Collaboration in the workplace depends on a number of factors.
Age, for example. Depending on the generation they come from, an employee could be more prone to technological collaboration versus analog collaboration (i.e. on a whiteboard or paper). Even within technology, some employees may prefer face-to-face collaboration, in the same room. Others will prefer conferencing collaboration while they are remote working from home. Some won’t care one way or another.
As the future of work approaches, we’re still not totally sure what it’s going to look like. More than that, each company isn’t sure if the future of work, for them, will line up with what the future of work for other companies looks like. Is it better to carry on how things have always been, or start introducing technology that my employees might not take to? It’s a tough question to answer.
Luckily the folks over at B2C have posited 5 trends to think about when it comes to the future of collaboration in the workplace. These are ways that collaboration can be used in the future. Let these thoughts inspire you to think about how your workplace can utilize collaboration moving forward.
- Collaboration is Key – We’ve shifted to a culture that places less emphasis on individual work and more on working together as a team. The advent of new technology has been a big part of this, as well as moving collaboration out of the office and into the digital space. Making sure that employees work together, either in or out of the office, is important.
- Accessible Anywhere – Collaboration systems allow for employees to work remotely like never before. Depending on how robust your system is, employees can share documents, work on them together, conference, chat, or review meetings that were captured while they went on. Remote collaboration can be total, or partial, but it’s very possible.
- Centralization of Resources – Gathering resources in a central location means that they are accessible to employees at any time, from anywhere. It also means they aren’t lost or misplaced.
- Empowerment – The centralization of those resources then empowers employees to work in ways they weren’t able to before. Employees can access information without waiting for the right person to get it to them. They can also publish documents that can be reviewed by the right person ASAP, rather than waiting days to get the information over to someone and receive it back.
- eLearning – You might be teaching the sales staff about a new product. You might be teaching a new hire about their position. You might be mandating new policies to the entire corporation and need to get the message to every employee. By housing training material online, employees can learn it at their own pace. More importantly, they don’t have to wait for the right person to get back from vacation or have the time in their schedule. When questions arise, they can pause, look at new material, go back to what was said, and more. Online learning really makes employee training more dynamic and accessible.
After reading these trends in future learning, think about your own company. Could you benefit from any of these opportunities? Would it make sense for your employees? Only you can answer that. The fact remains, the future of collaboration is different from anything we’ve seen before.
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