Building a Highly Collaborative Workplace Culture
Competition has always been viewed as one of the best assets that an organisation can have. However, competition has recently been re-evaluated and it can be stated that it brings the organisation more harm and negativity than it brings good. According to research, there are some very surprising conclusions about competitiveness in an organisation. It often backfires and results in negative side effects such as in increase in stress, increased business risk and lack of teamwork.
Although competition keeps organisations at the top of their game, it has damaged the employee’s ability of working together towards a common goal. With students and employees being taught to succeed at all costs, collaboration and teamwork have become merely words of motivation that are rarely ever practiced. Intense competition and ranking have caused us to see our career and workplace as a rivalry and we now view our colleagues as equal players in the industry that have to be overlapped in order to succeed.
With so many business leaders focus on innovation and growth, the result of these findings could damage organisations worldwide. After all, if an organisation wants to grow in an industry, they have to be open to taking a risk and sharing half-formed creative ideas in order to reach the goal.
However, the start of inclusions, social connections and helpfulness may contribute to employees being successful without having to deal with the unnecessary rivalry. With the use of motivational factors that encourage employees from different backgrounds to merge, intense internal marketing that promotes employee collaboration and social technology such as enterprise social networks that allow employees to collaborate online, organisations will witness a massive change. These were found to be very distinct factors that led to achieving maximum capacity.
What are the characteristics of a collaborative workforce?
There are certain factors and strategies that are adapted for employees to collaborate and grow in their organisation.
- Being a wide organisation, where respect and power is earned. After all, a leader is called a leader when one decides to follow his footsteps.
- Being open to hearing what needs to be hears during debates and discussion.
- Showing employees that mistakes are a sign of learning.
- Very focused listening and discussion that brings about questions and generating of ideas.
- Every decision that an organisation makes is seen as a hypothesis and will continuously be updated and evolved as new information is learnt.
- Being flexible and encouraging the showcasing of talent throughout the organisation.
- Getting employees to work together in order to build social capital.
- Encouraging employees to believe that they all need each other and that no talent of the organisation should be wasted.
- Letting employees believe that a winner only exists when everyone wins.
With the above characteristics, efficient products and solutions can help solve different business issues through engaging and collaborative workforces by having them contribute their talent to the organisation as a whole.
