Collaboration in the Work Environment

Empowering people is not an easy task. People need to feel wanted in the work environment as well as important for them to truly collaborate and work together. In order for businesses to accomplish the goal of empowering their workers to collaborate together they need to understand the wants and needs of the workers. Workers need trust between one another, they want a clear vision, and they need control over their input and what they are communicating. All of these contribute to stronger collaboration and better use of the available technology to collaborate.

First, trust between coworkers does not come easily and it can be difficult to incorporate this into the work place. One way to include trust building is to encourage small talk! Small talk is no small thing and the outcomes can be beneficial to the work environment. Small talk happens between two people who don’t know each other very well. They begin to have an informal conversation about an unimportant topic. When given the chance to bond over similar interests even for a couple of minutes people start to build a relationship. Building mutual and friendly bonds stems from the first couple of “small talk” conversations and from this people build trust. This is beneficial due to an increase in collaborative work among workers and empowerment to become a leader in their field.

Continually, workers want to know exactly what a business expects out of them. They want a clear and well communicated vision and goal. Some ways to do this is by sharing calendars, work plans, power-points, and other forms of collaborative schedules and goals, Google apps are a great way to share information. The use of the aforementioned software is the most beneficial for co-worker collaboration because it is easily accessible and allows everyone to participate in their own timing and way. Through this, workers feel empowered. They feel important in decision making processes as well as feeling like their input is acknowledged and appreciated. This will increase workers involvement in collaborative projects and overall participation.

Furthermore, businesses should incorporate Google Docs and other shareable and easily collaborative resources in order for their workers to be able to have control over their part in a project. To have control over the information they provide to a project will increase the amount of information they give and the value of information received. Giving workers more responsibility and allowing flexible time for completion can positively influence co-worker collaboration. Giving them control over their job and allowing them to make the decisions will create trust between employer and employee and great collaboration between the two. These actions will empower workers greatly and lead to an overall better work environment.

To conclude, these steps will increase empowerment among workers and therefore contribute to higher collaboration systems. I predict that collaboration between co-workers will increase in the future due to technology advancement and the increasing amount of information that people share via social media and other software programs. I think that flexibility for in office hours and out of office hours will increase due to the advancing uses of collaborative software programs. Learning how to empower workers will increase collaboration between co-workers and therefore lead to a better business.

 

References:

“Learning the Art of Small Talk.” CLC Idiomas, CLC Idiomas, 7 June 1970, clcidiomas.es/blog/learning-the-art-of-small-talk/.