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97% of company executives and workers believe that a lack of effective communication in the workplace impacts the results of a project.
Networking has always been a part of business. It allows people to share ideas and form tight-knit bonds that help with teamwork. Social collaboration has not only digitized but also made the process easier. You can now hold discussions with your colleagues and managers at the click of a button.
While social collaboration isn’t new, its potential in networking is still being tested by business experts. This article aims at helping you understand why social collaboration is vital, its benefits, and how to efficiently implement it in your work.
What are the Benefits of Social Collaboration for Company Teams?
While the benefits of collaboration are visible inside and outside the company, this article will focus on the internal benefits. Some of the benefits include:
- The discussions provide accessible electronic trails. This makes knowledge readily available even if an employee leaves.
- Social collaboration helps build a stronger team. For instance, it helps build peer interaction. When a worker shares their work, others can review and offer guidance to improve it. Ultimately, all workers become better at their jobs because of the experience.
- Enterprise social networking helps each worker better understand the organization’s projects. For instance, when COVID-19 hit, collaboration tools helped firms set their workers up for success.
- Social collaboration is responsible for better products. Once provided with a communication platform, workers can share information that will help them improve their work. This will, in turn, help mitigate potential problems they may have missed.
- Social collaboration tools help improve your company culture. Once every worker feels that they have the support and guidance of their colleagues, they’re more productive and creative.
How Do I Practice Social Collaboration?
Team collaboration has its benefits, but you need to practice it in a specific way to unleash its potential. Below are five practices that will help team collaboration bring change to your organization.
- Use an active top-bottom approach to collaboration to ensure the tools are effective. Ensure that your executive is on the frontline, engaging and answering workers, because without an active C-suite team, enterprise social networking will not be effective.
- Remember to be formal on the communication platforms. Although social collaboration is part of social media, you must remain formal. If you’re unsure how formal to be, take your cue from whoever seems to be in charge or simply treat the discussions like a physical meeting.
- Allow some level of freedom in social collaboration. For instance, the collaboration loses its potential if senior workers edit, criticize, or control the platform. This is because others will fail to join discussions out of criticism.
- Integrate social collaboration in the daily operation of the workplace instead of making it seem like extra work. Unify all workers to a single platform where work can be done, shared, seen, and corrected. If they use different platforms, sharing the work will only seem like another task they have to accomplish, making collaboration lose its value.
- Balance between company social collaboration and building your network. This ensures that you can get new opportunities even after leaving the company.
Conclusion
Social collaboration is the future of business, especially as the world looks to make more workplaces remote. Up to 80% of businesses use these tools to enhance their business processes.
Despite the advantages, you must be careful about implementing social collaboration tools. Make sure you bring every company worker on board to make the idea successful.
Ensure the platform is a safe space where employees can share their work-related views and opinions without criticism. You should also ensure workers are actively using collaboration tools.
