Collaboration in the Workplace: 10 Benefits and Expert Examples
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Collaboration in the Workplace: 10 Benefits and Expert Examples

Collaboration is one of the best ways to uncover your team’s best ideas.

A collaborative workplace environment helps bring different skill sets together, and more times than not, it allows projects to efficiently kick off. True team collaboration keeps everyone on the same page whether your teams are in the office or working remotely .

The good thing is that successful collaboration is no longer limited to in-office brainstorms and long boardroom meetings. Some of the best ideas surface when people aren’t even in the same room!

But only when you use collaborative tools to streamline your process. It’s like finding that sturdy Swiss Army Knife that helps your teams collaborate—no matter the circumstance.

However, things like collaborative project management tools are only one piece of the puzzle. In this blog, we’ll look at how leaders can promote teamwork and collaboration in the workplace, the most common bottlenecks, and some best practices for the entire team. 💡

What is Collaboration in the Workplace?

Collaboration in the workplace is when two or more employees work together to achieve a common goal—typically through sharing specialized knowledge, skills, ideas, and resources as a way to benefit their company.

A collaborative workplace generates innovative solutions brought together and flushed out by diverse teams—sometimes across the entire organization. It allows individual team members to pull from a larger group to get more resources to efficiently complete a project.

Benefits of Creating Collaborative Teams at Work

A Queens University survey found 75% of employees think collaboration is essential in the workplace. But only about 39% of employees believe their company isn’t collaborative enough.

Queens University Collaboration Statistics

Stats via Queens University of Charlotte

A collaborative team culture fosters a stronger sense of community among coworkers. It can improve workplace collaboration, employee morale, and job satisfaction —all while reducing stress. The upside of team collaboration is seemingly endless, but there are many benefits to consider:

1. Successful collaboration uncovers creative ideas Innovative and unique ideas tend to bubble to the surface when they’re put in the same “room.” It’s easier to see connections you would have overlooked otherwise. And team members can actively talk through possibilities and brainstorm the best answers for team projects.

For example, if a design team brainstorms with the copywriters in real-time, each group gets insight into everyone’s specific role and duties to produce digital content in an efficient manner.

Brainstorm, plan, strategize, and streamline communication in real-time to ship projects faster with ClickUp Whiteboards

Brainstorm, plan, strategize, and streamline communication in real-time to ship projects faster with ClickUp Whiteboards

By building a greater understanding of the pain point they’re addressing, they can combine both visuals and text in a more efficient manner that maximizes the outcome. Considering different ideas together makes it more likely to come up with fresh, inventive solutions faster .

2. Employee collaboration drives productivity

When employees work with other team members on a project, more gets done in a shorter amount of time thanks to their combined efforts. The more productive team, the faster you close the feedback loop.

Assigned Comments in ClickUp Dos

Assigned comments ensure that action items are not lost, no matter where they are created

And with a faster feedback loop, your teams iterate on new ideas, workflows, or processes in real-time. In other words, encouraging collaboration in the workplace is one of the best ways to stay competitive. 🏆

3. Collaboration in the workplace improves morale (even for remote teams)

This one’s a biggie. When team members feel supported by their coworkers, they tend to be happier and more motivated. This leads to employees taking more initiative and ownership in their work.

In fact, research shows employees who collaborate are about 17% more satisfied with their job. If the goal is to nurture a productive work environment based on teamwork , the last thing you want is for team members to feel disengaged or out of the loop because they aren’t working together to tackle challenges.

Send and receive emails without leaving ClickUp  Manage your emails and work in one place and send and receive emails anywhere in ClickUp

This can be particularly tricky with remote teams and virtual collaboration. But having a centralized location for all of your teams’ work to get done is crucial to stay in sync.

4. Collaboration limits stress and workplace anxiety

Having a collaborative environment lowers stress levels by reducing workplace anxiety . There’s less stress when employees are dividing tasks, sharing workloads, and helping team members collaborate by using their specific skill sets.

Research from Harvard Business Review found 92% of employees experiencing stress at work is due to their team dynamics. Without effective collaboration, pinpointing gaps in processes can be overlooked and slow down (and anger) your team.

But when teams share knowledge and work together, there’s a greater opportunity for synchronized workflows and better team dynamics.

5. Effective collaboration builds stronger working relationships

Working together creates trust. If a team member trusts their coworkers, that worker forms better working relationships.

Collaboration means working from different perspectives. But knowing who said what is important to working toward the same goals.

ClickUp Annotation Features

ClickUp’s Annotation feature allows teams to assign comments on files for faster collaboration

The benefits of nurturing better working relationships through collaboration also contribute to lower turnover rates. Collaboration and team communication at work have been linked to a 50% reduction in employee turnover rates.

Bonus: Team communication apps & tools

6. Unified teams rise from efficient collaboration

Remote or hybrid work is the norm these days. This means it’s important to find ways to keep your team connected. As a team leader, you must first demonstrate collaboration and take initiative on the communication skills you expect to get work done.

It doesn’t matter if you have some people in the office or remote workers scattered across the globe—team leads must encourage employees to avoid silos, communicate with other teams, and find solutions to their bottlenecks.

ClickUp Hierarchy

ClickUp’s unique Hierarchy gives you the flexibility to organize teams of any size

That consistent collaboration occurs when the team develops trust and works in unison. But they need the right collaboration tools to connect to others across a digital workplace.

Working on projects together and having weekly video conference meetings allow teams and remote workers to connect on a deeper level and form better relationships.

How to Encourage Effective Collaboration at Work

Knowing workplace collaboration is a net positive is one thing. But encouraging it well enough that it sticks is another. So consider a few practical ideas.

1. Use project collaboration tools

Research suggests digital collaboration tools have the potential to unlock over $100 billion in value for companies. Why? Because they directly boost productivity by as much as 20% to 30%.

That’s a significant increase!

Collaboration Detection in ClickUp Whiteboards

Collaboration Detection allows teams to work and edit simultaneously in ClickUp Whiteboards

And it’s what collaborative project manager platforms like ClickUp are designed to achieve. With ClickUp as your collaboration “operating system,” your direct reports has an easier time collaborating with useful features like:

  • Built-in doc creation to shared project and process docs
    • Collaboration detection
      features that let you edit docs with each other in real-time, updating instantly
  • ClickUp Whiteboards
    for brainstorming sessions to collaborate digitally is great for remote collaboration and clearing the nervous workplace tension—especially in virtual meetings where no one wants to talk.

3. Invite people to brainstorm

When faced with a challenge, brainstorming is an effective way to allow team members to share ideas and their points of view to successfully collaborate.

However, to facilitate the brainstorming process, it should be done with the understanding that creativity is encouraged and all ideas are worth hearing.

Team leaders must create a safe space for everyone to brainstorm. A great way to do this is by explicitly asking everyone to actively participate and practice their active listening skills. Encourage group discussions to build a secure collaborative workspace so ideas are heard without judgment.

4. Integrate cross-team collaboration

Cross-team collaboration is another great way to foster teamwork in the workplace. Companies that encourage cross-functional teams provide opportunities for different departments and employees of varying skills to work together and learn from each other.

This will not only improve collaboration, but it allows employees to share key information and drive innovation and productivity.

Common Workplace Collaboration Blockers

Despite the benefits of collaborating on work, there are plenty of obstacles that teams must overcome. Many blockers stem from a lack of something—be it tools, soft skills, or existing workflows—rather than working with too much of any one thing.

However, one of the more common blockers to collaboration in the workplace is lacking collaboration software that frees employees and gives them everything for efficient problem-solving.

In fact, a Gartner report found roughly 80% of workers who use collaboration tools maintain productivity and efficiency in the workplace.

Let’s look at the specifics of some common blockers.

  • Disjointed work tools: It’s pretty common to see teams working with a handful of applications without any real workflow or work process. While one person may use one tool for documentation, another may use a different platform for task management. If those two tools aren’t communicating—or aren’t existing on the same platform—miscommunication, visibility issues, and delayed project timelines and how projects should be managed. By having clear principles, teams have an easier time working toward the same goal.

Plus, promoting collaboration encourages trust and respect, which are essential for productivity. Some of the most important principles are:

  • Respect: All team members should respect each other’s opinions and creativity while avoiding criticism that isn’t constructive. Though this is a nuanced principle, setting expectations from the beginning helps teams uphold each principle
  • Open-mindedness: Team members should not shut down new ideas and perspectives but rather be open to them
  • A shared purpose: Team members should be aware of the common goal they are working towards and how they are contributing to it. This is where centralized tools like ClickUp to start collaborating with your team.
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