If you’ve been looking at unified communications solutions, you might have noticed that they like to boast how they can “improve collaboration” or include “collaboration tools.” Collaboration, like communication itself, has changed over the recent years as technology has evolved to enable remote collaboration.
In the past, if you wanted to collaborate with a team, you’d need to bring everyone together into the same room or office. But today’s business teams aren’t always located in the same space—some coworkers can be half a world apart and still need to collaborate.
That’s made digital collaboration a necessity for today’s businesses. In fact, according to a research report from Zippia, over half of today’s workers in the USA say that their jobs are reliant on collaboration technology. Over 50% of employers also said they use online collaboration tools and social media to communicate with their employees.
On top of that, employees who have access to digital collaboration tools tend to be more satisfied with their job and workplace culture,
All this raises one question: what does “collaboration” really mean?
Communication and Collaboration
We’re not looking for a simple dictionary definition of “collaboration,” but rather, what it means in a business setting. Collaboration brings teams and employees together to share ideas and work together on projects, but it’s more than just that—collaboration is about generating new ideas and needs to be a constant part of company culture.
Enabling collaboration means giving employees tools to help them stay connected with their coworkers from anywhere, and let them effectively share and manage files and projects. This goes beyond basic workplace communication.
While communication and collaboration services are often included together as part of a unified communications strategy, they’re not the same. Communication makes collaboration possible, but it’s only a piece of the whole. While communication is about sharing knowledge and information, collaboration involves putting that information to use together.
For instance, if you call someone over VoIP to discuss an upcoming project, you’re communicating. But when that turns into a brainstorming session, complete with notes, courses of action, and strategy, you’re collaborating.
This distinction is important because while you can communicate without collaborating, you can’t collaborate without communicating.
In the end, it comes down to a new, modern definition of collaboration: collaboration as a tool for digital success for a changing workforce.
Collaboration platforms allow remote workers and dispersed teams to work together in any environment, across devices and physical locations. This also enables businesses to access the talent they need from anywhere, without compromising teamwork. Collaborative tools also help create a universal hub for sharing and using business data, and as collaboration allows companies more flexibility for their teams, businesses are finding new ways to be flexible and inclusive with their teams and hiring.
Many unified communications vendors are now including collaboration services as part of their platforms, in order to increase the value of their solutions and provide new features for users. A UCaaS solution with an array of collaboration tools helps users connect and work on projects together without needing to switch between applications or juggle multiple screens.
The Range of Collaboration Technology
Today’s collaboration tools take many shapes and bring a wide array of features to businesses. While in-person collaboration sessions may use whiteboards and meeting rooms, remote collaboration has managed to replicate those with virtual whiteboards and video conference rooms, along with an assortment of tools to make sharing and working together easier.
Collaborating can include teams meeting in a Slack channel to converse while sharing documents and tossing ideas around, or joining in a Microsoft Teams meeting while they share PowerPoint presentations over the call. There are multiple kinds of collaboration tools and technology designed to help enable these kinds of meetings and sharing.
As collaboration tools and apps are designed to help teams and employees work together productively and quickly, there are a number of features they can provide. These often include:
- Real-time messaging
- Voice and video calls and conferences so employees can talk and work together from anywhere
- File sharing and team editing
- AI features like virtual assistants and data analytics
- Presence features to show when team members are available
- Screen sharing
- Connections to virtual whiteboards
- Voice and video recording and transcriptions
- Integrations with other business applications
These features can bring a wide array of collaboration capabilities to an organization, helping employees work together swiftly and more easily.
Can’t Collaborate Without Communicating
As collaboration technology continues to evolve, it’s important to remember that it can’t exist without effective communication. If teams can’t share their thoughts and ideas with each other, then they’re not going to make much progress; it’s hard to collaborate without anyone being on the same page as their coworkers.
As such, communication still needs to be reliably available across the channels and devices the teams use, otherwise, they simply won’t be able to collaborate. Companies that try to push collaboration before they’ve finished refining their communications stack are setting themselves back.
Collaboration happens when employees have the means to communicate over the channels they prefer, accompanied by the tools and features that let them share ideas, files, and workloads.
And that is what collaboration really means.
