We are now well into the first quarter of 2022, and it’s a great time to start thinking about how you are going to foster employee productivity and collaboration in this upcoming year. IT Solutions providers can help gauge what team collaboration tools your organization will benefit the most from and help you get them implemented.
There are many collaboration tools available on the market. Which one is the right fit for your organization is entirely dependent on your current stack of applications, how you’re currently working and collaborating, and which tools you employ to get the job done. We take a rather open approach here at EIS with implementing products and don’t abide by the one-size-fits-all philosophy that you get with some organizations.
For now, let’s talk about the top reasons you’ll want to implement team collaboration tools at your organization.
Benefit #1: Foster a positive workplace
An engaged team is a more productive team, and it’s no secret that, with our new hybrid or fully remote workspaces, having the right tools to foster collaboration and teamwork helps improve company morale. If your company is currently not using a collaboration tool OR you feel your team might be signing up for every tool on the market and there is no clear cohesive standard for it, you may want to take time to give this some serious consideration.
Benefit #2: More engaged meetings
Collaboration tools give your team the ability to work together in meetings. The ability to raise your hand, react to what’s being said with emojis, change virtual backgrounds and more, gives your team the ability to have fun with their meetings and teammates while also taking part in the meetings.
For some more introverted employees, the ability to raise your hand is a game-changer in virtual meetings.
Benefit #3: Keep meetings on track
Keeping your team on track during meetings is now more streamlined than ever. Some productivity tools offer the ability to put an agenda straight into the meeting request, as well as the ability to take your meeting notes right in the meeting.
This means you have a centralized location to access all of your meeting notes, and your team will be able to keep track with their collaboration goals when keeping an eye on the agenda items. Preparing an agenda before the meeting will help encourage your team to start thinking about what they want to contribute.
Team collaboration tools are an awesome platform we have available for all things that sitting around a boardroom conference table used to support for in-person meetings.
Benefit #4: Improve workflows
By implementing a cloud productivity tool, you are elevating your staff’s ability to automate workflows. By automating workflows, you can drastically reduce the amount of time that is spent on specific tasks within your departments.
Automation is important in this day and age and, with tools like Power Automate in Office 365, you can begin to look at how your workflows can improve. You can effectively drop bottlenecks to make sure that the right people, at the right time, are getting the information they need at your organization.
If you haven’t thought any further about how your organization can receive help from automating some of your workflows, I highly recommend you do! Where are your staff spending the most time on menial tasks?
Here are some automation ideas you may want to bring to your IT solutions provider:
- Create a one-note page for a meeting to record notes and minutes.
- Push notifications for important emails that come through.
- Create automated reminders about tasks that you have due.
Benefit #5: Improve communication
By implementing cloud collaboration tools in your organization, you give your team the tools necessary for them to feel comfortable reaching out across departments to get things done. Not only does this speed up the process of some projects, but it can make for a better connected company. A better connected company that can bring all its departments together can really improve happiness at work.
One of the bottlenecks to communication is having to take time to look up the person’s number, then you have to dial the number, then you have to listen to the ring, and hope that they pick up the phone. OR you can send an email to them and wait a couple of hours while it gets lost in the sea of dozens of emails they are receiving. This is why cloud communication tools, in this day and age, are so important to the functionality of your team.
Having the ability to just open up Teams or Slack and ping the person you’re looking to collaborate with is a game-changer.
EIS Makes Team Collaboration Easy
If you have any questions about your current collaboration stack, or wish to implement one but don’t know where to start, please reach out to our team by scheduling a consultation.