Collaboration is a fundamental part of business, making tasks meaningful and strengthening working relationships while improving the employee experience. However, effective collaboration is only possible when the physical environment, digital environment and company culture all align to support it.
In this blog, we focus on your company's digital environment and how enabling it for optimal collaboration can reap benefits for your employees and the company overall. Here’s what you need to know about a collaborative digital workspace and what it can do for your business.
At its core, a collaborative digital workspace is a shared digital space between a company’s employees that’s enabled by effective digital communication channels and practices. It’s a digital environment that gives employees secure and easy access to resources, apps and files so that they can communicate and collaborate efficiently on any device, in any location.
Building a collaborative digital workspace can facilitate team collaboration, which in turn creates a more engaged employee culture, improves employee retention and decreases costs across business functions.
Let’s delve into the key benefits of collaborative digital workspaces.
In a healthy collaborative digital workspace, newer, more effective communication channels are used, which allow teams to communicate with each other quickly and efficiently. These channels are accessible and usable from anywhere, and because of their efficiency, all employees get relevant and vital information, when they need it, leading to increased visibility and greater employee engagement.
Communication silos are a big problem for businesses, especially those with hybrid models. Disconnected communication channels that don’t integrate with a company’s greater technology stack lead to siloed teams, siloed communications, and frustrated employees. A seamless collaborative digital workspace empowers sustainable remote/hybrid working practices and increases visibility across teams and projects through communication tools and policies that are integrated and accessible. This effectively eliminates siloed teams and isolated employees.
De-siloed communications are particularly necessary for companies managing multiple projects across multiple teams (often, in many different locations). Innovative collaboration, enabled by an effective digital workspace, can address this by streamlining oversight for employees and management alike, no matter where they’re sitting.
Collaborative digital workspaces involve technologies like virtual desktops, which give employees greater control over where they work, when they work, and on which devices. This flexibility allows them to define their work-life balance, as their company environment no longer creates conflict between their work lives and personal lives. And this, in turn, leads to more motivated employees.
The flexibility a collaborative digital workspace offers is attractive to potential candidates, especially Millennial and Gen Z employees. More than other generations of workers, they place a high value on the freedom to choose when and where they work. In fact, a recent McKinsey & Company report revealed that 48% of 18-29 year olds have said that they would prefer hybrid work setups with 2-3 days spent in the office, the rest at home.
Collaborative digital workspaces contribute greatly to the employee experience both remotely and in the office, as employees feel respected by their company and trusted to deliver, no matter where they are or how they work. The positive knock-on effect is increased employee satisfaction, making it more likely that employees will remain at the company for longer.
Collaborative digital workspaces enable employees across a business to acquire, store and share information from multiple sources, making it easy to upskill and share knowledge, ideas and innovations. By enabling better knowledge management in this way, collaborative digital workspaces contribute to a culture of continuous learning and development, which improves employees’ capabilities and encourages knowledge sharing, simply because of how easy it is to share and exchange information.
Your choice of digital collaboration tools has far-reaching effects on your digital workspace, employee engagement and, ultimately, your business growth. The right software solutions for enabling effective communication and collaboration are essential in today’s workplace.
While every company is different, the need for effective collaboration is a commonality shared across businesses. There are various innovative digital collaboration tools available to help you develop a collaborative digital workspace. Selecting the right tools, however, should be aligned with your company's needs, both now and in the future.
Discover the key considerations for selecting suitable digital tools for your business in our Guide to Choosing the Right Internal Communication Solutions.
Transforming your tech stack and developing a collaborative digital workspace might sound daunting. But you don’t need to create this workspace alone. Working with an experienced strategic partner, like Cocentric, can help you to build your plan and implement the transformation project effectively.
Our expertise, paired with our digital workplace products, One Digital Workplace (the modern intranet), plus software partnerships with Microsoft, Meta and Zendesk, help transform businesses into connected and collaborative spaces. We offer strategic consulting and support to help companies build a more connected workplace that fosters greater employee engagement, improved company culture and better productivity overall.
For expert tips on how you can transform the digital employee experience within your own company, download our guide How to Transform the Digital Employee Experience or contact our team of experts to learn more about how we can empower your business.