A company is not a collection of individuals. Rather, the best businesses truly do act as a team. When employees and employers are all on the same page and moving in the same direction, then success is almost certain to follow. However, as experienced professionals no doubt realize, ensuring effective business collaboration isn’t easy. After all, a great number of startup ventures end in failure. Today, we’ll focus on five threats to quality business collaboration so that business leaders can identify and address them with confidence:
Remote Employment
There are many benefits to remote employment. Because of remote employment, businesses can recruit new team members from a vast talent pool, and employees can enjoy the convenience of working from home. However, remote employment presents a problem for businesses that depend on quick and seamless collaboration between team members. If your company is considering adopting a remote-employment heavy policy, make sure that you have the technology on board to support such a strategy.
Poor Office Design
Believe it or not, the space an employee occupies can have a big effect on their overall productivity, and, for our purposes, their willingness to work together with others. Cramped offices, poor layout choices, and bad office design in general can stultify even the most energetic employees over time.
Lackluster Recruitment
There’s some truth to the old saying that one bad apple spoils the bunch. And a few bad apples working within a company can erode positive company culture and make it more difficult for capable employees to collaborate in a meaningful way. Though it shouldn’t come as a surprise, making smart hires is absolutely essential to a business’s long-term viability.
Limited Corporate Support
It’s unwise for business owners to assume that all of their employees possess innate collaboration skills. Leaders who take the time to properly educate their staff and improve their soft skills hold a big advantage over their competitors who forgo this step. Consider showing communication training videos to new staff members to help them integrate into your office culture.
Confusing Structure
Ideally, all professionals should have an intimate understanding of how their company operates on a granular level. But at the very least, they should know who their direct superiors are and what the chain of command looks like in general. However, the reality is that some companies operate in a clandestine manner and keep different departments separate from each other. This is a bad idea because it prevents employees from communicating with coworkers in other areas of the business. At the end of the day, all employees and managers are working toward the same ultimate goal. Great companies ensure that their employees always know when, how, and with whom they should collaborate.