Does Collaboration Make Your Business Money?
Since childhood, we’ve been bombarded with platitudes touting the virtues of teamwork. “There’s no ‘I’ in team… Teamwork makes the dream work!” It is perhaps the only reason peewee athletes ever pass the ball.
But it turns out this push toward teamwork doesn’t stop once we’re adults. Only now, “teamwork” is known by a different name: collaboration. Collaboration can be as explicit as executing projects together, or as simple as existing within an environment that openly engages and brainstorms. Unfortunately, the word often brings to mind inspirational posters scattered about the office: pictures of hands in the middle of a huddle; someone offering a helping hand to a friend as they climb a mountain; links in a chain; cogs in a machine, etc.
Collaboration has become such a buzzword that it is sometimes given little to no thought. The truth is, companies are missing growth potential by taking it for granted. Collaboration directly impacts your bottom line and could help your company make more money. Here’s how.
Familiarity Is More Important than Skill
In our individualistic society, it’s easy to place a disproportionate emphasis on the abilities of an individual over those of a team. While individual skill helps, having an office that openly collaborates helps more.
In studies conducted by Harvard and the University of North Carolina, familiarity among team members was shown to have a greater impact on profitability and efficiency than individual work or experience. When familiarity increased by 50 percent,defects in that team’s work decreased by 19 percent and their deviation from budget decreased by 30 percent.
When individuals don’t live in silos, their work improves. Operational efficiency is directly tied to continued collaboration. As the group is strengthened, so are its individual parts.
Customers Can Tell
When teamwork is emphasized, the results extend to the most important part of business: customers. In the aforementioned study, the improvement wasn’t only seen through consistency—there was also a “10% improvement in performance, as judged by clients, when teams had members with a high degree of familiarity.”
A team that works together as a cohesive unit leads to happier interactions with customers.
Conversation Ups Efficiency
A fringe benefit of teamwork is the “small talk” that occurs when employees are consistently engaging. But small talk has a big (and positive) impact on employee productivity. Oscar Ybarra, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, says that engaging with coworkers helps sharpen employees’ short-term memory and concentration. The effects carry over into work and add small bursts of energy throughout the day.
Collaboration is about more than having meetings; it should be a workplace culture. Building a collaborative environment benefits employees—even when they’re working individually.
Knowledge Spreads
When employees connect on a regular basis, even if the interactions are informal, it naturally results in knowledge being shared. If an important memo is sent to the company and is overlooked by one member, he or she is more likely to catch wind of the memo by partnering with others during the day.
Shared knowledge means more informed and educated employees.
Employee Retention Improves
Companies that encourage collaboration have an easier time onboarding new employees. Individuals learn by interacting with others and observing how they do their job, and the more quickly new employees connect with their coworkers, the less likely they are to jump ship. Employee retention leads to a long lasting and productive workforce.
No one is ever openly against teamwork, but it is not often given the precedence it deserves. Many companies that do value teamwork don’t necessarily create an environment that fosters collaboration.
That’s where the Stand Up Desk Store comes in.
Our standing desks come with four rolling casters and can be moved easily; this mobility makes collaboration in your workplace simple. If your company is committed to teamwork, then equip your employees with the tools that enable connections. Plus, you can take advantage of our sweet corporate discounts for qualified purchases.
Learn more about the real-world benefits of collaboration and how Stand Up Desks improve your productivity, and start to facilitate teamwork within your company today. After all, teamwork makes the dream work!
