How To Boost the Adoption of New Collaborative Tools

Collaborative tools are a must in today’s workplace. They enable employees to collaborate on projects with their colleagues, whether they are across the office or across the world, which is increasingly important as hybrid and remote work continue to rise in popularity.

Also read: 5 advantages of collaborative work

But many organizations struggle with the adoption of collaborative tools. For example, according to a study from MIT Sloan Management Review and Capgemini Consulting, 63 percent of managers and executives surveyed said that the adoption of technology within their organization was too slow. And not only can the adoption of collaborative tools be a slow process, but it can also be a challenging one, with employees struggling to understand how to manage the technology and integrate the new collaborative tool into their day-to-day workflow.

The stack has not stopped growing since. Most teams now hold their conversations, their projects, their documents and, increasingly, their AI assistants in different places, and every new arrival competes for attention with the tools already installed. Adoption has become less a training question than a question of how the organisation decides to work.

But there are ways to make the process more effective. As CIOs roll out new collaborative tools, they need a clear plan to ensure the technologies are embraced by their employees, and that the collaboration those technologies enable is seamless and effective for their entire team, whether they’re working remotely, in the office, or a combination of both.

So how, exactly, do you do that? Let’s take a look at six strategies CIOs can use to boost the adoption of new collaborative tools among their teams.

Do a pilot program 

Many companies decide they want to start using a new collaborative tool, and then immediately roll out that tool to the entire company. But there’s no way to know whether a tool is the right fit for your team until you try it. And trying it out on a smaller scale could be a more effective strategy than kicking things off with a company-wide roll out.

Also read: How to implement an enterprise social network in your company

Pilot programs offer a host of benefits. First, you get to try out a new collaborative tool with a smaller group, and figure out what features are a good fit, which don’t work for your team, and whether that particular technology drives the kind of collaboration you need to empower your team’s best work.

For example, let’s say you’re planning on introducing a new chat platform to foster better communication between remote and in-person employees. Testing out that platform with a small group can help you identify any potential issues (like remote employees struggling to connect to the platform or share files). From there, you can either find solutions to the tool’s issues or find a better, more effective tool before you roll it out to the entire team. 

The point is, there’s always going to be challenges and speed bumps when rolling out a new tool. Doing a pilot program allows you to identify those speed bumps and challenges before you implement the tool on a company-wide scale, which can save you (and your team!) time, energy, and frustration.

Write the rules of use down before the rollout

A tool that arrives without rules gets used in as many different ways as there are teams. Six months later, nobody knows whether a decision lives in a chat thread, an email or a shared document, and the tool takes the blame for the confusion it inherited.

Before the rollout, put in writing:

• what each space is for, and what belongs in an open feed rather than a private message;
• who owns each space, keeps it tidy and answers when nobody else does;
• what the new tool replaces, and what stops being used the day it arrives;
• how fast an answer is expected, so that no one feels obliged to stay permanently available.

This is governance work rather than IT work: it names roles, decisions and places, and it is what turns a tool into a way of working. Talkspirit treats it as such, with explicit roles and responsibilities attached to the spaces people work in.

Also read: How can you reduce information overload associated with work tools?

Invest in proper onboarding

If you want your team to successfully adopt a new collaborative tool, you can’t just roll it out and hope for the best. You need a clear strategy for getting your entire team up to speed on how the technology works and how your team is going to work with it.

And that means investing in onboarding.

Proper onboarding sets your team up for success. It gets your employees trained, comfortable, and ready to use the collaborative tool in their day-to-day workflow. And if you want to successfully integrate the technology into your work environment, onboarding is an absolute must.

The way you onboard your team will depend on the tool. For example, if you’re rolling out a fairly simple and straightforward video conferencing tool, a quick training video plus a procedural document that outlines how and when to use it may be all you need to get your team up and running. On the flip side, if you’re adopting a more complex project management and document sharing software, a more comprehensive onboarding process (for example, an on-site training with a rep from the software company or a series of training modules that walk your team through all the features and functionality of the tool) may be more appropriate.

Bottom line? Your team’s successful adoption of collaborative tools depends on the runway you give them. That runway is onboarding.

Offer continued training

Teams change. Organizations change. Technology changes. And if you want your team to continually get the most out of their collaborative tech stack, you can’t stop at onboarding. You need to continue to offer training opportunities as things (whether that’s the team, the organization, or the technology) inevitably change.

For example, let’s say you adopt a new collaborative tool, and six months after rolling it out to your team, the software company releases a new version with additional features. If you want your team to continue getting the most out of the tool, you need to host an additional training to get them up to speed on the new features, how they work, and how they fit into your work environment’s workflow. Or let’s say your team dynamic shifts, and a host of employees who were primarily working in the office shift to working remotely. The way they use the collaborative tool at home is rarely the way they used it in the office, so they need additional training as they make the transition.

Also read: [Expert Opinion] How To Find The Right Balance Between Remote And In-Office Work In A Hybrid Work Environment

Sessions run remotely reach dispersed teams more easily than a room ever will, provided they are built for it: seven tips to conduct online trainings effectively.

The more you train your team, particularly if something shifts or changes, the more successful they’ll be using your collaborative technology, and the more effective they’ll be as a result.

Ask for feedback

When you roll out a new collaborative tool, the only way to know whether it’s working for your team, and whether they’re having any issues with the adoption of the new tool, is to ask them.

When you introduce a new tool, make sure to check in regularly with your team and ask for feedback (for example, after the onboarding process, after 30 days of using the tool, and then again at 90 days). Asking for regular feedback can help you stay on top of any potential issues or challenges as they happen, and can also prevent you from sticking with a tool that’s ultimately not the right fit for your team.

Measure adoption instead of assuming it

Feedback tells you how people feel about the tool. Numbers tell you whether they use it. Decide before the rollout which indicators you will look at, and look at them team by team: a company-wide average hides the departments that never started.

• Activation: the share of invited people who have signed in and posted, commented or shared at least once.
• Weekly active users per team, which tells you where adoption stalled and who to go and talk to.
• The volume that actually moved: if internal email and the tool being replaced are just as busy as before, the new platform is an extra layer rather than a replacement.
• Depth of use: how many spaces, projects or documents are still alive ninety days in, not on day three.

Review those numbers at 30, 60 and 90 days, alongside the feedback you collect, and treat a flat curve as a signal to fix something rather than as a reason to insist.

Also read: Top 7 internal communication KPIs and How to measure the success of change management

*
*   *

Introducing new technologies is always a bit of a challenge. But with these six strategies, you have (almost) everything you need to successfully boost the adoption of new collaborative tools in your company, whether your teams are working in the office or remotely. 

Almost, because you’ll also have to make sure you choose the collaborative tools that best fit your team’s needs. To help you make this decision, we invite you to read our article on “How to choose the right collaborative tool?”.

Adoption is one piece of a larger question: how do you lead a change through to the point where the new way of working is simply the way of working?

Access the white paper

Our white paper “How to Successfully Lead Change in an Organisation?” gathers strategies, best practices and case studies from seven companies that took a change project all the way to adoption.

Download the white paper

–
Author: Deanna deBara