How to Select the Collaboration Tool That’s Right for Your Needs

Nowadays, the better your employees collaborate, the better your offering is going to be. This means getting the collaboration tools needed to make it simple for your staff to work together to create something great is critical. This month, we take a minute to discuss some of the problems businesses have with collaboration and how you can circumvent these challenges. 

Recently, Corel conducted a study about how businesses use collaboration. The study took a look at 2,000 workers' opinions throughout several nations and found that 54 percent of enterprise employees believe that having to use poor collaboration tools is bad for business. In fact, 70 percent of them thought that if they use these poor collaboration tools they act to limit productivity. Let’s look at some other numbers from the study:

• 27 percent of employees believe that businesses aren’t investing in the right tools
• 25 percent of employees believe that their collaboration tools have poor functionality
• 22 percent of employees believe they aren’t using the tools they have at their disposal
• 21 percent of employees claim they are not properly trained on how to use their tools

When you consider these to be all valid concerns, despite the small percentage of the surveyed showing concerns, you begin to see a small disconnect in the way that employers and employees view collaboration. Collaboration is supposed to work to make a workforce more productive, but if it has the opposite effect, it is basically a hindrance to the business. 

In the study, Corel found that 41 percent of employees have left their position, or would consider leaving, if the business suffers from substandard collaborative strategies. Since the onboarding process is extremely difficult, time-consuming, and expensive it would stand to reason that making the “right” call on collaboration software is a must. 

What Are the Problems You’ll Encounter?

Far too often, a business will implement collaboration tools without actively considering their workforce—the very people tasked with using these tools. For example, you can utilize a collaboration tool that would be great for your team if the expectations were that they use it for collaboration. However, a lot of businesses today require their remote employees to always be signed-in to a platform, creating situations where those tools become a distraction and a complete hindrance to their ability to actually be productive. 

Additionally, there are companies that utilize several collaboration tools that seemingly do the same things, further convoluting the workflow rather than helping it. Nothing can sully a worker’s mood more than being ready to use one piece of collaboration software only to be asked at the last minute to change. This creates stress and can cause redundant action, something that can really kill efficiency.

A solid collaboration tool meets the needs of the workers of the business, as well as management, to create a more productive and efficient workplace. The best way to understand what tools will work for your business is to ask your workers what they need to maintain high levels of productivity. If they are fighting with the software that is just there to seemingly help teams work together, it is completely counterproductive. 

If you would like to talk to one of our IT professionals about getting the stand-alone collaboration tools to help your business be its most productive, give us a call today at (206) 709-9556.