As digital transformation rocks organizations across all industries, business leaders are constantly improving their business and bottom line.

For many, this means looking inward at internal processes and policies to discover how to operate more efficiently and improve productivity. The effective adoption of workplace collaboration applications allows businesses to do just that.

According to Smartsheet's 2017 Enterprises Collaboration Report, over 80% of IT decision-makers say that collaboration apps are used across their company, with seven out of 10 indicating that they have a top-down strategy in place for those tools.

Additionally, more than 50% of these respondents said that their company used at least six different collaborative apps for business, with 16% indicating that they used more than ten various tools.

This article explores some reasons behind this surge in collaboration and why entrepreneurs and business leaders will better adapt to it.

The Perception game

It's perhaps fair to say that most modern workplaces endeavor to be social and collaborative affairs, and with good reason. A Stanford study from a few years ago found that even the mere perception of working collectively on a task can supercharge our performance.

"The results showed that simply feeling like you're part of a team of people working on a task makes people more motivated as they take on challenges," the researchers say.

A similar finding emerged from a recent joint study between the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) and Rob Cross, Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Business at Babson College. It found that companies that promoted collaborative working were five times as likely to be high-performing.

Upgrading workflows

Collaboration applications emphasize transparency in all aspects of the business. This isn't limited to employee functions but also client and end-user-facing functions. With collaborative apps, the details of a project are available so that no employee is working in the dark, unaware of how their hard work is impacting the business. The same goes for organizations showcasing work to clients - client relations can be improved with increased transparency.

Communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Bottle can boost employee morale and collaboration by connecting different people.

"New collaborative technologies do more than just digitize old ways of doing things; they make new ways of doing things possible." - Accenture.

Workflows are just beginning to be disrupted, and by adopting collaborating software now, you are preparing your team and your business for future disruption. The key here is to adopt workplace collaboration software that multiple groups of people can use; otherwise, you are further siloing each department by equipping them with different tools.

Remote - the new normal

Over the last five years, remote teams have grown by 44%, and the pandemic has only accelerated this growth. Even traditional companies are now reducing the required in-office workdays for their employees. With more and more days out of the office, workplace collaboration applications are necessary to keep employees connected and experience company culture.

As mentioned, communication platforms such as Slack or Bottle immediately equip team members with efficient ways of communication regardless of where they are in the world.

"We need to connect everyone to innovate. We want to be very diverse. There is an unwritten rule that the more diverse we are, the more chances we have to innovate." - Deloitte.

The same Deloitte report suggests that workers, in general, were 17% more satisfied with their workplace culture as a whole when they had access to practical collaboration tools.

Higher Engagement - Higher ROI

Ultimately, by adopting collaboration software that improves productivity, decision leaders aim to improve overall ROI. After all, embracing technology for the sake of it only to remain stagnant or even take a step back is the antithesis to digital transformation.

Consider this statistic: Deloitte indicates that improved employee engagement can be worth about 20% of the operating income of large enterprises. That means that adopting software that enhances employee engagement can be a relatively easy win for your bottom line. On top of that, consider another piece of research out of Australia. Deloitte discovered that the Australian economy would lose about $9.3 billion in value if it began adopting collaborative-type technologies in the workplace.

Even more, only one out of five businesses without collaborative strategies outgrew the market, compared to 30% with a mediocre design and 52% with a critical process.

Conclusion

One purpose has been established; it's essential to ensure that your work environment works towards supporting and promoting collaborative working. Several systemic factors influence how we behave at work, whether it's how information flows through your organization, how decisions are made, the physical design of your workplace, or how you measure and reward employee behaviors.

Even though collaborations can increase workplace productivity, incite creativity, build a sense of community, fill employees with a strong sense of purpose, improve problem-solving, give them a goal to strive for, and can lead to groundbreaking innovations and ideas, it remains one of those commonly underutilized instruments in the workplace.

Start your journey to make your team more collaborative. Sign up to use Bottle for free!