A buzzword on everybody’s lips these days is collaboration. When you look at a stale office environment, when people aren’t making the most of their potential, it’s up to you to provide the appropriate encouragement. If your business is struggling to stay afloat, this may be time to incorporate some new and dynamic methods to how your business communicates. Collaboration isn’t just one of those overused terms now, but it can actually save a business. How can you implement this?
Incorporating Collaboration Tools
You can get an abundance of collaboration tools for pretty much any cost. And there are numerous computer support and cloud solutions that provide collaboration platforms and tools. It’s all about finding the right ones. This depends on your working set up. Collaboration tools can benefit remote workers that need to liaise on a specific task but they are on opposing sides of the world. Even if you have a business that has employees dotted around the planet, there’s no excuse for them not to work together.
Encouraging Brainstorming Sessions
The tools are merely the pad and pen; it’s the employees that need to come up with the goods. Everybody has their own opinion on brainstorming sessions; some believe it to be counterproductive when the focus could be spent on important tasks. But there are plenty of big businesses out there that actively encourage employees to come up with ideas that may very well get used. Brainstorming sessions can seem quite forced. Everybody’s vying for attention, and it could very well be a case of who shouts the loudest, but if you set the scene and make it an informal setting, at a time when morale is high and workload is low, perhaps on a Friday afternoon, you can capitalize on the positive environment, not to mention that very tangible Friday feeling!
Going To The Employees
You could find that your employees are full to the brim with ideas, but they’ve not had the opportunity to communicate themselves. You can do this in a brainstorming session, or you can give them the opportunity to pitch an idea. From there, if the idea “has legs”, you can assign a team to work on the idea. Rather than having random people work together with no sense of cohesion, if you spot potential in certain people based on the project, this is a simple way to encourage collaboration, but you are also putting your workers firmly in the driving seat. They are in the spotlight, ready to help your business grow.
And this is one of the great reasons collaboration work so well now, far from it being a buzzword, it’s a very simple way not just to generate ideas, but to improve the culture of the working environment. Collaboration has never been easier, but it’s surprising how many companies stick to the antiquated notions of teamwork and doing the job you’re “supposed” to do. If you want to create a holistic business that nurtures its employees, collaboration is most definitely the way forward!
