How to Promote Effective Collaboration in Your Company in 2022

Despite the onset of the pandemic in 2020 — and the subsequent rise of the digital workplace — team collaboration remains very much a crucial pillar of a company’s success. Collaborative workforces come with a slew of benefits, including improved performance, fresh idea generation, and even a more engaged workforce, just to name a few. 

In fact, it’s even been shown that employers can expect an improvement of up to 5 times the usual with collaborative teams, with employees in these setups feeling more motivated to achieve their targets. Other studies back this up, with PGI predicting that collaboration in the workplace can increase “successful innovation” by 15%. 

It’s clear that collaboration is key to a successful company and business. As such, here are a couple of key tips to fostering a collaborative environment in your workplace. 

1. Cultivate an open workplace culture

The first thing you’ll need to do is to cultivate an open workplace culture, one that is transparent between employees and leaders, with an open dialogue with regards to aims, goals, and the overall direction of the company. 

This, of course, doesn’t mean that you should be revealing all private and confidential information to every employee, but it’s crucial that all team members are generally aware of the company’s health and direction — or even challenges and obstacles — in order to foster a collaborative workplace. 

When there is trust within the team, this helps to promote collaboration between team members and leaders, across all levels and departments. 

2. Don’t limit job scopes to departments/disciplines

Keep in mind that this may not apply to every single department or job scope out there, but it can be very beneficial to encourage collaboration across multiple departments. Those from marketing, for example, might have ideas for the product team, or those in customer success might have insights and ideas that might genuinely help the engineers — think of it all as a giant, well-oiled machine. 

To do so, you’ll need to facilitate the collaboration between teams that might not otherwise work together on a normal basis. Set up regular brainstorms, or even cross-department training and exposure opportunities — at the very least, a fresh set of eyes come in handy for different teams and functions. 

3. Clearly define goals and objectives

This sounds fairly obvious, but it’s clear that every team member — from leaders all the way to interns — must have a clear understanding of what they’re working towards. Schedule in regular check-ins with your team members to discuss goals and objectives, which should be set in a measurable and result-driven manner. 

Before setting these goals, however, it’s important to take the collective feedback of the team on board of what is achievable, ambitious, or even unrealistic. Then, make sure that every individual is aware of their role in ensuring these goals are achieved. 

And finally, collaboration will be key to ensuring that all the gears work together to move your organisation towards success. 

4. Invest in collaborative tools

As we go through 2022, it’s readily apparent that the need for digitalisation is immediate, important, and arguably more important than ever. With the rise of flexible work models such as hybrid and remote work models, the glue that will hold your team together comes in the form of future-ready digital tools.

These help to empower your team to collaborate — whenever, wherever — and you’d be best advised to invest in the right tools for the overall success of your business. There are a whole plethora of tools here (click here to read about what we use here at Digi-X), but you should always start with an effective, powerful HRMS to manage your company’s workforce.

Scroll down to find out more about our number one recommended option here.