5 Strategies for How Technology Can Improve Collaboration in the Workplace
A work environment that doesn’t encourage teamwork and collaboration is one of the top 5 reasons people quit their jobs, according to research by Ernst & Young. Many businesses face growing workplace collaboration needs with aging technologies, making it vital to ask the question, how can technology promote collaboration and teamwork?
We need modern technology for team solutions — secure, reliable, scalable, and cost-effective — that make workplace collaboration efficient, effective, and enjoyable.
Here are 5 Technology Strategies to Help Improve Workplace Collaboration
Workflows can be improved by digital collaboration in the workplace in a variety of ways. Here are five proven strategies how technology can improve collaboration in the workplace.
1. Use a Chat-Based Workspace to Improve Collaboration
Team members often get stuck waiting for the feedback and sign-off they need to drive a project forward. Back-and-forth scheduling for conference calls burns up time and energy. When they finally do get on a call, edit documents, and send out the revised versions, they’re often stuck waiting again for sign-off.
Workplace productivity changes when your team can quickly get coworkers and decision-makers on group or private chat, or in an online meeting with co-authoring. Teams can review, discuss, edit, and approve documents in real time, and workplace collaboration will vastly improve.
2. Improve Online Meetings
Technology mishaps should be a thing of the past, especially struggling to participate in virtual meetings. Too often, difficulty with connections or the joining process interrupts and delays meetings. These problems discourage people from working together and creates a barrier for our increasingly mobile workforce.
Empower employees to have better meetings with a single meeting application that integrates with the rest of your collaboration and productivity software.
A positive meeting experience produces positive results for you and your organization, which is another benefits of modern workplace technology for team collaboration.
3. Break Down Work Silos and Improve Collaboration
All too often, team members are heads-down in their work and unaware of the knowledge and efforts elsewhere in your business. Lack of information and duplication hurt morale and have a material cost to your business.
Using a social network tool brings conversations online. Your team uses social networking in their personal life; bringing social tool into your business provides a means for your team to share ideas, information, and interests. With remote and hybrid workers, you can encourage and capture the informal conversations that foster collective intelligence, collaboration, and innovation.
4. Simplify File Sharing
Haven’t we had enough of emailing files and waiting for feedback and revisions. The process of juggling messages and multiple copies with edits is an inefficient relic from the days of typewriters and routing slips.
Take advantage of the collaboration features of cloud-based file services:
- Access documents anywhere, whether online or offline
- Collaborate in a single document that’s always up to date
- Seamlessly share large files
- Use built-in chat functionality to discuss edits within a document
- Control permissions of contacts inside and outside the company
5. Move from a Patchwork of Apps to a Productivity Suite
In our new mobile society, we are accustomed to downloading apps at home and in the office. The result: a hodge-podge of applications that all do different things, have different sign-ins, and may not deliver the security and compliance you want and need. By utilizing productivity tools, you will be better prepared for changing work environments and will be able to collaborate more effectively with the assistance of modern technology.
Conclusion on How Technology Can Improve Workplace Collaboration
Moving to, and fully utilizing, a productivity suite gives your team the right digital tools to get their work done, the resources to communicate and collaborate, the integration to eliminate duplicate data and effort, and the security to protect your information, your people, and your business. Do not just deploy technology and hope for better workplace collaboration; help your team understand the apps, tools, and features they can use to be more efficient, productive, and successful.
For more on the topic, check out the eBooks and whitepapers in our Library. Better yet, schedule an introductory call and connect with our team of Cloud Advisors.