How to Develop Collaborative Work in Companies?
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Collaborative work is much discussed but rarely made concrete. This article gives three practical directions: foster the flow of information through transparency, participation and decompartmentalisation; put the collective at the heart of human resources management, from how performance is rewarded to internal mobility; and create an atmosphere of collaboration, starting with the tools people use every day.
If there’s one subject that’s been much talked about in recent years in terms of work methods, it’s collaborative work. Yet concrete implementation often remains unclear. It’s not easy to know where to start and identify and prioritize the actions needing to be carried out to develop collaborative work within your company!
What the term covers, the forms it takes and its limits are dealt with in our definition article. Here, that question is settled: this article assumes you know what collaborative work is, and looks at how to put it in place, step by step, in a company that still works another way.
How to develop collaborative work: the sequence
Here is the order in which these projects follow one another most naturally. Each one maps to a section below.
- Pick a testing ground. One team, one project: small enough to move fast, visible enough to set an example.
- Make information accessible. Who works on what, where documents live, what is shared by default.
- Open up the floor. Give the people who never speak up in meetings somewhere they will.
- Break the silos, starting with the most stubborn one: the individual mailbox.
- Align HR with the collective. Recognition, internal mobility, team objectives.
- Roll out the tool, then support the change. A tool makes collaboration possible; the rollout and the ground rules make it real.
Fostering the flow of information
Collaboration and communication are closely linked. The key to effective communication is sharing information and ideas. To encourage the flow of information and ideas, here are three areas your company can work on to create a breeding ground for more collaborative work: transparency, participation and decompartmentalization.
Developing transparency
In the business world, “transparency” refers to real-time knowledge of who is working on what. This is not for the purpose of “policing” (which would certainly be counterproductive), but more so that information can circulate, projects can progress, and everyone can be more proactive in case of difficulties. On a project, transparency requires that all information be shared with all stakeholders: progress, problems encountered, advances and failures/blockages. To achieve this, collaborative platforms allow all information to be centralized in the same place.
Encouraging everyone to express themselves
Each of us has his or her own temperament. Not all your employees are extroverted, and not all of them necessarily like putting themselves or their actions out there. While it’s good to be aware of this, it’s especially important to make sure that everyone has a voice. Remember that adage, “Those who talk the most do the least?”
In the context of more collaborative work, the objective is precisely that everyone express themselves, that the projects progress thanks to the opinions and skills of each person. But for the shier among us, speaking on an instant messenger will be much easier than in a meeting in front of 15 people. Collaborative platforms or enterprise social networks such as Talkspirit encourage participation and involvement.
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Breaking down information silos
Along with the self-censorship some of your shier employees might suffer from, another problem lies in information silos. This occurs when one group within a company does not communicate effectively and does not optimally share information with other groups. Often owed to an organization that is slightly too rigid, information silos don’t favor transversality.
On a smaller scale, the most obvious information silos are individual mailboxes: they might contain a lot of information and documents which could be useful to others, yet they remain private! Thus, when the employee leaves, all the information contained in his e-mails disappears …
Conversely, with an enterprise social network or the right collaborative tools, companies can improve information sharing and accessibility, thus improving productivity and encouraging development of collective intelligence.
Also read: Five Advantages of Collaborative Work
Putting the collective at the heart of your human resources management
Developing collaborative work means gradually moving towards a way of working that focuses on the collective rather than the individual.
Valuing collective performance
You must have noticed that we still tend to value individual performance first and foremost. Take compensation, for example: it’s more than common to offer a fixed salary with variable compensation based on individual objectives.
Of course, it’s quite normal for everyone to want their personal work to be recognized. But this should go hand in hand with recognition of collective performance, a balance we’re still far from achieving.
One way to achieve this is through the implementation of a profit-sharing agreement or collective bonus, rewarding (or not) collective efforts and success.
Simplifying internal mobility
Internal mobility is an essential issue for strengthening the collective aspect, for both employees and employers. On an individual level, a change of position or team enables people to learn from other ways of working. For a company, simplifying internal mobility makes its employees (and managers!) more adaptable, stimulates their inventiveness and questions their certainties, which in turn continuously breathes new life into the company.
Also read: Collaborative Work: What are the Stakes for Companies?
Fostering an atmosphere of collaboration
Beyond lofty speeches and good intentions, collaborative work is also a matter of atmosphere.
A first step towards a more collaborative atmosphere is, of course, the decision to make greater use of collaborative tools internally:
- Encourage the use of instant messaging internally rather than e-mail
- Share all documents on a common directory hosted in the cloud
- Work in real time directly online on the same documents
Here are a few practices that are gradually helping to create a climate conducive to more collaborative work.
Creating a collaborative atmosphere becomes easier when the work environment is suitable. Avoid individual offices with closed doors. Instead, use open doors or even open spaces or a flex desk.
Also read: The Top 13 Best Collaborative Platforms
Rolling out the tool, then supporting the change
A collaborative tool does not create collaboration: it makes it possible. What separates a platform abandoned after six weeks from one that becomes a reflex comes down to three things.
Start with a pilot team
Opening the platform to the whole company on the same day is a bet on everyone adopting it spontaneously. Better to pick one team with a real problem to solve, let it work that way for a few weeks, then let it tell the others what changed. It becomes the demonstration, and its habits become the manual for the teams that follow. Five organizations describe how they went about it.
Write down the ground rules
What makes usage drop is rarely a missing feature: it is the vagueness of the rules. A handful of decisions is enough, provided they are written down and known: what is handled in writing and what stays in a meeting, where to post depending on whether the information concerns three people or a whole department, the response time everyone can reasonably expect, what remains confidential. In Benelux organizations, where teams often span several sites and work in Dutch, French and English at once, writing those rules down matters even more: they cannot be picked up in the corridor.
Train, support, measure
Moving from individual to collective working is a change management project, with the training, internal champions and time that this implies. Launching a new internal communication tool is prepared the same way. Two or three indicators are enough to know where you stand: the number of distinct contributors each week (not the number of messages), the share of team topics that have left the mailbox, and how many spaces are genuinely alive.
| Lever | First action | What you watch |
|---|---|---|
| LeverTransparency | First actionOpen one space per project, where progress can be read without asking for it | What you watchShare of projects whose status is visible to everyone |
| LeverSpeaking up | First actionOpen a written channel where reacting does not mean raising your hand in a meeting | What you watchNumber of distinct contributors, not the number of messages |
| LeverBreaking silos | First actionMove any exchange involving more than two people out of the mailbox | What you watchShare of team topics handled outside e-mail |
| LeverRecognition | First actionAdd a team objective alongside individual ones | What you watchWhether bonuses and reviews carry a collective share |
| LeverInternal mobility | First actionPost openings internally before advertising them outside | What you watchNumber of internal moves over the year |
| LeverTooling | First actionRoll out to a pilot team before the whole company | What you watchShare of employees active each week |
In conclusion
Bear in mind here that there are many ways to develop collaborative work within your company, but this transition must respond to a coordinated corporate strategy and be done step by step with care for the quality of the collaborative experience.
Have questions about which collaborative solutions to offer your employees? Talkspirit teams are available to answer and guide you through your projects.
FAQ
With the flow of information, along three areas: transparency, participation and decompartmentalisation. Collaboration and communication are closely linked, and the key to effective communication is sharing information and ideas.
Real-time knowledge of who is working on what. Not for the purpose of policing, which would be counterproductive, but so that information can circulate, projects can progress and everyone can be more proactive in case of difficulties.
By making sure everyone has a voice: not all employees are extroverted, and not all of them necessarily like putting themselves or their actions out there.
A situation where one group within a company does not communicate effectively and does not optimally share information with other groups. Silos are often owed to an organisation that is slightly too rigid and that does not favour transversality.
Yes, as a balance: companies still tend to value individual performance first and foremost, offering a fixed salary with variable compensation based on individual objectives. Wanting personal work to be recognised is normal, but it should go hand in hand with recognition of collective performance.
On an individual level, a change of position or team enables people to learn from other ways of working. For a company, simplifying internal mobility makes employees and managers more adaptable, stimulates their inventiveness and questions their certainties.
