Five tips for fostering great collaboration in the workplace

The positive impact of collaboration on business success has long been acknowledged. Employees who work in a collaborative environment achieve far better performance, are more motivated, productive and innovative. Collaboration offers countless benefits, not least helping employees feel like they are part of a team and integral to the success of the company, and more and more businesses are making collaboration one of their main priorities. Here are five easy strategies for fostering effective team collaboration in your organisation:

1. Identifying unique strengths

Everybody is different. This means that everybody has different skills and talents to bring to the table. Identifying what each employee is good at means you can then give them tasks that suit their unique strengths. This will make their individual contribution valuable to the overall success of the whole team and highlight the importance of working together towards a shared goal.

2. Overlap zones

A great way of fostering workplace collaboration organically is through your office design. The creation of ‘overlap zones’ or shared spaces where people from different teams bump into each other is a great way to prompt conversations and innovation across teams and departments.

3. Hot desking

Similar to ‘overlap zones’, hot desking prompts collaboration through flexibility and organic interaction. Instead of being restricted to assigned seating arranged according to team, employees can move around and interact with different people from different teams and departments.

4. Creative brainstorming

Organise regular brainstorming sessions in a less formal setting than a meeting room. A place where employees feel relaxed, positive and creatively stimulated is vital to fostering inspired brainstorming sessions and innovative collaboration.

5. Celebrating collaborating success

Employee recognition is the cornerstone of workforce productivity. This is particularly the case with rewarding successful collaboration, as it not only helps to foster teamwork and establish cooperation as a benchmark for success, it also highlights and cements the benefits of looking outside the box and working with other people, particularly with different skillsets and ideas.  

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