The Effectiveness Of Collaboration Within The Workplace

Sharable Information Resources

1. Do the collaborative resources that the employees invest in create value?

2.  How does the work redistribution increase the organization’s collaborative efficiency?

3. What is the need for rewarding effective collaboration?

4. What are the benefits of leveraging technology and considering structural changes? 

The report is prepared to discuss about the effectiveness of collaboration within the workplace and how it has increased the global and cross-functional activities’ efficiency. This has not only contributed to effective teamwork but has also enhanced the production level and allowed the organizations to reach heights of success with much ease and effectiveness.

1. There are different types of collaborative resources that the employees like to focus or invest in for creation of value along with better management and flow of information including both social and personal information. The information resources include the knowledge, skills and information obtained by the employees for managing collaborative work within the organization while the social resources include the people’s awareness, access, position and tasks performed by the employee within a network. This would not only help in managing better collaboration, but could even manage the personal resources by using the energy and time in a much better way (Cavusgil et al., 2014). The informational and social sources are considered as sharable and exchangeable for managing the needs and requirements of the collaborators while the social information could allow for creating knowledge and network awareness, furthermore enable participation in various activities along with the approval of decisions for deriving the positive business outcomes. The personal resources, on the other hand, could be considered as the demands of the employees when they wanted to collaborate with others and provide better help, support and assistance for the creation of more value and positive business outcomes (Ferraro & Briody, 2013). 

One of the major cases that could be experienced had been the amount of time that the employees and managers of the organization had spent on collaborative work. They were found more to spend 80 percent of their time I the meetings and for responding to the requests and feedbacks of the customers. Though the benefits of collaborative working were properly structured and documented, still the costs were ignored at certain times, which created complexities regarding the much higher demands for collaborative working. This even resulted in high work pressure and even the employees felt lack of interest in working properly (Savrul, Incekara & Sener, 2014). The informational, social and personal sources should be combined together so that the employees could invest in those for creating value as well as influence each other to work in coordination and as an unit for faster delivery, production and higher level of profit. The leaders have the roles and responsibilities to make sure that the employees are managed properly through rewards, incentives and better benefits too. For example, at a blue chip professional service firm, there were few demands of the employees and based on that,  the performances of the employees and the entire group became string predictors for gaining voluntary turnover. The exhibit named “In demand, yet disengaged” showed the problems including lower level of engagement and scores that represented the dissatisfaction of the staffs. This resulted in higher turnover of staffs and even they felt lack of interest in working (Botha, Kourie & Snyman, 2014). The leaders though possess relevant skills, knowledge and expertise to resolve these kinds of issues by streamlining the operations and processes and redistributing the work, which could enhance the collaborative working within the organization and ensure accomplishment of tasks much more quickly. 

Collaborative Workload Distribution

2. The effective collaboration of employees requires work distribution and deployment of jobs roles and responsibilities effectively for the employees. The redistribution of work could also result in making the employees understand their roles and responsibilities, furthermore make them accustomed with the surroundings of the work environment and ensure properly meeting their needs and requirements too. The effective collaboration could be rewarding as well as the managers have the roles and responsibilities to redistribute the work and aim for achieving the goals and objectives with ease and effectiveness. The goals and objectives are measured along with tracking the assistance required to provide value added performance (Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2013). It would also include rewarding the employees for their performances and keeping them motivated and encouraged to perform to their potential. Bonuses should be provided to the leaders for keeping them motivated and encouraged to keep the workforce effective enough to achieve the desired business outcomes with convenience.

The redistribution of work is done by determining the previous supply and demands, which can be derived by conducting employee surveys and by utilizing the 360-degree feedback and CRM approaches. This would not only provide important information and data regarding the volume, type and destination of request, but would also allow for gaining an in-depth analysis. The analysis of the environment or surveys should be conducted for evaluating the individuals, their performances and estimate those people who might be at risk or were being pressurized due to the collaborative workload (Leismann et al., 2013). The work redistribution could be managed by focusing on the three major functions including the behavioral changes, leveraging the technologies and physical space, managing structural changes and finally creating a healthy and positive culture for enhancing the level of interest among the employees.

The behavioral changes would be encouraged to ensure better flow and exchange of data and information along with the investment in personal resources for enhancing the effectiveness of collaborative working. It would also be easy to provide training , mentoring and coaching sessions so that the employees could feel less stressed and disengaged all throughout. It would even enhance the level of satisfaction and they would feel interested to perform to their potential as well. The leveraging of technology and physical space could also create better networks and manage the functions rapidly, furthermore make informed decisions to ensure better collaborative working (Stern & Coleman, 2015). The management of meetings and conferences along with sending and responding to emails would facilitate the flow and exchange of information, furthermore utilize and allocate the resources appropriately. The work redistribution would also be managed perfectly by enabling structural changes, i.e., improvement of infrastructure and betterment of culture. The support staffs and lower level managers must be approved with the roles of managing the capital expenses, travelling activities and some of the human resource management functions as well. This could allow for meeting the demands of collaborative working through better supply, furthermore respond to the queries and requests to overcome the bottlenecks and ensure successful distribution of job roles and responsibilities too (Barnes-Mauthe et al., 2013).  

Rewarding Collaborative Work

3. There is need to reward the employees and even providing them with enough scopes and opportunities so that they can remain motivated and encouraged, furthermore excel in terms of their performances to achieve the desired positive outcomes with ease and effectiveness. The chief learning officers of the organization could make the employees learn to collaborate and gain rewards for the betterment of their performances and ensure accomplishing the tasks with convenience. The organization should learn to set and measure the goals and objectives, furthermore utilize tools like network analysis program, peer recognition program as well as value added performance metrics for assessing the performance of the organization during any sort of merger or acquisition (Ross et al., 2016). Consolidating the facilities would not only regain the necessary talent but would also create a better impact with not much formal authority. The bonuses and incentives would be provided to the employees properly for making sure that the informational, social and personal resources were managed properly along with obtaining the opinions and feedbacks of the people from diverse groups. It is often seen that the women provide support and help to others during heavy workload and this could enable delivering the right training, mentoring and coaching programs for them to enhance their skills, knowledge and expertise level. By providing support to others, the workload of the women would tend to increase and this could even result in depending less upon the personal resources too (Li, Abel & Barthès, 2014).

The managers and leaders of the organization must make sure to provide equal scopes and opportunities to the employees, furthermore facilitate the collaboration through providing rewards and improve the systems of measuring and creation of value. This would also help in maintaining a balance between the collaborative contribution and individual accomplishment. Collaboration could result in handling the challenges in business in a better way as well as enable diversity within the organization’s workplace, which could promote teamwork, better communication and accomplishment of business goals and objectives effectively too (Stanley, Snell & Edgar, 2014).

4. Nowadays, with the advancement in technology and communication, the business organizations have learned to leverage technology at the utmost level for gaining competitive advantage and create an accurate plan for achieving the maximum benefits in terms of profit and competitive advantage in business. The implementation of technological solutions could serve as a success roadmap as well as integrate the company website with the Enterprise resource planning or ERP software system for supporting the business goals and objectives. Making investments in both the hardware and software components would not only help to achieve the customer related information, but could also reduce the chances of errors during order management and the overall costs too (Davis & Daniels, 2016). With the leveraging of technology, it would be easy to become the preferred suppliers of the customers and increase the flow of cash, furthermore improve the electronic delivery of customers’ services and streamline the business operations with ease and effectiveness. There could also be fundamental shift in IT such as the mobile and cloud based technologies, which could strengthen the business functions and allow the staffs of the organization to gain secured access to data, apps, information and productivity suites as well (Bellamy, Ghosh & Hora, 2014). The consideration of structural changes could lead to better change management processes and for ensuring business growth, development and longevity. The structural changes would result in accomplishing the financial goals and objectives, furthermore improve the flow of cash and profit level in business too. With the consideration of structural changes, it would be easy to simplify the business structure and accommodate the growth and development of business to achieve higher level of profit in business. The existing culture of an organization would be replaced with a new and healthy culture, where effective teamwork and communication between employees would be possible. This could result in organizational success through collaborative activities and ensure deriving the most suitable positive outcomes within quick time (Karim & Kaul, 2014).

Leveraging Technology for Competitive Advantage

Conclusion

The report was prepared to discuss the collaboration within the workplace and it could lead to better teamwork, communication and strengthening of relationships among the employees. This would not only allow the employees and managers to work collaboratively, but would also enhance the scopes and opportunities for business growth, success and better profit level to be achieved, considering it as one of the major business goals or objectives. 

References

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