Essential Team Collaboration Statistics for 2023

Team collaboration facts and stats employers need to know

5
Team Collaboration Statistics
CollaborationInsights

Published: December 9, 2022

Robbie Pleasant

Robbie Pleasant

To say the nature of collaboration has changed over recent years would be a bit of an understatement. While collaboration once meant scheduling a time to gather in a meeting room and share ideas on a whiteboard in-person, it is now far more versatile, thanks in no small part to team collaboration platforms and apps.

Today, collaborating from anywhere is possible thanks to a plethora of virtual meeting environments, file and screen-sharing tools, and apps for synchronous and asynchronous communication alike.

These changes raise some important questions: what does today’s collaboration environment look like? How are teams and employees collaborating? And what tools do they use?

To answer these questions and more, we’ve looked at the latest statistics for team collaboration. Together, these stats show how collaboration has evolved and the role it plays in business environments.

The Benefits of Collaboration

First, we can look at what collaboration and collaboration tools can bring to businesses and their teams. What are the benefits of collaboration?

A report from Zippia shows that companies can reduce employee turnover rates by 50% by promoting communication and collaboration. Employees agree, as noted in a survey by Khris Digital, wherein 47% of employees stated they’d stay with a company if they can “work with a great team.”

Additionally, enabling employees to collaborate at work is good for morale, leading to a 17% increase in satisfaction.

The reports found that over 50% of workers in the United States rely on collaboration for their daily work. Even those who don’t rely on it still find it highly valuable, as 75% of employees say collaboration is “very important.”

Many employers also rely on collaboration tools, as 56% of employers use online collaboration tools to communicate with employees.

Reports also show that collaboration has a beneficial effect on efficiency, as employees working in collaborative settings were over 50% more effective at completing tasks than their coworkers who work independently and reported higher levels of engagement and success. A Deloitte survey also shows that, when employees collaborate, 73% do better work, 60% are more innovative, and 56% are more satisfied with their work.

Finances Online finds that collaboration also saves time, to the tune of about two hours per week for every employee.

That all adds up for businesses, as an international study by Deloitte found that workplace collaboration saves businesses thousands of dollars for each employee and helps increase sales by 27%.

This has led to more businesses investing in collaboration. The report from Finances Online indicates that the global collaboration market is on track to reach $13.5 billion by 2024, and research by ReportLinker finds that the market is on track to reach $85.8 billion by 2026.

When companies don’t enable collaboration, it can have big consequences for their teams. 86% of employees in leadership positions state that lack of collaboration is the largest cause of workplace failures.

How are we Collaborating (and Where Can We Improve)? 

Given how often collaboration involves remote and hybrid employees connecting with each other or with in-office workers, technology is a major aspect of modern collaboration. In fact, a survey from Alfresco finds that about 83% of employees depend on technology to collaborate.

Collaboration tools include a wide variety of technology, such as:

  • Video conferencing solutions (such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams)
  • Virtual whiteboards
  • File sharing
  • Instant messaging
  • Digital calendars
  • Project management solutions

Augmented reality and virtual reality are growing in popularity, as teams are using them to replicate an in-person collaborative experience from anywhere. Artificial intelligence is also a growing technology making its way into collaboration, being used for features like automatic transcripts and notes; Cisco reports that 90% of companies want to adopt a “cognitive collaboration” solution for their remote workers, bringing human intelligence and AI together.

However, those tools do not always create an easy, seamless experience, as 59% of employees find it difficult to use their company’s tools. Cisco found that 85% of surveyed employees frequently experience issues with online meetings, and 42% feel frustrated when they can’t join meetings easily.

This indicates that there is still room for collaboration technology to improve, and providers are frequently releasing new features, tools, and updates to make the collaboration experience easier.

How Often are we Collaborating?

Collaboration continues to grow in use and importance and shows no signs of stopping. Zippia’s report shows that workplace collaboration has increased by 50% over the past 20 years.

The report also found that how much employees collaborate, as well as how they collaborate, will vary based on whether they work fully remotely, fully in-office, or balance the two with hybrid work.

Employees who work in the office full-time tend to spend the most time collaborating, but that collaboration is overwhelmingly done in person, taking up 43% of their time compared to the 9% of their workdays spent collaborating virtually. This lines up with the report from Fit Small Business, which notes that nearly half of all workers surveyed say that collaboration is easier in the office.

Hybrid employees tend to spend about 21% of their time collaborating virtually, regardless of how many days per week they spend at home. Those that spend more time in the office will spend more of their time collaborating in person, which aligns with how in-person workers collaborate the most.

Employees who work remotely full-time tend to spend the least time collaborating, at about 27% of their time, although they still spend more time collaborating virtually than their remote and in-office coworkers tend to. (This makes sense, since remote employees don’t usually have the opportunity to collaborate in-person with anyone.)

Zippia’s report also finds that the top performers are also the employees who collaborate the most. Top-performing employees spend 45% of their time on collaborative work, splitting their time between teams and individual work nearly evenly. 

To Summarize

Collaboration is essential for businesses to grow and for their employees to succeed, especially with the nonstop expansion of remote and hybrid work. Employees who can collaborate easily have higher satisfaction rates, higher retention, more productivity, and greater efficiency compared to their peers who can’t work together as easily.

However, there are still challenges for collaboration, such as difficulty joining online meetings. These issues should be addressed as the technology grows, and businesses integrate new technology, such as AI and virtual reality.

Team collaboration is essential for businesses in all environments and of all sizes, for remote, in-office, and hybrid environments alike. In the years to come, collaboration technology will continue to advance, and more benefits will undoubtedly emerge.

Digital TransformationFuture of WorkHybrid WorkProject Management
Featured

Share This Post