How To: Communication & Collaboration = Productivity
What makes collaboration so effective for engagement?
There are two core traits that define effective collaboration tools as engaging an employee, and enhancing productivity:
1) Visualisation: Human beings are visual creatures, and tend to work better when we can see what we’re working on. It’s easier to see something than interpret
it as described (as the old truism states: A picture is worth a thousand words). Furthermore, we tend to develop a stronger connection with something or someone when we can see them and their body language. This is why video conferencing is such a powerful tool (once people start turning it on); in addition to being able to see the person or people we’re interacting with, it also allows for screen sharing and co- authoring.
2) Feedback: Most of us are stuck in “email jail,” and end up using email as our primary versioning control and document management tool. Email was not created with that role in mind, however. If you email a document or spreadsheet to a colleague for their input, you then need to wait for them to get the email, make changes, track those changes, and send the updated document back so you can implement them. If you are working in a team, then you need to also consolidate all input, resolve conflicts, and produce a new “clean” document.
It’s a long and laboured process and a significant inhibitor to productivity. Collaboration tools do away with this lengthy process completely, allowing for the feedback process to happen in real time. The team can instantly pull up a shared version of a document, make adjustments, and finalise it within the span of a meeting.
Any collaboration tool that addresses these two traits will immediately enhance both engagement and productivity within an organisation. Employees, whether remote or in the office, maintain an immediate presence and connection with their teams, avoiding the alienating side effects of being remote, and sustaining their level of engagement in the work. Furthermore, the immediacy of the interactions means documents, spreadsheets and similar can be completed quickly, decisions can be made on the spot, and items can be actioned immediately. Most importantly, no one on the team is left tearing their hair out trying to work out which document is the ‘final’ one.
Building the foundations for collaboration
Ultimately, productivity is driven by the implementation of technology. Through the roll-out of cloud-based applications and adoption of collaboration tools, organisations can migrate away from email being the principle vehicle for communication, and into 2020, we will see more organisations of all sizes look to adopt these tools.
Failure to do so will be costly. Organisations with inefficient collaboration tools will not be able to capitalise on flexible and mobile working capabilities. This will make it hard to attract talent, will affect morale, and will make it more difficult to spend as much time on the road meeting clients as competitors will. The end result will be a less nimble, more monolithic operation.
Organisations will need to adapt quickly, too. Gartner’s predication is by the end of 2022, 70 per cent of teams will rely on workstream collaboration as the principle means of communicating and collaborating. This speed of adoption comes with risks – most significantly, if a business adopts collaboration tools without a sound strategy, the tools will go unused for introducing new inefficiencies into the workflow. One of the key traits that will define a successful collaboration solution is cohesiveness, whereby the entire set of tools used in communication will be integrated and work natively with one another. A user should be able to log in through a single sign-on and have immediate access to all their collaboration tools from within the one platform, which would include presence, the address book for their teams, voice and video communications, sharing and storage.
Top tips for collaboration adoption
Establishing a collaborative environment requires a change management program put in place to transition people away from the dependency on traditional email and telephony. In engaging with a partner around collaboration, there are five key “tips and tricks” to keep in mind to ensure a smooth transition:
- Find complete solutions
One of the greatest risks to the adoption of collaboration tools is the interoperability of applications. One of the reasons email was able to carve out such a large portion of use is that a standard was developed (SMTP) to allow rival email services to “talk” to one another. So far, the collaboration space isn’t as similarly aligned, and one of the quickest ways to stop people using collaborative apps is when the environment doesn’t work seamlessly. For this reason, finding complete solutions that seamlessly cover conferencing, messaging, presence, and document sharing will be important in overcoming organisational resistance to the new technology.
2. Drive collaboration from the top down
If your company’s executives or executive sponsors are not using presence and messaging, and continue to rely on email, then you can be sure the rest of the organisation will also continue to be stuck in the past. The successful shift to collaborative platforms requires a change management program that needs to be led proactively from the top, with a focus on demonstrating the benefits to the wider team.
3. Understand that collaboration tools are about empowerment, not restriction
As an example: If a company were to adopt a set of tools to enable remote working, but then started to micromanage the remote staff with incessant “check in” meetings and messaging, the solution will ultimately fail. It’s important to define clear KPIs (based on outcomes rather than inputs) and model what the success of the remote working solution might be. Once the context has been set, it’s important the organisation step back and allow employees to use the tools to realise the promise of enhancing individual productivity, rather than creating new inhibitions to their working day.
4. Ensure a secure foundation first
There is an ongoing perception that security in the cloud is something that organisations need to be concerned about, but in reality many on- premises environments are insecure themselves, and by working with a leading partner in the cloud, much of the security is handled by the provider. In working with a reliable technology provider, such as Microsoft, the organisation can be confident that the security profile is paramount, and management around permissions, profiles and logins is simultaneously simple and robust.
5. Understand that “collaboration” does not mean the same thing as “communication”
Communication tools, such as email or the traditional phone line, are simple and established tools to allow one person to share information with another. The problem with communication tools is information is often lost when trying to broaden the flow of information to more people. Emails get lost, and phone conversations across a chain can be distorted. Collaboration is more than just rolling out a new set of communication tools, it’s about providing an environment in which groups of people can work together in real-time.
Understanding the difference between the two is often critical for the success of a collaboration solution; in many cases organisations roll out new and shiny communication tools under the assumption of “collaboration,” only to discover it’s not delivering the promised productivity boost. Actual productivity gains will be seen when the solution being delivered is more than a suite of communication tools, but rather a blended, fully integrated solution that places its focus on work outcomes, rather than the means of communicating.
Engaging with ELB to help develop and implement a collaboration plan will provide your organisation with a necessary productivity boost moving into 2020