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Teaming Up with SharePoint, or Collaboration That Counts

By Sergei Golubenko posted 03-29-2016 10:05

  

Teaming Up with SharePoint, or Collaboration That Counts

Teamwork is like a voyage across the ocean. There are days of quiet water, there are stormy days. To keep the ship afloat, your team should be active, well-coordinated and task-oriented. Navigating in the market ‘ocean’, a modern company is that ship with complex organizational structures, galloping communication processes and relationship models that differ substantially from classic vertical structures.

In these conditions, only strong teams united by cross-departmental collaboration can reach their goals. To aid them along the way, team leaders can introduce powerful software, and this is where SharePoint collaboration capabilities stand out to support teams and make their work more productive.

Workflows That Save Time

As multitasking coupled with tight deadlines is the everyday reality, collaboration-based, automated workflows are vital.

Of 500 Fortune companies, 80% use SharePoint to manage their workflows. SharePoint allows managers to optimize work processes, arrange streams of documents and adjust internal workflows. Using a SharePoint site, employees don’t need to jump between different systems, as they are able to share documents in a single click, edit them and instantly search for information.

Workflows arranged, one more time-consuming activity, that is, communication can be regulated. SharePoint Newsfeeds and community cites enable employees to keep in touch, discuss projects and tasks, ask questions, get consultations, which facilitates co-working and prevents mistakes.

Thus, working in the unified SharePoint collaboration area, employees save both their workflow execution and communication time.

Collaboration That Drives Initiative

The time you save with SharePoint can be then spent on team consolidation activities such as brainstorming, open discussions and idea generation. The biggest advantage is that you still stay on the same SharePoint site and just change an activity field (e.g. you can create a separate feed or a site). At this stage, SharePoint collaboration aims to trigger employees’ action.

While sharing opinions and discussing new projects, process-driven employees learn to be initiative-driven. By creating an open platform where every team member freely shares ideas, you will encourage them to search for solutions. Once this practice is implemented by a team leader, employees will feel constantly involved into the working process.

Sticking to the course, the general level of employees’ interest in a company’s everyday life raises as well. SharePoint again helps to guide internal communication. Employees are free to follow Newsfeeds to be informed about the company’s activities or to join a preferred community site to get news from their group only.

And yet, it’s impossible to force employees to use a SharePoint site if it has no useful information. It should be managed and renewed constantly to attract employees’ attention. It will result not only in more enthusiasm but also will help to achieve the next important step in team productivity that is a lower stress level.

Co-working That Raises Confidence

Stress is accumulated for weeks and months, and can affect not only one person but the entire team. According to the American Psychological Association, the U.S. economy loses more than $500 billion and 550 billion workdays because of work-related stress. So struggling with stress is not only a matter of saving personal mental health but also saving companies’ budgets.

It’s possible to prevent stress accumulation and its impact on work results by choosing a right collaboration tool. SharePoint enjoys high user adoption rates as it can be managed stress-free even by beginners. When collaborating on a SharePoint site, users work in the Windows environment packed with familiar social features such as likes, shares, status updates, and hash tags. Moreover, a SharePoint site can be customized according to your corporate style. Thus, employees will perceive their SharePoint as an integral part of their company’s identity.

Even a bigger stress results from the fear of making a mistake or failing. Coming back to SharePoint collaboration feeds, let’s remember that discussing an issue can help to avoid mistakes and to make employees feel more relaxed and supported by their colleagues. Stress-free working conditions guarantee productivity and lead to employees’ higher engagement, which determine their results.

Engagement That Leads

Disengagement is costly. Einar Westerlund, the Director of Project Development for the Queen’s Centre for Business Venturing (QCBV) states: “There is a very real bottom-line cost to disengaged employees. The business cost of each disengaged employee in an organization is close to $10,000.”

However, engagement is not a stand-alone concept, it depends on a range of factors. To be engaged employees should feel interest and passion for what they do. Unfortunately, passion isn’t to be managed with software. But still, a customized collaboration site allows to develop other engagement components, as it helps employees to feel comfortable in their work environment, to follow their work progress and results, to get appreciated for their input.

Engagement cannot be evaluated in standard measures but in terms of how effective the teamwork is. So engagement does deserve to be stimulated and promoted with the help of your SharePoint site.

Conclusion

Collaboration is the basis of productive teamwork, so it has to be supported with dedicated software. As a strong collaboration platform, SharePoint helps team leaders to encourage employees’ independent input, confidence and engagement that will ensure better performance and contribute to a company’s bottom line.

You are always welcome to contact our SharePoint consultants to discuss SharePoint collaboration capabilities or to ask any information on SharePoint platform. 



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