There’s No U in Teams

Collaboration beats communication

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Theres No U in Teams
Collaboration

Published: June 28, 2019

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

Is it time to upgrade your business phone system?

It’s difficult to ignore the incredible transformation that the communication landscape has seen in recent years. Gradually, we’ve moved away from an environment filled with individual desk phones and devices in closed-off cubicles. Now, we’re discovering that teams can get more done and accomplish more when they’re connected in a truly unified and cohesive environment.

You may still have a personal identity and work, dealing with your own calls and projects. However, the overall status quo is less about “I” and more about “We” as we embrace the age of true collaboration.

As trends like remote working and digital transformation enter the forefront of the business landscape, collaboration tools are a necessity for any company. Not only can they improve company productivity by up to 30%, but they have the power to unlock endless new opportunities too.

Let’s explore the true potential of the modern team.

From Chaos to Cohesion: A Truly Aligned Environment

For years, we relied on various separate forms of communication to connect with coworkers. You’d send faxes and emails to your team members from other offices, share memos around the company, and plan lengthy meetings just to catch up with colleagues. The methods worked – to an extent – but they weren’t ideal. We were simply getting by with what we had.

While meetings and emails may still have a part to play in the business environment, we’re now discovering new ways to connect that are more seamless, consistent, and reliable. There’s less waiting around for a ping in your inbox or searching through endless content for information. Instead, we can communicate more naturally through instant messaging, video that mimics face-to-face interaction, and audio.

Most importantly? Collaborative tools take all of those forms of communication and link them together into one simple hub. This eliminates the need to spend a third of your work week, sorting through email for collaboration. What’s more, with things like @mentioning, private messages, and intelligent search, we can finally support the large percentage of managers that miss out on essential information because they simply can’t find it.

Collaboration apps are aligning and visualising the workstream – creating a digital environment where work can happen seamlessly, no matter which tool you need to use.

When all of the content, connections, and software you need is located in the same digital space, that also means that you don’t necessarily need to visit a specific office each day to get work done. Collaboration tools are breaking down the walls in the talent market.

Work is an Activity – Not a Place

One of the biggest transformational effects that collaborative tools have had on the workplace is in the way we now think about work. In the past, you used to “go to” work, waking up at 7 am each day to catch the tube to your office. Now, work isn’t a place you go to; it’s something you can do regardless of where you might be. Remote working programs have increased drastically as a result, at a rate of 159% over the last decade.

Now that employees can work from anywhere, at any time, there are more opportunities than ever before for companies to expand their hiring circle. There’s no need to try and find the talent that you need close to home if the perfect employee lives overseas. In a world where file sharing, screen sharing, and video conferencing are reliable and accessible opportunities, there’s no limit to where we can work.

Team leaders can finally select employees based on their ability to deliver value to their business, rather than focusing on the hours that they choose to work, or where they’re located. What’s more, with collaboration tools, remote workers don’t need to feel like second-class citizens in their business environment. Anyone can join in and share their ideas and insights. People can stay connected and involved wherever they are.

In the future, when things like virtual reality and augmented reality become more commonplace, it may even be possible to digitally place yourself into a work environment from halfway across the world.

Creating Tools to Get Work Done

Collaboration tools are part of a rising trend to transform the workforce into something more agile and dynamic. Now that the complexity of the workplace is on the rise, traditional boardrooms and offices are quickly being replaced with more dynamic and flexible workspaces. There’s even been a surge in the number of organisations replacing standard conference rooms with huddle rooms – now that huge business meetings are less necessary. Around 45 million small to medium huddle spaces were in use last year according to Wainhouse research.

Huddle rooms, when equipped with immersive collaboration technology, can spur meeting productivity by maintain the creative momentum of a group and providing access to useful information and essential data. Collaboration tools can not only help people to access the workplace wherever they are, but they also ensure that in the meeting room environment, but teams can also work more effectively too.

Since research shows that most businesses lose up to 15 minutes at the beginning of each meeting trying to get technology up and running, the ability of collaboration tools to reduce these problems is a significant benefit.

Collaboration isn’t just about bringing people together; it’s also about providing companies with the information they need to make informed decisions. By placing all of the critical data an employee needs in a shared workspace platform, companies can empower their teams to make informed and instant decisions wherever they are.

Technology that Just Works

In an environment where work happens quickly, in settings all around the world, teams need a stronger, more unified environment. Collaboration tools eliminate the dispersed options for communication in the workplace and provide people with access to unified solutions that just work. These tools don’t require any time-consuming training or confusing installation. Instead, they give your people access to everything they need in one synchronised environment.

As the workplace becomes increasingly distributed and agile, businesses need to embrace technology that supports people wherever they are, whatever they’re doing. Collaboration tools make communication in the workplace simpler, by ensuring that everyone can be a part of the team, no matter where they might be.

 

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