Warning: Undefined variable $image_html in /home/taskque/public_html/blog/wp-content/themes/Newspaper/includes/wp_booster/td_module_single_base.php on line 137

Team collaboration directly impacts your team’s productivity and eventually your bottom line. If your team members don’t collaborate with each other, you will struggle to achieve your goals. On the flip side, collaborative teams enjoy the perks of engaged employees, higher productivity and trust.
Here are some of the statistics that will give you a better idea about how important team collaboration is:
- 97% employees and executives believe that lack of alignment within a team can impact the outcome of a task or project.
- 86% of employees and executives consider lack of collaboration and ineffective communication as the most important reason behind workplace failures.
- 75% of employees rate teamwork and collaboration as very important.
- 39% employees believe that people in their own organization does not collaborate enough.
In this article, you will learn about six effective ways to foster collaboration at the workplace.
6 Ways to Foster Team Collaboration at Work
Here are six ways that can help you foster team collaboration at workplace.
1. Establish Open Communication Channels
Encourage employees to speak up and let them express their opinion without any fear. When your employees think that they can contribute and their feedback and suggestions are noted, that is when they share creative ideas more freely. Open communication channels and remove all the roadblocks which are preventing employees from communicating and collaborating with one another. Effective communication is like a two-way street, where both parties speak and listen to each other.
2. Manage Tasks Intelligently
Most managers ask the same question, “How to encourage collaboration between team members?” The short answer is by dividing your team into different groups and make them work together on separate projects. You can easily do that by using TaskQue’s group feature. This facilitates group collaboration. TaskQue uses a smart task allocation mechanism which optimizes resource utilization and maximizes productivity.
3. Listen to Every Individual
Every employee is different and looks at things from a different perspective. That is why it is important for managers to listen to every individual. Don’t just stop there, dive deeper into individual perspective and you will unearth some useful insights that might be invisible to you.
Share and discuss your own ideas in a meeting and encourage employees to do the same. This will make them feel valued. When your employees think that their voices are being heard, that is when they share their most creative ideas.
Bill Gates once said, “Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.”
4. Create a Culture of Innovation
In today’s competitive business environment, you will have to keep coming up with new and innovative ideas. This is not easy but if you develop a culture of innovation in your organization, it won’t be that difficult either. Start by ditching the traditional mindset. Appreciate and reward team members who come up with unique ideas. Develop a consensus around a handful of ideas that you want to turn into products.
5. Build a Community
Make your employees feel that they are part of a large community by promoting the community-based working environment. When you are part of a community, you start to feel more connected. Encourage employees to help one another and focus on building a stronger long-term relationship. This will you in fostering collaboration in your team.
To strengthen the bond and develop a sense of community, you can even allow your team members to meet at a social gathering after office hours. This way, your employees get to know each other better and collaborate more effectively.
6. Celebrate Success Together
Last but certainly not least, celebrate success together. Make it a habit to organize an event to celebrate your success and make sure that all the team members are a part of that event. You can also celebrate smaller achievements of by announcing on the floor and managers or leads can ask everyone to applaud and give hi5’s to the employee.
Reward teamwork to send a message to employees that you value team collaboration. You can easily achieve this by making it a part of employee appraisal. An employee appraisal that rewards and punishes employees based on their team collaboration along with other factors can make your team acts as a well-oiled machine.
Which collaboration techniques do you use to boost your team collaboration? Share it with us in the comments section below.