By Brigitta Poulos

The year has flown by and now that we’re closing in on the tail end of the year, now is the perfect time for businesses to redirect their focus onto two very important areas: collaboration and productivity. On top of encouraging problem-solving and promoting employee well-being, collaboration and productivity are key for workplace efficiency and skills development of staff.

In this article, we share some tips and tricks that will help your business improve in these areas, and how you can get your workplace working smarter, not harder.

Collaboration

1. Positive working environment

Having a supportive environment is vital if a business is wanting to make its workplace a collaborative one. For an employee to be able to collaborate, they need to feel empowered to share. This means that positive encouragement and praise need to be a regular and sincere response to teamwork and ideas. Making the workplace a safe space, where people can share ideas and suggestions without the fear of receiving negative reactions is key to ensuring collaboration thrives in the workplace.

2. Communication is a two-way street

Employers should set clear expectations and encourage open and honest communication between management, employees, and staff. Transparency and clarity not only enable collaboration to occur successfully but also prevent confusion and miscommunication which can cause dissatisfied and disgruntled staff. Another aspect to consider about communication is selecting shared platforms that employees can easily use to connect with management and other team members, such as Microsoft Teams.

3. Play to your strengths

Something to keep in mind when engaging in teamwork and collaboration is how to best use the skills of your team. When delegating tasks or organising groups, consider the skillsets and strengths of different employees, and try to arrange it so employees who are working together have strengths that complement and supplement each other.

4. Bonding

A classic for a reason – team bonding – isn’t just a handy excuse to throw a party or take the afternoon off, but a genuine tool in improving the collaboration between your employees.

Productivity  

1. Time management

Time is money, right? As a tool that’s priceless, one of the most crucial things to help productivity in the workplace is effective time management. This may look like conducting time management training sessions for employees, setting clear but reasonable deadlines, managing customer or client expectations where necessary, and helping employees to prioritise their to-do lists.

2. Taking well-deserved breaks

While it may seem counter-intuitive, taking regular breaks will actually improve your employees’ productivity. Encouraging them to even take just five-to-ten minutes to stretch their legs, grab a drink, get some fresh air, and have a mental pause from work will help them to feel refreshed and clear any brain fog, allowing for greater productivity upon return.

3. Recognise and reward employees

Motivation is key to productivity. Therefore, employers should be proactively engaging in the recognition and rewards of their employees. Whether it’s giving praise for a project well done, shouting the office coffee run, or implementing a rewards system, employees will be more motivated to make effective use of their time if they know they will be praised or even rewarded for their efforts.

How enableHR can help?

We believe HR should be simple. Simple enough for you to run your business confidently. Inside enableHR is everything you need to manage the entire employee lifecycle, from recruitment and onboarding to managing your people and termination. If you’d like to see enableHR in action, contact us to learn more about how we can help your business.

Brigitta Poulos is a Workplace Relations Advisor at HR Assured, enableHR’s sister company, who loves helping clients and businesses achieve excellent workplace compliance with their obligations and duties, and interpretation of relevant employment legislation and awards. She particularly enjoys researching and explaining new or ‘hot’ topics in the workplace relations and human resources fields to our clients.