How to Improve Team Collaboration in Your Business

Improving the way that individuals and teams within the workplace environment interact, collaborate and work effectively and efficiently together is an ongoing yet critical challenge for almost all organisations, regardless of their size.

A successful company relies the fluid relationships, first class communication and a sense that employees and team members truly know and understand each other in order that they can make the most of their working time together. The challenge is in identifying ways to im-prove these interpersonal elements alongside offering the mechanisms, tools and resources that allow teams to collaborate efficiently, seamlessly and quickly regardless of location, across various departments and even differing skill-sets. Boosting the way your team collaborates will help you to boost overall productivity in your organization and with this in mind we have put together a few tips on how best to amplify collaboration in your business.

Teams that play together, stay together

Playtime has been at the centre of community, tribe and team building success stories since long before the idea of a boardroom was invented. Humans bond whilst they are trying to explore and the advantages of taking your team out of their comfort zone, away from the office setting and in front of some new challenges together are bountiful. Whether it’s a simple sport, like after work soccer, nature-bound water sports like paddleboarding or a day out un-dertaking prescribed problem solving activities with a third party organizer, team building ac-tivities engender better relationships amongst employees, increase collaborative problem solv-ing skills, take communication to another level and improve confidence levels.

Make everything easy

If there are perceived road-blocks in front of your team players when it comes to collabora-tion then you are going to struggle. Open up the channels of communication and allow free flowing feedback to filter from your employees all the way up the ladder and back down again. Their ideas, bouncing between teams and departments being heard and responded to show that you are clearly investing in their thoughts, plans and ability to work together. The more streamlined the processes within your organization, the easier it will become for all parties to work together more efficiently.

Your team needs the right tools to flourish

In the digital environments in which we all increasingly work there is nothing more critical to collaborative success than the right tools for the right jobs. A well-reputed place should be the first choice for you where you can get some of the top furniture brands and get some great storage effective products like trundle beds. Collaborative software platforms, systems and networks are crucial to ensure that employees from every location, every depart-ment and at different levels of ability and administrative access can work together seamlessly and efficiently; solving problems together, asking and answering questions, accessing project specific data and assets and managing calendars cooperatively. Software such as Asana can help teams to work collaboratively and remotely, both Google and Microsoft have a plethora of collaborative software suites and companies such as Brandfolder are experts when it comes to efficiently, quickly and securely accessing and managing digital files. Your digital assets are in constant use and your team need to be able to work with them fluidly.

Keep communication open

Your responsibility as an employer is to facilitate free-flowing communication amongst your team members. If they feel trusted to share information with each other, cohesively prob-lem solve and push ideas back and forth at all levels then their collaborations are going to be all the more productive. Always set time aside to review the communication status within your staff and listen to any improvements that are suggested or identify any training or support that might be required to keep things moving in the right direction.

Creating a team-centric environment

To maintain a solid team you should always look for opportunities to help the individuals within your organization identify as team players; part of a cohesive whole rather than isolated cogs in a confusing machine. This starts on day one where you eschew routine powerpoint presentations and instead assign mentors to new team members, promoting collaborative in-ductions and team cooperation at the get-go. Keep that ethos alive in a trust based environ-ment where the success of the team is rewarded; where the actions of the many working to-gether lead to the success that your business is striving for and don’t forget to treat your stars with external activities, encouraging them to socialize outside of the office, boosting their communication, confidence to work together and professional chemistry.
With a team focused approach to work and play, the right collaborative tools and software alongside a communicative environment driven by a team based work ethic you will soon have your team firing on all cylinders.