The Value of Collaboration

Everyday at companies across the globe, we as employees are encouraged or even required to work in teams. It's been long established that employees want to work in teams and with others and this need has even created an entire industry of coworking spaces such as Joule and CoCo here in the Twin Cities where individuals and freelancers can interact with others in a shared office environment.

Despite this want, need, and even many times requirement, most workers are still desk based. In a recent study by Forrester Research and Cisco, 71% of employees reported that they work from their desk or cube in an office environment more than 4 days per week and make the majority of their calls from this desk. The problems with desks and cubes however is that they actually break apart the team environment and make employees more secluded, but often employees feel most productive at their desk. So, how do we create a balance of collaboration, team work, and productivity?  

In short, the answer is unified communications including video enabled phones and chat services such as Microsoft Lync that can help teams work more effectively and can foster team work even with teams that may be separated by a cube wall or an entire ocean.

The Cisco study also tested customer-related tasks and found that 54% of employees prefer in-person interaction for “demonstrating a product,” 57% for “engaging in complex negotiations,” and 41% for “closing a sale.”

Those who make use of feature-rich unified communication technologies, such as video-enabled phones, find a lot of value in them and often find that many of the tasks that were previously done in person can now be done remotely for a fraction of the cost in a manner that is equally effective and often more efficient.

According to the study, a majority of existing users (87%) found that they were vital to their work and agreed that video-enabled phones are being used as an alternative to in-person interactions. These findings point to the need for businesses to invest in innovative unified communications tools that deliver better collaboration and an in-person conversation experience.

At nology we've partnered with multiple businesses to deliver a truly unified communications experience to their employees through a full suite of VoIP, video conferencing, chat, and social media integration. To find out more contact us today - 612.339.0838 .