Business collaboration has long been praised for its ability to increase employee satisfaction and encourage innovation. IDC predicted that by 2024, businesses that have collaborative workplaces will have 30% lower employee attrition and 30% higher productivity.
Lately, however, companies have been relying on business collaboration tools to conduct everyday interactions between remote workers rather than leveraging these tools to optimize the workplace.
Just because your company is using collaboration tools to conduct routine business doesn’t mean you should become complacent. Instead, your organization should be raising your collaboration game by trying out new tools and strategies to better engage your employees.
Focusing on Employee Experience
Companies work hard to create personalized and memorable customer experiences. But what about the employee experience?
During the pandemic, workers miss face-to-face interactions. Communicating through instant messaging allows for real-time communication, but it’s no substitute for being in the same room with co-workers and team members.
Global consulting firm Deloitte noted that the frequent challenges remote workers face include:
- Exhaustion from staring at a screen all day instead of talking face-to-face
- Feeling disconnected, less creative, and less productive from lack of direct interaction
In response to these challenges, Deloitte recommends scheduling virtual meetings, breakout sessions, and frequent check-ins.
Battling employee disconnect requires the right collaboration tools. More advanced collaboration tools better simulate the experience of being in the office environment, chatting between cubicles, and spit-balling ideas in the conference room or by the coffee machine.
Adding more tools to your company’s collaboration toolbox also increases the chances that employees will be able to use their own communication style in the remote workplace.
Enriching the Collaboration Experience
Your company can create richer experiences for collaboration with video chat and web conferencing. Deloitte suggests combatting disconnect with video chats and virtual social time with colleagues, such as a virtual lunch or coffee breaks.
Video chat and web conferencing imitate the experience of being in the same room with co-workers. Video allows employees to see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices. Co-workers can look each other in the eyes to pick up on body-language cues.
The operative word here is “virtual.” Using video and audio supported by a high-speed network will best imitate the feel of being in an office or conference room environment with your colleagues. A low–latency fiber optic network allows for crystal–clear audio and high-definition video.
Safer Business Collaboration
Creating a better employee experience means also creating a safe environment for business collaboration. Workers need to feel that they can share sensitive information, including project files, without risk of being hacked.
Company projects are attractive targets for cybercriminals who want to steal intellectual property or research findings. If a university research study gets hacked, months or years of hard work may be rendered useless because results have been compromised.
The right collaboration solution will enable reliable and secure connectivity that eliminates risk. A fiber optic network is resistant to breaches and delivers a low-latency, high-availability connection.
Sourcing Richer Collaboration Tools
If your company’s collaboration tools are only meeting the status quo, you need to start stepping up your game. Finding the right partner for business collaboration will enable your organization to adopt an integrated UC solution that has everything you need for voice, file sharing, and video conferencing.
FirstLight has all the collaboration tools your company requires to create a stellar employee experience. We provide a rich suite of collaboration tools through our unified communications as a service offering (UCaaS).
We partner with Cisco to give our customers access to innovative collaboration solutions, such as Cisco Webex Teams and Webex Meetings, as well as many other offerings. Cisco collaboration solutions provide integrated video, audio, and content sharing for the optimal virtual workplace experience.
Get all the details on FirstLight UCaaS. Read our UCaaS Data Sheet.
