The benefits of workplace collaboration

The last few years, have seen a surge of people talking about the importance of workplace collaboration and teamwork. That’s because when done right, workplace collaboration can have a positive impact on your team and organization. With the outbreak of COVID-19 and the challenges it has brought to the workplace, teamwork and collaboration have become more important than ever.

Let us take a closer look at the positive impact they can have on your team.

Benefits of teamwork & collaboration

More perspectives, more innovation
Bringing teammates and their different perspectives together can have a great impact on the collaborative process. It can spark innovative ideas and create out-of-the box solutions to complex problems, that individuals may not have come up with on their own. 

And with the addition of diversity, you sure are aiming for success. According to a McKinsey study, teams with members from diverse backgrounds (gender, age, ethnicity, etc.) are more creative and perform better by up to 35% compared to more homogeneous teams. That is because diverse teams can provide a 360-degree picture, which can lead to an exponential increase in ideas. Another study from Tufts University comes to affirm this, suggesting that just merely being exposed to diversity can shift the way you think.

More collaboration, happier teams 
Teams that collaborate well report higher levels of team satisfaction. Collaborating on different projects helps team members bond, strengthen relationships, foster respect and create a sense of openness. Happy teams can directly influence the quality of work and ultimately impact an organisation's success.

An Atlassian survey of more than 1,000 team members across a range of industries, found that when honest feedback, mutual respect, and personal openness are encouraged, team members are 80% more likely to report higher emotional well-being. And happy employees is a truly worthwhile goal, as they are more productive than unhappy employees.

Teamwork sparks individual growth
Team settings are also great for members to explore their personal growth. For one thing, when there is collaboration and work is divided between colleagues, employees can spend more time to grow their skills. But that’s not all. In these settings, where individuals are working together, constantly involved in each others’ work, they discover new concepts from colleagues with different experiences and learn from someone else’s mistakes, which helps sidestep future errors.

In addition, working in a team can help individuals better recognise their strengths and address their weaknesses, ultimately making them a better team member, and even a better person.

Optimized workflows
A team that collaborates successfully will most certainly improve company-wide processes and individual workflows. Collaboration can make your team more productive and free up time in employees' schedule for other tasks. While when adding digital collaboration tools, employees are given the ability and flexibility to work and take on problems, whenever and wherever they are. Employees can chat, work, and share files and data with teammates much easier, which leads to decisions taken quicker and work done faster. When employees are always in the loop, know what’s happening in the company, they are left with much-needed space to brainstorm and think of better ways to move the business forward.

This has a direct impact on customer experience as team members act quicker when your clients need them.

Sharing the workload eases burnout
Increased team collaboration is a great remedy for burnout. Burnout is a key challenge in the workplace, with a Gallup study showing that from nearly 7,500 full-time employees, 23% of them were feeling burned out very often or always. Sharing the workload is ideal to this challenge.

Additionally, team members can provide emotional support to each other, as they are able relate to their colleagues workload and understand the demands and stress of completing work, better than managers.

Working in a team helps team members take risks
When you work alone, you might be hesitant to take that extra risk. Everyone is scared of failure, after all. But when you work on a team, you know you have the support of everyone in it to fall back on, in case of failure. With this sense of increased security team members usually take that extra kind of risk.

Yet, it’s important to point out here, that size does matter. A recent research suggests that the most disruptive ideas often come from small teams, possibly because larger teams argue more, which can get in the way of coming up with those big ideas.

Reap the benefits of workplace collaboration

Strong teamwork facilitates quicker communication and collaboration, while it helps to get work done effectively, improving an organisation’s workflow and increasing productivity.

With collaborative tools such as Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence, you can develop new ways to work productively, create an efficient workflow, better ways to brainstorm and come up with new solutions to age-old organizational problems. Βy integrating the two you can provide your team everything it needs to organise and manage agile projects, saving time and making faster progress.

It is up to you to choose how you can benefit from these tools for the success of your business. We are here to help you out, give us a shout out!