Yesterday’s Technology Can Hurt Tomorrow’s Collaboration Efforts

Business owners talk a lot about collaboration, but few organizations have the means to take full advantage of it. One way these businesses miss the mark is by using outdated technology. Ironically, most technology in the workplace is designed to improve collaboration yet businesses continue to struggle with it. By improving your understanding of your technology, you’ll pave the way for greater workplace synergy.

Employee Engagement is Cause for Concern
The wrong technology can sometimes be considered counter-productive, especially when your employees don’t see the need to use it. This is further complicated when third-party applications are perceived to be easier to use than those which have been provided by the workplace. According to a survey by Gallup, 13 percent of employees are actually engaged during their workday, which is a shockingly low number compared to what is expected of your team. In fact, according to the vice-president of research at Gartner, Jeffrey Mann, “What you’ll find is that disengaged employees will potentially be killing your business.”

The first step toward getting your workers interested in collaboration is to convince them that participating in meetings isn’t the end of the world, and they need to use the tools provided to them in order to understand their importance. This is one of the largest reasons for a disengaged employee when they must collaborate; they might have difficulty operating legacy software, or even adjusting to changes in new technology. According to Mann, “If company data is not available at the right time in the right context, it will slow down the machinery of an entire business.” Therefore, a company should strive to help their employees understand their technology whenever possible, which in turn improves their access to information and boosts productivity.

Even worse, if an employee finds their technology bulky and cumbersome to use, they probably won’t use it. In the employee's mind, it’s a simple matter of efficiency. Your workers will want to collaborate and enjoy new technology if you help them understand what they’re working with.

The Disengaged Worker and BYOD
On occasion, you’ll see employees forsaking your enterprise software and using third-party applications, like a social media group chat to communicate and collaborate. This is an example of BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device; using their own technology to improve the workplace experience. However, it could be detrimental to your business’s security policies.

You might think you should be rewarding your team for being innovative and showing initiative, but the security risks outweigh the benefits for sure. Enterprises want to utilize a unified communications system across the entire company infrastructure, which can help managers keep track of communications. If a team member had planned an entire project on their personal mobile device, and then that device were to either be stolen or compromised, that data is now at risk and the project is in the trash bin. This is both time-consuming and counter-productive.

What’s the Best Way to Improve Team Collaboration?
If an employee were to cause data to be lost due to a personal device debacle, it can be catastrophic. In order to avoid this situation, employees need to understand that the software provided to them is optimized to improve their collaborative efforts in the most secure way possible. What you need is an enterprise-level solution designed to meet the needs of your business while optimizing workplace efficiency.

Give your team the customized collaboration tools necessary to achieve their best potential workflow. k_Street Consulting, LLC can equip your business with the best technology for any job. All you need to do is call (202) 640-2737.