Guest article by Amy Collett, bizwell.org
If you’re an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you know how important it is to have everyone on the same page in your company. When you work in close quarters, collaboration among your employees is essential to ensure your company works well together to accomplish goals efficiently. But collaborating can sometimes be hard to achieve. Below are five tips to help improve collaboration in your company.
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1. Create Opportunities for Cross-Team Collaboration
One of the best ways to get your employees talking is by creating opportunities for cross-team collaboration. Encourage cross-departmental meetings and ensure everyone understands how individual roles support other teams. Create an open atmosphere where people feel comfortable bringing up any topic, even in another area of expertise. The exchange of ideas that occurs through these conversations creates a culture of open communication and idea sharing.
2. Use the Right Technology Tools
Give your company and team some collaboration support with programs, templates, and other products. For instance, a product roadmap tool assists your team in creating plans and tracking the progress of new products, streamlining the responsibilities and individual roles for everyone involved. This tool lets you set business goals, address pain points, and establish timelines.
When collaborating on documents, you may need to make significant edits to a PDF file. However, It's difficult and time-consuming to edit PDFs. Instead, use an online conversion tool to convert a PDF to Word and make edits with ease. Convert the file, start working in Word, and save it as a PDF once you've finished your edits.
Not every business has adopted collaboration tools. If your company hasn’t, here are some other popular tool options:
• Salesforce
• Trello
• Yammer
• Asana
• Slack
Get your team using these collaborative tools, and watch collaboration and productivity soar.
3. Create an Open Communication Culture
If you want your team to collaborate, you need to set an example. Open up your calendar, and show others what you have going on — you may be surprised how open people are when seeing others taking the lead. Ensure team members spend enough time communicating with one another via face-to-face meetings, phone calls, project discussions, and document sharing. When speaking with your employees, ensure you foster trust, speak with clarity, and never presume that your employees see things in the same way you do.
4. Celebrate Team Efforts
You may want to reward teamwork by organizing a company-wide office lunch day or creating team rewards and incentives programs. On lunch days, offer refreshments and snacks and provide this as time off for recognizing completed projects. Employees love knowing they're working toward something bigger than themselves — and rewarding team efforts is a great way to boost morale and engagement.
5. Organize Outside-of-Work Social Activities
Organizing outside-of-work social activities is a great way to encourage teamwork, help your employees get to know each other better, and foster a strong company culture. Try organizing a sports day or a movie theater outing.
Collaboration Will Help Your Business Flourish
When your company culture encourages open communication and idea sharing, it helps your business flourish. If you prioritize collaboration and make it a habit, your employees will follow suit.
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