Collaboration: Changing the World for the Better

The following is a guest post from Jacob Morgan, author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Collaborative Organization, which is the first comprehensive strategy guide to emergent workplace collaboration.  He is the principal of Chess Media Group, blogs at Social Business Advisor can be found on Twitter @JacobM.

I believe that Collaborative Organizations can make the world a better place.

According to a Gallup poll, around 71% of employees at American companies are not engaged in their jobs.  Engaged employees feel a connection to their company and work with a sense of passion.  How sad is it that so many employees (at least in American companies) are not passionate about the work they do and don’t feel connected to their companies?

For the first time in the history of business leaders are able to make investments in technology and strategy that not only positively impact the lives of employees in the workplace but also outside of the workplace.  We have the necessary tools and can develop the strategies required to make sure that our employees can stay connected and engaged with each other and with the information they need to get work done.  The consumer web has led to an evolution of new technology solutions which also helped change our culture.  We are now much more comfortable living in a public world where we share information and ideas on plaforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, and many others.  Enterprises are strugggling to adapt to these changes in both behavior and technology which are changing the way we work.  Technology is improving and our needs are changing yet organizations are not able to keep up.

The challenges for enterprises around collaboration are very real and all too common, some of then include:

• disengaged employees
• employee productivity issues
• too much time spent in email
• stagnant innovation
• work-life balance issues
• finding people and information
• retaining and transfering knowledge
• organizational alignment

Although I believe that new collaboration tools and strategies can help solve these problems, I think what's more interesting are the broader implications.  If businesses are able to engage their employees and allow them to more effectively collaborate with each other, what happens?  

I believe the following:

Employees will:

• Feel more inspired or happier at work and about their jobs
• Become more productive
• Build networks of passion and interest
• Feel challenged and encouraged
• Feel as though they work with a sense of purpose
• Contribute more ideas which lead to opportunities that the organization can leverage (revenue generation and cost savings)
• Help each other at work

This is what happens to employees while at work, but think about what happens to these same employees when they leave work at the end of the day?  I believe these same employees:

• Will be less stressed out at home
• Will spend more time with family and loved ones
• Will live their lives with greater zeal and passion
• Will worry less about work related issues as they will have the ability to work from anywhere and know that they can get access to the right people and information the need

We have started to see organizations make the necessary investments in the enterprise collaboration space but we need more.  We need our businesses to evolve faster and I personally see this as a business requirement for organizations today.  I also believe that we should start spending more time looking at how collaboration more broadly positively impacts the lives of employees, that is where the real cool and interesting stuff happens!

 

 

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