by guest contributor: Lucy Reed, founder of GigMine

Is employee collaboration the secret sauce to business success? That does seem to be the case if you look at the statistics – Not only do collaborative companies have five times better performance rates, but they’re 30 percent more innovative and significantly less likely to have burnt-out employees. Collaboration between your employees and teams creates a healthier work environment, essentially, and boosts work productivity.

Eight ways to build collaborative teams offers some suggestions on how you – as a manager, business owner, or other leader – could increase employee collaboration in your company:   

Promote open communication and idea-sharing

Transparent communication and idea-sharing are two foundational pillars of collaboration. If you’d like your employees to work well together, they need to be able to communicate and share ideas without fear of reprisal. You can encourage open communication by establishing trust between your employees, managers, and other personnel. When talking to them, speak clearly and concisely, don’t assume employees will see things the same way you do, and hear them out. Open communication is a skill that may need building up. 

Use tech and tools that can aid collaboration

Face-to-face collaboration can be a challenge in an office space due to space and time constraints. That’s where technology comes in. With the right tools, your employees will be able to communicate with each other without leaving their desks. Some organizations create in-house collaborative software for this purpose. Others use existing commercial tools like Slack (communication), Todoist (to-do list), and Asana (task manager). PCMag offers a good list.

Encourage feedback

Have you heard of the “feedback culture”? It emphasizes everyone in the organization – employees, managers, and executives – offering feedback to each other periodically. This is different because traditionally the only real feedback exchanged is quarterly or annual performance reviews. A feedback culture is a departure from that formula. It’s about a faster, more direct exchange of information. It’s less hierarchical and reliant on formal reviews. It can be difficult to implement and require much adjustment but can transform your organization in a good way.

Encourage employees to get to know each other

How well do your employees know each other? It’s easier to collaborate with someone you know well, as opposed to someone you know on a professional level only. Often, especially in bigger “siloed” companies, most employees don’t know each other well enough to approach each other, let alone have a conversation. It makes collaboration between teams and departments impossible. As such, if you don’t already, encourage team bonding through team-building activities and games. Informal events can also bring everyone closer together. 

Share examples of the collaboration you’d like to see

It’s not enough to share your intention of creating a collaboration culture in your workplace – you should, ideally, back that up with real-world examples for your employees to learn from and emulate. Without examples, your employees may not understand what’s expected of them. Humanyze offers practical examples that are simple and easy to implement like document sharing, video conferencing, and peer training.

Be collaborative yourself

As a leader or mentor figure in your organization, your employees will look up to you for cues on how to behave and operate. By being collaborative yourself, you give them permission and encouragement to be collaborative. Make it a point to talk to your employees, share and receive ideas, give them feedback, work with them on tasks, and mentor them.

Conclusion

Forcing collaboration is not a good idea – strike a balance between allowing people to be individuals and also to work together. Collaboration won’t happen overnight – it takes time for people to get to know, be comfortable with, and work together with each other. Persist and you will succeed in creating a wonderful, productive culture that would take your company to new heights.