The Future Of Collaboration In The Workplace: Deveshi Malhotra

Effective collaboration inthe workplace is ofpivotal importance as it leads to innovation, efficient team functioning, improved communication and ultimately no lags or redundancy. 

Employee collaboration has been redefined in today’s era of remote work ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift posed a new challenge in terms of preserving company culture despite the massive workforce transition.How have organisations supported employees to foster effective collaboration and communication during this digital transformation?

A Deloitte survey stated that individual’s ability to rapidly shift the location of work according to skill availability and criticality has made communication, collaboration, and connectivity more critical. These three factors are critical in enhancing performance as well as achieving organizational goals and success. 

Project Aristotle conducted by Psychologists at Google, focused on identifying what makes a team function collaboratively: people having similar personality types, employee educational backgrounds, rewards, and incentives offered by the firm, however, after conducting the research they were able to conclude that culture is the cornerstone of constructive collaboration. 

The pandemic has sustained communication and collaboration challenges.

Inventing new strategies and systems of effective communication is imperative as that will reduce the risk of losing employees, their productivity and eventually the customers. The need of the hour is for the global firms to explore and analyse the value created within employee networks to identify the tools that boost collaboration and organizational effectiveness.‘Collaboration at a distance’ launched by Deloitte includes functions such as Ideation and whiteboarding, creating immersive virtual environments, organizing structured interactive sessions etcetera, which fosters employee engagement, leading to high levels of performance and increased profits. Building such models that support the hybrid way of working and pay attention to the ties that bind people together through effective leadership and organizational support provides employees with social cohesion, stability, trust, engagement, and the motivation to collaborate effectively. 

(Deveshi Malhotra is  studying B.Sc. Social Science at UCL, London)