5 advantages of collaborative work
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Collaborative work is a way of working in which hierarchies fade and employees combine their skills to reach a common goal. Its five main advantages:
- Less time lost: a project’s conversations and files live in one place, so nobody digs through four mailboxes to find the right version.
- More flexibility and responsiveness: where each person works stops dictating how the project moves.
- A better atmosphere: everyone’s work and initiatives become visible, which gradually builds trust.
- Easier knowledge sharing: know-how leaves individual heads and private folders and becomes available to the team.
- Higher productivity: less time spent searching, chasing and arbitrating, so more time on the work itself.
- None of this comes from the tool: it requires knowing who decides what, where information lives, and how a decision gets made. Without that, collaboration produces overload rather than time saved.
According to L’Internaute, collaborative work is a way of working in which hierarchies vanish and where employees combine their creativity and skills in order to achieve a common goal.
With the “culture of sharing” growing in companies, it is no coincidence that many collaborative tools have been developed in recent years.
Indeed, moving towards a more collaborative work environment has clear advantages, which are essential for any manager or Human Resources director who feels a need to change the way people work in their company.
Several solutions now exist to make team collaboration smoother. Talkspirit is one of them: a European collaboration platform built to simplify how information circulates and how decisions get made at work.
Here is our selection of the five main advantages of collaborative work:
Limiting time losses
Saving time is proudly ranked first among the advantages we have chosen to present to you. And for a good reason: this is a significant advantage, which is particularly noticeable and valuable (in terms of working time and therefore in euros!). After all, collaborative work often implies using collaborative tools. As a result, information is centralized on a dedicated platform, in order to increase accessibility and therefore the productivity of teams.
This has several effects, which could not be more positive:
- Exchanges using a collaborative platform replace internal emails;
- All these exchanges are gathered in the same place, and are accessible in real time by all stakeholders, who can thus easily interact;
- Project management and monitoring are simplified and much less time-consuming,
- No more browsing sessions, digging through your entire mailbox to find a file you can’t get your hands on.
Read also: How to develop collaborative work in companies
Gaining flexibility and being more responsive
The value of collaborative work is therefore temporal, yet it is also spatial.
Working more collaboratively and using collaborative tools allows indeed a high geographical flexibility. Once you are equipped with a collaborative platform, nothing prevents you from working efficiently on a project from the comfort of your countryside house, remotely, with colleagues located in Paris, Dubai or Sao Paulo!
Working in a team also allows you to be more responsive, when dealing with unexpected events and difficulties. By gathering all the data and exchanges in the same place, each team member can stay informed in real time about the progress of the project, the documents exchanged, and the obstacles encountered.
Improving the atmosphere at work
Collaborative work obviously means working with others. The days of working alone in front of your screen, working on what you will say during your weekly meeting are a thing of the past.
Working in a team allows you to exchange ideas between colleagues, valuing each other’s work and initiatives, and gradually establishing a trusting atmosphere. Kindness weaves itself and settles in. Real cohesion is formed between employees. The working atmosphere is therefore more relaxed, more open and certainly more enjoyable.
Encouraging the sharing of knowledge
Collaborative work allows people from very different backgrounds, trainings and experiences to work together. It is therefore a favorable environment for mutual aid and the pooling of skills within the group.
The use of collaborative tools, such as an enterprise social network like Talkspirit, encourages emulation within a group. It also simplifies the acquisition of new skills and new working methods.
Read also: 4 tips for effective remote team collaboration
Being more productive
Collaborative work is particularly developing thanks to the introduction of these new tools and collaborative platforms. These may be simple video conferencing tools, such as digital workplaces or corporate social networks.
These numerous tools are all designed to simplify the exchange and sharing of documents. This saves time, energy and streamlining, which makes it possible to be more efficient, more productive and achieve better results.
What these advantages actually depend on
None of these five advantages comes from the tool. They come from how an organisation distributes information and decisions. A team that opens a collaboration platform without changing anything else simply moves its emails into a feed, and finds the same delays in a new shape.
Three conditions separate collaboration that saves time from collaboration that costs it:
- Knowing who decides what. Without explicit roles, opening a topic to everyone multiplies opinions and postpones the call. That is the mechanism behind decision fatigue, and it is solved by distributing authority, not by adding another meeting.
- Knowing where information lives. When the same document exists in four tools, the promised centralisation turns into information overload. One home per type of content beats one more platform.
- Knowing how a decision is made. An explicit decision framework, backed by collaborative decision-making tools, turns discussion into commitment. That is the step taken by organisations moving towards shared governance.
Collaborative work is an organisational choice before it is a software choice. Tools make that choice sustainable day to day, they do not make it for you.
| Advantage | What actually changes | What it takes to get it |
|---|---|---|
| AdvantageLess time lost | What actually changesA project’s conversations and files live in one place instead of in separate mailboxes | What it takes to get itOne home per type of content, and the deliberate retirement of duplicate channels |
| AdvantageMore flexibility and responsiveness | What actually changesWhere people sit stops dictating how a project moves | What it takes to get itA written, asynchronous way of working, not just meetings held over video |
| AdvantageA better atmosphere | What actually changesEveryone’s work becomes visible, initiatives get noticed | What it takes to get itA respected right to disconnect, otherwise visibility turns into surveillance |
| AdvantageEasier knowledge sharing | What actually changesKnow-how leaves people’s heads and private folders | What it takes to get itSomeone is accountable for keeping that knowledge current, otherwise it goes stale |
| AdvantageHigher productivity | What actually changesLess time spent searching, chasing and arbitrating | What it takes to get itClear roles and a clear decision framework, otherwise collaboration adds round trips |
In addition to these five advantages of collaborative work, there are even more benefits: a better collective intelligence, increased transparency within companies, a better sense of belonging… Collaborative work is revolutionizing the daily lives of many employees.
Setting up a corporate social network is thus a first step towards the future of work! The Talkspirit teams are at your service to help you through this transition. As our CEO Philippe Pinault likes to remind us, the future of work is already here.
Author: Paul Maubareyt
FAQ
According to L'Internaute, collaborative work is a way of working in which hierarchies vanish and where employees combine their creativity and skills in order to achieve a common goal.
Collaborative work often implies using collaborative tools, so information is centralized on a dedicated platform. Exchanges on that platform replace internal emails, are gathered in the same place and accessible in real time by all stakeholders, project management and monitoring become much less time-consuming, and there is no more digging through your entire mailbox to find a file.
Yes. Using collaborative tools allows a high geographical flexibility: once you are equipped with a collaborative platform, you can work efficiently on a project remotely with colleagues located in Paris, Dubai or Sao Paulo.
Working in a team allows colleagues to exchange ideas, valuing each other's work and initiatives, and gradually establishing a trusting atmosphere. Real cohesion is formed between employees, and the working atmosphere becomes more relaxed and more pleasant.
It allows people from very different backgrounds, trainings and experiences to work together, which makes it a favorable environment for mutual aid and the pooling of skills within the group. Using a corporate social network like Talkspirit also simplifies the acquisition of new skills and new working methods.
Badly framed collaboration creates information overload and decisions that never get made. Opening every topic to everyone multiplies opinions and delays the call, and the same document living in four tools cancels out the centralisation that was promised. Three safeguards prevent this: explicit roles that say who decides what, one home per type of content, and a written decision framework.
