What is Workplace Collaboration?

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Teamwork and cooperation in companies positively affect company performance. In fact, according to researches, it has been stated that the performance of companies that carry out their work in cooperation is 5 times higher than the performance of companies that do not cooperate. Workplace collaboration between employees ensures that information, time and other resources are shared for the benefit of all concerned. As employees collaborate, the team becomes more productive.

Definition of Workplace Collabration

Collaboration in the workplace is about the people working within the company. Collaboration means that an employee works in harmony with other people working in different departments so that the work done is efficient and produces great results.

Why is Workplace Collaboration Important?

Collaboration within the company fosters creativity and innovation and helps decision-making by considering different aspects. In this way, cooperation enables to offer better products/services to customers and increase the performance of the company.
A healthy cooperation has a motivating and empowering feature for employees. Team members can learn new skills and gain different perspectives by collaborating with different people.
Collaboration helps to develop a sense of belonging. Thanks to collaboration, all members of a team feel valued for their contributions and embrace their work more. Thus, his loyalty to the company also increases.
It is very important for companies that use the remote working model to focus on collaboration. Some companies feel that working remotely will have negative effects on collaboration. However, employees working from home are also encouraged to participate in intra-company cooperation and a sense of belonging is created.

What are the Benefits of Workplace Collaboration?

Innovation

The biggest benefit of workplace collaboration is innovation. Employees come together and try to solve a difficult problem together and come up with an innovative idea. Teamwork has an innovative structure that encourages problem-solving. For this reason, it produces better and unique solutions than people working separately.

Loyalty

People who work in a team have a higher sense of friendship, ownership and belonging than those who work alone. For this reason, workplace collaboration brings with it increased productivity, employee loyalty and employee retention.

Learning

In teamwork, employees gain new knowledge by benefiting from each other’s resources as they work together. In addition, new hires learn a lot of useful information from experienced professionals. Therefore, teamwork facilitates the onboarding process by creating an environment for learning and skill sharing.

5 Skills Required to Collaborate

One of the best things to do to ensure collaboration in the workplace is developing social skills. Mastering certain core skills for collaboration makes teamwork more effective.

1. Goal Setting

When doing teamwork, everyone needs to have a good understanding of the purpose of the project, its vision, and what it needs to do to be successful. Having transparency at the beginning of the project brings everyone together for a common purpose and ensures their dedication to achieve.

2. Communication

It is very important to establish strong communication within the team. For this reason, it is necessary to give clear information to the employees about what the work to be done is and when it will be finished. All current situations should be communicated to other members of the team when there are any changes regarding the project, when the expected results are realized or not.

3. Active Listening

Even if the details of how the project will progress and who should do what are clear, it is very important to get the opinions, feedback and recommendations of the team members.

4. Problem solving

When a problem arises during the project process, it is necessary to analyze and solve the problem calmly as a team, without blaming anyone. In other words, employees should focus on finding solutions instead of blaming each other. Thus, an atmosphere of trust is created among team members and they feel comfortable communicating with each other and being transparent even if there are any problems.

5. Time management

The last essential skill for collaborating is time management. Time management is a very important skill for prioritizing tasks, scheduling work according to this priority, and determining delivery dates.

In summary;

The secret to innovation and creativity in the workplace is collaboration between teams. When people feel safe, valued and appreciated in a workplace, the company will be successful and efficient.