There are significant benefits to your bottom line when collaboration pervades your entire organization, including engaged employees, talent retention and attraction, greater velocity, and profitability. But these aren’t the only advantages of working in a group. A collaborative culture is the single most important factor in a company’s longevity.
The 11 Advantages of Working in a Group
Here are the 11 benefits we’ve identified, as well as why cooperation is so important in any company’s day-to-day operations:
1. Increased Organizational Flexibility
When collaboration improves, the organization’s ability to deal with rapid change improves as well. When client preferences change or disruptive technologies enter the picture, teamwork makes it easier to pivot. In fact, work approaches like Agile and Scrum, which allow teams to be more flexible and responsive, are built on the foundations of teamwork and collaboration.
2. Employees Who Are Involved
Unfortunately, only 33% of employees are actively involved. As a result, if you don’t work on employee engagement on a regular basis, your firm could be jeopardized. And improving cooperation, which fosters a sense of camaraderie among your employees, is one of the most effective methods to engage them. Widespread collaboration results in fully engaged employees who are willing to take on new projects and who view change as a challenge that will propel them to the next level.
3. Employees who are healthier
You might wonder how excellent teamwork can promote worker health. So, if you truly want to improve everyone’s health, foster a values-driven culture that values teamwork and professionalism. When you treat your employees like people rather than cogs in a machine, and make sure their supervisors focus on positive relationships, you can say goodbye to the lethal stress levels that contribute to poisonous health issues. Many studies show that health and wellness initiatives imposed on employees are ineffective. Instead, why not focus on improving teamwork and culture?
4. Meetings that are more productive
Meetings run more smoothly when people collaborate well. Workers require fewer meetings as they complete their jobs and use tools to document work progress or assign work that has still to be completed, thanks to proactive teamwork enriching the corporate culture. When meetings are required, there is more proactive information sharing, greater involvement, and greater support for one another’s efforts.
5. It’s more appealing to top talent
When it comes to hiring top talent, collaboration provides your company an edge. Job candidates that are highly driven want to work for someone they admire and believe they can learn from. Millennials enjoy the opportunity to participate, interact, and learn from senior management, according to research on millennials in the workplace. As a result, if your organization already has a collaborative culture, you’ve laid the groundwork for attracting great talent, particularly from the younger generation.
6. Business Velocity Acceleration
You can bring products to market faster if your company has a collaborative culture. Teamwork and communication help to speed up the entire process and make producing anything easier. As a result, the entire organization’s potential to produce value accelerates.
7. Higher Rates of Retention
What are the benefits of increased employee engagement? Workers who are happier and more fulfilled. Why would they want to quit if their work is fulfilling, their coworkers are all generous team players, and they are receiving the recognition they desire?
8. Novel Concepts
Collaboration is never simple. It causes as much friction as it produces in terms of productive productivity. But what’s the silver lining to all that strife between personalities and work styles? It generates fresh, exciting thoughts. And without such fresh, innovative ideas, your company would languish in mediocrity. Take a look at Yahoo! as an example.
9. Improved Stakeholder Alignment
When discussing collaboration, it’s a good idea to pay specific attention to external collaboration with your consumers, partners, and vendors – the stakeholders who are directly affected by your project and product. If you can include their comments into your product development process, the customer’s genuine wants and the features of your product will be more aligned. Win-win.
10. Individual Productivity Enhancement
In teams, implementing collaborative processes and networking tools can boost productivity by 20-30%. Individual workers’ goals are reached faster and with greater quality results when any team adopts tools or processes that make cooperation and team communication more efficient.
11. Profitability Boost
Then there’s the bottom line, of course. Collaboration makes it better. Because once you’ve hired all of the superstar geniuses and created a culture that matches their abilities, they’ll start to work on coming up with the new ideas that will move you forward and bring in the bacon. Everyone is pleased. Isn’t that oversimplified? Perhaps. When Google asked what improvements would have the biggest influence on their company’s overall profitability, 56 percent of respondents said teamwork would be the most important element.
Now is the time to start working on your teamwork. Collaboration is the one component that your company needs in order for everything else to fall into place – talent, creativity, productivity, and profitability. It’s necessary for your survival. So get to work on turning your office into a hive of collaboration!
