Succeeding with collaboration in our new hybrid work

In the context of uncertainty and upheaval, many organizations have had to adapt and rethink processes and ways of getting things done.

Through this process of change, ensuring teams can work effectively and are able to perform at their best – enabling employees to do their best work now and in the future – is crucial.

For organizations like Microsoft Corporate, L’Oreal, Deloitte, Nestle, AXA and Pfizer, there has been an irreversible shift in working approaches in order to make hybrid work, work! This has involved re-thinking practices in how teams collaborate effectively and adapt to their new hybrid realities. And tools like Klaxoon, are proving to be a crucial enabler.

The importance of collaboration

Harvard Business Review (HBR) recently released findings based on a decade’s worth of data on collaboration, including interviews with some subjects who were asked how they handled work during the Covid-19 crisis. “The obvious conclusion”, HBR stated, is that “the degree of collaboration during a crisis has a huge impact on whether companies and individual employees thrive.” There were also stark results surrounding the financial health of the organizations they surveyed, based on their collaboration. Simply concluded, the more collaborative, the more revenue generated.

Collaboration and effective teamwork within the organization isn’t a new idea for HR leaders though.

Many leaders appreciate the value of enabling employees to bring a whole host of ideas, viewpoints, experiences, and skills to the table, and there is no seniority level too big or too small to help innovate. When collaboration within teams improves, so too does an individual’s ability to handle requests at pace. It also gives employees more responsibility, which can go far in raising morale and motivation, especially when teams are still working virtually, or working in a mixture of hybrid and remote settings.

Cultivating an environment that inspires originality, and the collaborative efforts that drive this is key to succeeding with many business outcomes.

What have organizations deployed as a result of the pandemic for collaboration?

Boosting morale and being able to work effectively in remote and hybrid settings has been a challenge. And this has been felt throughout many organizations, and at the individual level across the board.

For example, in November of 2020, UNLEASH spoke to Isabel Naidoo, SVP of Inclusion and Talent at FIS who shared that the connections and collaboration that come with office working cannot be underestimated, citing colleagues of hers saying that they “missed inconsequential conversations” and that “with people running from video call to video call, finding time for casual chat seems almost impossible.”

Whatsmore, according to recent Gensler research, “the dramatic shift toward work from home during the pandemic has dealt a significant blow to collaboration. The startling decline in collaboration from 2019 to 2020 signals that there could be a considerable downside to working environments that are entirely virtual.”

Even before COVID-19, HR and business leaders struggled with encouraging collaboration. This is outlined by McKinsey, as they comment in a recent article, “Companies competed intensely for prime office space in major urban centers around the world, and many focused on solutions that were seen to promote collaboration. Densification, open-office designs, hoteling, and co-working were the battle cries.”

As businesses look to recovery, there is now a more pertinent need for them to foster an environment that drives innovation, creativity, and new ideas. Organizations must climb aboard a new train to reach the destination of the new world of teamwork – a more flexible environment that helps all teams to thrive.

Meet the new challenges of hybrid work by exploiting technology

According to an Opinion Way survey in May 2021, “8 out of 10 workers would like to continue to work remotely some of the time. A new era of hybrid work is beginning for teams, and this new reality is shaking up our tools, methods, and organizations.”

This hybrid reality can, and has, created a melting pot of opinion on what successful collaboration looks like and what technology organizations should be exploiting to get it right. Employees have now been provided with the flexibility of determining how they work, and where they work – and there is a weighted expectation for this autonomy to continue. The challenge for employers can appear monumental.

And this isn’t the only challenge. Employers are also faced with large-scale criticism and a situation that appears difficult to reign back, that collaboration overload is actually sinking productivity. Around 10 million workshops were delivered using Klaxoon in 2021, the results of which validate Isabel Naidoo’s colleague’s comment on back-to-back meetings. We are now all too familiar with the problem of Zoom fatigue and the intensification of an “always-on” culture that is magnified by remote working models.

But getting teams together in workshops remains a key lever for organizations to work through challenges, come up with solutions and make important decisions. So how do we make them as effective as possible?

Firstly, they need to be truly hybrid. Yes, people can join from anywhere, at any time, with anyone. But starting to think about providing the psychological safety associated with anonymous input for example, is where teams can harness technology in their workshops and truly transform team input. Not everyone is comfortable with public speaking or making their opinions heard in front of others. Tapping into the myriad of options available such as questions, polls, lives and ideations creates a more democratic session – and potentially a more productive one too. Also, thinking outside the box with how teams collaborate synchronously and asynchronously, also changes the game. If people work in different time zones or work part-time/flexibly, then suddenly you can harness their input and overcome collaborative constraints in a way that’s not been truly possible until now.

This reimagining shows how teams can begin to unleash their collaborative potential in exciting new ways going forwards.

Running workshops is now a global trend across all types of organizations all around the world. With workshops, we are able to eliminate silos and all inefficient constraints, in order to focus on the matter at hand – and help all teams reach their full potential.

Matthieu Beucher, CEO, Klaxoon