Table of Contents
- What is Collaboration in the Workplace?
- Why Do Teams Struggle to Collaborate?
- Understanding the Benefits of Collaboration in Workplace
- Key Elements for a Collaborative Workplace Culture
- Types of Workplace Collaboration Tools
- Strategies for building collaboration in the workplace
- BizPortals 365 Intranet: Transforming Workplace Collaboration for Greater Results
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This blog explores the challenges of workplace collaboration, such as fragmented communication, information silos, and outdated systems. It highlights strategies for fostering a collaborative culture through open communication, clear goals, and cross-functional teamwork. Additionally, it emphasizes how modern intranet solutions and collaborative tools can streamline workflows, improve information sharing, and enhance overall team productivity and innovation.
Today’s workplaces thrive on the power of diversity, bringing together multiple profiles within a single cross-functional team. Some members are highly experienced, while others are new to the team. Some work from physical offices, while others contribute remotely from around the world.
Despite being fragmented and scattered, they function as a single unit—delivering successful ventures, one after another.
What holds them together is effective collaboration in the workplace.
‘Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.’ Helen Keller’s words perfectly capture the idea of workplace collaboration.
However, achieving this vision can be challenging, especially when employees are forced to switch between different apps, struggle with outdated platforms, and rely on slow, paper-based processes.
So, what does true workplace collaboration look like in practice? Are there some secret tips that can elevate your teamwork game? And what tools can transform the way your employees connect, collaborate, and learn?
Let’s explore all these questions one at a time.
What is Collaboration in the Workplace?
Collaboration involves a group of people sharing their skills and ideas with the purpose of achieving a common objective. The workforce, with different perspectives, ideas, and expertise, works together to find innovative solutions, which, in turn, help organizations solve problems in a more efficient manner.
Collaboration can happen in any type of setting, whether teams are stationed at an office or working remotely. The goal of a collaborative workplace is to maximize the possibilities of success by administering communicative and collaborative experiences across the organization.
Why Do Teams Struggle to Collaborate?
A Forbes study reveals that 86% of employees point to lack of collaboration or ineffective communication as the primary reason for failure in the workplace. It clearly highlights that for most organizations, it’s not leadership that causes failure—it’s the way teams connect and work together that ultimately breaks down.
Despite the availability of modern, digital workplace solutions, what are some critical challenges that restrict employees from effectively collaborating in the workplace?
1. Information silos
Information silos exist due to hierarchical organizational structures and the use of disjointed tools. Furthermore, silos often form when teams are dispersed geographically.
When information gets trapped in cabinets or network drives across teams and departments, it leads to inefficient collaboration among employees, slow decision-making, duplication of work, and lower productivity.
2. Communication overload
Too much information or documents, cluttered in instant messaging and email apps, meetings, and physical drawers, makes it hard for employees to prioritize what actually matters the most. This often slows down the feedback loop, reduces the quality of workplace collaboration, and decreases the ability to retain and share knowledge across the organization.
3. Lack of clear goals and accountability
When there is a lack of clear goals and accountability, team members tend to work in isolation, and no one knows precisely what the team is trying to achieve. Often your work gets missed or repeated. Additionally, it becomes challenging to measure progress, and ultimately, teams end up making assumptions rather than collaborating effectively towards a common purpose.
4. Technology gaps
Relying on conventional paper-based processes continues to limit employees’ ability to collaborate effectively in their workplace. Although many organizations have adopted digital workplace collaboration tools, determining whether these tools truly add value for employees is still a point of contention for most of them.
While many uses different tools and applications for file sharing, communication, and task tracking, others still rely on outdated tools that make a marginal impact—or sometimes no impact at all.
What suffers in the end? Your workplace collaboration strategy.
Understanding the Benefits of Collaboration in Workplace
Modern workplaces with complex challenges often demand a diverse set of skills working in cross-functional teams across the organization. When team members effectively collaborate, they harness collective intelligence, leading to increased productivity, greater innovation, and improved decision-making.
Furthermore, a collaborative environment supports faster learning and adaptation. Evidently, when employees work together, they tend to learn from the expertise of their peers and are more likely to contribute towards shared success. This not only promotes knowledge sharing but creates a conducive environment for employee engagement.
Key Elements for a Collaborative Workplace Culture
Understanding the elements of a collaborative culture can help you improve your workplace collaboration strategy. While you can incorporate these aspects into your day-to-day operations, you can also strategically tailor your collaboration tool to align with your people, workflows, and industry-specific needs.
1. Open and transparent communication
By promoting open and transparent communication, you can ensure employees understand their role, stay aligned with organizational objectives, and collaborate more effectively through mutual understanding. However, centralizing information and allowing employees to share data, connect one-on-one, engage with team members, and access relevant company news or project updates can help revamp your workplace collaboration.
2. Cross-functional teamwork
Cross-functional teams bring together individuals from different departments, backgrounds, and expertise to work towards a common objective. When such diversified teams work together, they come up with innovative approaches, gain insights into each other’s work, and become more capable of spotting new dimensions than they did before.
It becomes even easier when you capitalize on features like centralized document management, customizable project or team sites, and workflow automation. This eventually reduces response time by offering unrestricted access to information and minimizing the need for manual document routing.
3. Leadership and role modeling
Effective leadership and role modeling are the key pillars of workplace collaboration. When leaders encourage open communication, recognize and appreciate team contributions, and promote inclusivity in decision-making, employees feel valued and connected to broader organizational goals. Certainly, it encourages them to share ideas and feedback and engage constructively with their team.
4. Tools and technology that enable collaboration
Last but not least, tools and technology that organizations adopt serve as an essential enabler for connecting teams, streamlining communication, and fostering collaboration among employees. Modern technology like SharePoint not just offers a centralized platform to collaborate, but also offers features such as co-authoring, document versioning, metadata integration, and permission-based access that allow employees to experience collaboration in a true sense.
Take your workplace collaboration to the next level with BizPortals 365 Intranet. With intuitive features that improve communication, simplify workflows, and boost collaboration, it makes it easier for your team to work together seamlessly. Watch this video to see how it can transform your workplace.
Types of Workplace Collaboration Tools
What are a few tools that can amplify your workplace collaboration efforts?
Let’s look at it this way: Any features that help you implement the core elements of workplace collaboration could be the ideal solution you are looking for.
However, a SharePoint environment, with a range of built-in tools, offers an integrated solution to transform how people communicate and collaborate across the organization. Below is the list of some powerful tools designed to support your collaboration goals:
1. Project and Department Sites
It helps you create dedicated spaces for departments and teams to manage tasks, share updates, and centralize related resources, improving internal collaboration.
2. News and Announcements
It helps you keep employees informed with regular updates, company news, notices, and important announcements—all in a centralized and secure space.
3. Shared Calendar
Ensures that your employees do not miss any deadlines or important events. Easily coordinate schedules, track key dates, and align team activities with a unified calendar that’s accessible to everyone.
4. Ask-a-Guru
It allows you to create an internal Q&A space where employees can ask questions and get expert suggestions from pre-assigned team members, peers, or subject matter experts.
5. Document Library
Centralized repositories to help you store, manage, access, and collaborate on documents. You can leverage features like version control, global search, and permissions for secure and improved information sharing.
6. Suggestion Box
It captures employee ideas and feedback in an organized, accessible format to encourage innovation and continuous improvement.
7. Survey
It empowers organizations to create customizable surveys to collect user inputs, measure engagement, or gather feedback, fostering a culture of open communication and inclusivity. Although each tool has a unique function of its own, they are a part of a larger picture called the intranet.
How can an intranet help create a truly collaborative workplace?
Discover proven examples of collaboration in the workplace that helped teams overcome communication barriers, break silos, and align with organizational goals, highlighting the crucial role of the intranet in driving success.
Strategies for building collaboration in the workplace
1. Set the tone with leadership involvement
Encourage leaders and experts to frequently contribute to the resources and share updates, ideas, and feedback openly on a centralized platform to set a collaborative tone across the organization.
2. Create clear rules for shared content
Try creating clear rules for managing shared content, like naming conventions, storage locations, and permissions. You can also assign content reviewers to approve resources before they are published to ensure consistency, build trust, and reduce duplication.
3. Listen, learn, and continuously improve
Once the required collaboration practices are introduced, it is important to identify the areas for improvement. Conduct surveys and gather feedback to spot trends and adjust the processes, content, and workflows accordingly.
4. Use data and insights to strengthen collaboration
In a SharePoint environment, you can easily track analytics to identify how employees collaborate with content, tools, and each other. Track page views, document usage, and engagement trends to refine your collaborative efforts by focusing on what’s working and what’s not.
5. Organize content smarter with metadata
Metadata integration ensures the content (document, page, and resources) is not cluttered and is accessible when needed. Tagging files with relevant attributes or keywords, like departments, type, date, and project name, makes it easier for teams to respond faster, thereby enhancing efficiency and collaboration among employees.
6. Deliver personalized user experience
A one-size-fits-all strategy rarely works. Try to create personalized sites for employees so that they can access relevant tasks, documents, events, and deadlines that are most important to them. It helps increase participation, enhances productivity, and impacts overall workplace collaboration.
BizPortals 365 Intranet: Transforming Workplace Collaboration for Greater Results
Workplace collaboration, in today’s competitive landscape, is not just a matter of intent—it is a key indicator of an organization’s culture and its overall success.
BizPortals 365, a SharePoint-based intranet, can be a powerful tool in amplifying your workplace collaboration efforts. Apart from being a centralized and secure platform, it empowers you to tailor your intranet to meet both industry-specific workflows and the needs of your employees.
While you can create dedicated sites for departments, projects, and teams and easily arrange web parts to suit your processes, BizPortals 365 offers multiple theme options to perfectly align with your organization’s identity and branding.
After all, it’s not just about getting hundreds of features—it’s about tapping their full potential to drive greater organizational success.
Schedule a live demo, ask questions directly to our experts, and get a personalized walkthrough of BizPortals 365 intranet firsthand.
Table of Contents
- What is Collaboration in the Workplace?
- Why Do Teams Struggle to Collaborate?
- Understanding the Benefits of Collaboration in Workplace
- Key Elements for a Collaborative Workplace Culture
- Types of Workplace Collaboration Tools
- Strategies for building collaboration in the workplace
- BizPortals 365 Intranet: Transforming Workplace Collaboration for Greater Results
Step into a smarter digital workplace
Get a Free Product Tour