos. You can also take them out to lunch or dinner.

Here at Vantage Circle, we reward performers with points that they can use as per their wish to buy products and services.

Conduct Team Bonding Activities

This is a great way for new employees to meet each other, existing employees to mingle with people from other departments, and just letting off some steam.

Team building activities are also a great way to enable employees to acquire some important workplace skills. These skills include communication, decision making, problem-solving, strategizing and more.

When people team up with people they haven’t worked with before, it can sometimes change their perception of that person for the better. These activities bring people across departments, across ranks, and new hires closer.

Encourage Transparency

People can work with each other only when they trust and are comfortable with each other. And to build trust, employees should be transparent with each other. They need to let their teammates on any activity they are doing relating to the project and share the progress with everyone.

Being transparent and clear about their intentions will only bring the team closer. It will build interpersonal relationships among peers. And it’s not just from peers that they expect transparency but also from their leaders. When employees feel their employers are keeping information from them, it affects their relationship but also weakens their confidence. It makes employees feel their employer or peer doesn’t value them enough to let them in on the complete truth. It makes them question their worth in the organization.

Therefore, always encourage employees and executives to share the complete information with their team.

Foster Innovation and New Ideas

For any new idea to initiate and flourish, the person who has the idea needs to feel assured that their ideas will be discussed and considered. Suppose they feel their ideas won't be valued or laughed at. In that case, they will naturally hesitate to participate in the team's activities.

For this, encourage employees to come up with as many ideas and strategies as they can develop. Every thought will be given the same consideration, and that the whole team will weigh its pros and cons.

Cross-Functional Work Groups

Sometimes it might happen that a project requires a lot of time and effort. To make this process feasible and get the desired result, you can divide people into cross-functional workgroups.

A cross-functional team is “ a group of people with different functional expertise working towards a common goal.” Therefore, you can divide who has editing and photoshop skills in the creative team, marketing for promoting and publicizing the project, etc.

Doing so ensures that the project has been divided into the required sub-divisions. People have been strategically grouped to use their skills. It makes sure that all aspects of the project have been covered and that work happens quickly and efficiently.

Establish Metrics

When you set expectations and objectives, it’s essential to record and track every employee’s progress. To do this, you can let the entire team know that their performance will be measured on the following set of categories.

Time tracking metrics can determine the time taken to complete a task and if changes are needed to improve efficiency. Other metrics can figure out if some members are working more than others and so on. It can also be used to figure out if employees are getting stuck at some task and if they’d need the training to improve their performance.

Conclusion

A collaborative environment not only ensures that employees learn about teamwork and team spirit, but it also allows them to learn from each other and acquire new skills. In a collaborative workplace, employees are much more accepting and trusting towards each other. This helps build a healthy work environment where every employee can flourish.

This article is written by Shreya Dutta. She is a content writer and marketer at Vantage Circle. She is passionate about all things literature and entrepreneurship. To get in touch, reach out to editor@vantagecircle.com.