Social Collaboration Tools for Higher Productivity

Covid-19 has turned our working models on their heads. We tried to adapt, but what about the long term? When offices reopened, employees were given unprecedented flexibility in where they worked and when they worked, and most organizations continue to offer this. But the great irony of this new world order is that workers, even with the desired flexibility, spend most of their day in a digital cocoon. They face a constant barrage of emails, voicemails, text messages, application alerts, project status updates, and so on. 

Employees these days don headphones and stare constantly at their screens. This builds a heightened sense of isolation among employees, whether they work from the office or home. This sense of disconnection perpetuates low morale and a lack of willingness to collaborate, affecting the entire team’s cohesion.

Communication Silos Perpetuating Disconnect at Workplace

Given human beings' tribal nature, we find it more natural to work with a small group of people who share our common interests and goals than with a large group of people with different cultures and values.

Imagine a start-up company operating from a single office with a handful of employees. Given the organization’s size, employees enjoy the benefit of direct access to management. They are a close-knit group, sharing a clear understanding of where the company wants to go and how they fit in. However, as the company grows, so does the number of employees, departments, tools, technologies, and premises. On top of that, global expansion adds new dimensions to the organization, including geographies, time zones, cultures, and languages.

While these aspects add value and diversity to the organization, each has the potential to create new silos. Left unaddressed, such silos, with their limited communication, could reduce group collaboration and adversely affect the company's growth prospects. 

In the not-too-distant past, organizations might have addressed these issues by introducing more fun Friday activities or cross-departmental projects. However, in an era dominated by digital tools and increased screen time at work, these tools don't promise to encourage employees to take time out of their work to interact, as there is little opportunity to do so. So, what are organizations doing to cater to the modern workforce’s socialization—and, thus, productivity—needs?

Cultivating Cohesion at Work

Social collaboration in the workplace often determines the difference between happy, engaged employees and bored, unproductive ones. If you want your employees to reach their full potential, you need to nurture an environment of healthy collaboration.

For the past few years, social networking has been known to play merely a supportive role in cultivating team cohesion. However, there has been a shift in perspective driven by a change in workplace settings. The first thing you see when you log into an internal social networking site isn't a social feed but a dashboard of activity across the projects and business processes you're involved in, something that can help bind a global company together—a unifying force.

Imagine a scenario where executives get into the habit of posting messages on an internal networking site instead of sending them out via company-wide email. Not only does this improve corporate communications, but it also builds an online community based on trust and open communication.

So here is a roundup of some of the best social collaboration tools that organizations can leverage to facilitate collaboration, communication, and coordination between employees within an organization.

Social Collaboration Tools for Higher Productivity

• The Modern Intranet

A modern intranet platform can work wonders for your organization. It boosts workplace productivity, consolidates content and resources, and strengthens employee engagement and communication. It also encourages and improves team collaboration across departments, offices, and hybrid work environments.

Many organizations have siloed business units or office locations that operate independently of each other. Although they're all part of the same company, they don't often interact with each other. Thanks to the modern intranet platform, your organization can consolidate all the resources, tools, and employees integral to it. This creates an effective working environment and team spirit.

• Workplace Chat Software

Digitally savvy employees are seeking ways to communicate beyond traditional tools such as email and broadcasts. Workplace chat software enables real-time communication and collaboration. This can be done by electronic means, such as messaging, or other related means, such as calls, audio, or video calls. Such software can be installed on a desktop, laptop, or any other mobile computing device and normally requires a web browser or a mobile application.

Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom are some of the popular workplace chat platforms. These platforms typically offer a range of features and tools that can be particularly useful for remote teams or organizations with multiple locations. They allow employees to stay connected and collaborate even when they are physically apart.

• Cloud-based File Systems

Creating, storing, and managing files are critical tasks in a business's day-to-day operations, and a cloud-based file system makes it all seamless. A cloud-based file system involves storage in the cloud as well as other services that can enable people to generate, save, modify, share, and organize the files they need. Additionally, multiple users can work on a file saved on the cloud, facilitating social collaboration.

• Virtual Meeting Platforms

The challenges of collaborating with remote colleagues and stakeholders via screen can be many. Technical issues, low participant engagement, lack of collaboration capabilities, etc., can all get in the way of seamless collaboration. But with a virtual meeting platform, you can have fun virtual meetings and communicate in real time with video, audio, and chat. You can also work side by side, with everyone scrolling, typing, and browsing the same document at the same time. It's like a well-oiled machine where everything (and everyone) comes together perfectly to move things forward—in real time or asynchronously.

Final Thoughts

While team-building exercises and similar initiatives can help build trust and strengthen relationships between teammates as a step toward creating high-performing teams, fostering cohesion requires communication, both formal and informal. At a time when culture, collaboration, and communication are more critical than ever, social collaboration tools have stepped in to help organizations share information and achieve project milestones together.

This shift in communication styles can break down old silos and allow organizations to share information, data, projects, and goals—all of which are important for effective and functional team cohesion. However, organizations must be careful to ensure that these social collaboration tools are social enough to make their employees more productive and not so social that they become distracted. Getting the balance right is key.