One of the biggest factors that have contributed thus far to us as an organization is the ability to leverage collaboration in our day to day activities whilst working to achieve set goals and objectives.
Collaboration today is a key growth resource missing in many organizations, small businesses, emerging oil and gas firms and the likes of them. One of the biggest factors that contribute to the success of any business is whether or not its employees can perform together as a team. With increasing competition, it has become extremely important to encourage creativity in the office, to improve productivity and promote healthy employee relationships.
So, what is Collaboration? As the definition implies, collaboration is initiated to achieve a common goal. This could be through working in teams which enable employees to be quicker and more effective in their work, as compared to people who work on projects on their own. Collaborating and delegating of tasks also makes employees more responsible, which goes a long way in raising their motivation levels towards their jobs.
Below are some of the many benefits of collaboration at the workplace for organizational development.



1. More Efficient Processes
Have you ever encountered an organization where “the right-hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing”? What happens in such an environment? A lot of duplicated activities! Things fall through the cracks. Someone drops the ball on something, and a mini-crisis ensues. Employees end up having to re-do work or fix errors that could have been avoided in the first place.
And what’s the impact of that on the company? Projects take longer to finish, customers are unhappy and may go away, the company ends up spending more time, people resources and money than necessary and all these hurts the bottom line.
However, through better collaboration, employees gain clarity in their roles. Clarity helps each person know what they are supposed to do as well as know what others are doing or not doing. Clarity through collaboration gives employees a focus on specific parts of your mission, at specific times and without costly overlap or gaps.



2. More Attractive to Top Talent and accelerated Business Growth Velocity
Collaboration gives your firm a competitive advantage when attracting top talent. Highly motivated job prospects want to be able to work under people they respect and whom they feel they can learn from.

According to a report -  research on millennials in the workplace, conducted by PwC, "Millennials relish the opportunity to engage, interact and learn from senior management."

Thus if you have a collaborative culture already inculcated into your company, you have the foundation for attracting top talent, especially from the younger generation.
With a collaborative culture, you gain the ability to bring products to the market faster. Teamwork and communication speed up the entire process and makes it easier to produce or deliver anything. The entire organization's ability to create value accelerates as a result.



3. Maximum Utilization of Employees Strength
When you encourage your employees to work together on projects, you also get the benefit of each person being able to work on activities that are most suited to their specific strengths.

Based on different research on human behaviour in organizations, employees who are encouraged to develop and use their strengths are more engaged and loyal. They perform better, produce more, learn their roles quicker and more positively affect their organization's profits.



4. Higher Retention Rates
The great thing about better employee engagement is that employees become happier and more fulfilled workers. Employees would stay longer if their work is fulfilling and if the people they work with are all generous team players who as well pay their quota where necessary and if they can achieve strategic goals per time while getting the skill or knowledge they crave.

What collaboration does is set the foundation for a more open culture within the workplace. And it is this culture that keeps people loyal and committed to your organization which further increases the growth of the organization.



5. Innovative Ideas
Innovation through collaboration is one major means for organizational growth. Collaboration is prone to generate innovative ideas.
More and more organizations today find themselves having to find and exploit new ideas and opportunities to respond to growing competitive pressure and to keep up with changes in customers’ needs. The recent economic recession has only further accelerated the urgency of this change and the “demand” for innovation for companies. Hence the more urgent need for collaboration in the workforce.

Let’s get to work on ‘Team Work’!

If you've made this far in the article, then you know collaboration is the one ingredient that your organization must-have for every other element; talent, innovation, productivity, and profitability to fall into place. It is crucial to your survival and most importantly, your success.
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