Why collaboration makes employees want to go the workplace

The workplace is a wonderful place to advance one’s career, connect to a larger mission, and form meaningful bonds with coworkers. There are a lot of ingredients that go into the recipe for a great workplace. One that often gets tossed around is collaboration. But is collaboration really that important to driving a positive employee experience at work or is it just a buzzword? Turns out, yes! Employees who collaborate at their workplace are 17% more satisfied in their job and workplace culture than those who don’t. Why? They feel a greater sense of belonging to their workplace and have stronger relationships with those they work with every day.

For workplace managers looking to create a great employee experience, creating a collaborative environment should be at the top of the priority list. In this blog post, we’ll go over five ways workplace collaboration can improve the employee experience.

5 benefits of workplace collaboration for employees

1. Helps employees solve problems faster and smarter

In order to win a relay race, many players need to work together and complete their part of the race. Most group sports or activities distribute the work or task among a few members. Why? We’re all better when we work together. The same is true about projects at work. Each function plays its part in ensuring the success of an overall project. Collaborating allows employees to share their unique skills, allowing faster, smarter solutions.In fact, people who work in a collaborative setting at work are 50% more effective at completing tasks than those who work independently. And it makes a difference if you’re onsite versus at home. In an office, you’re able to walk up to a coworker and ask a question. They can respond right then and there and speed up the process of completing the task. When you work remotely, you might have to wait an hour or two to get a response to a Slack message.

2. Improves communication

It might be obvious that collaborating requires good communication skills. If you need to request something from another teammate, it’s important to be clear on what the request is and when you need it. If the request is unclear, both teammates can feel lost and frustrated. And communication is key to a good employee experience. It’s no surprise then that 39% of respondents in a survey cited poor communication to be a top stressor at work. That means good communication can go a long way in helping employees form strong relationships at work and feeling less stressed. Plus, communicating onsite and face-to-face is a very different skill set than communicating online. It’s an important professional skill to be able to speak clearly in a meeting or communicate an idea to someone in a 1:1.

3. Prevents burnout

Burnout can happen to employees when they feel overworked, isolated from teammates, or frustrated by a lack of support. Collaboration can be the silent hero in helping prevent burnout. Why? Collaboration helps employees distribute tasks more equitably. That helps lessen the workload on each person and can prevent burnout.Plus, collaboration can help reduce the fatigue and loneliness employees may feel when they’re working on projects siloed. Meaningful communication and collaboration at work can improve team dynamics by reassuring employees that they have other people to lean on. It can also strengthen workplace relationships and even friendships.

4. Improves knowledge sharing

Most employees specialize in their roles, which means they alone don’t have all the answers to solve a problem. Knowledge sharing is an essential part of the employee experience because it helps people learn new things and develop additional skills in their careers. Plus, it allows employees to flex their own skills and provide value to their team. In an office setting employees can share their knowledge in a lot of ways. They can help a teammate out with a question, lead a functional training, or even offer a new perspective in casual lunchtime work conversation.

5. Fuels career growth

The ability to collaborate is an important skill for career growth. Studies show that top-performing workers spend 45% of their time working individually, 45% of their job working collaboratively, and 10% of their time learning and socializing. This data suggests that the highest-performing employees spend an equal amount of time engaging in both individual and collaborative work.For employees, career growth is an important aspect of the employee experience in the workspace. Feeling stagnant or stuck isn’t a great feeling for anyone. By collaborating more at work, employees meet new teams, take on new projects, and learn new ways to grow in their career.

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Collaboration is essential to driving a positive employee experience. It helps employees feel like they belong to something meaningful and have a team of supporters to lean on. Plus, it allows employees to learn better and faster in ways that will help propel their own career trajectories. But more important to the bottom line, collaboration drives business success because it brings people together to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently.