1. HR Glossary
2. Social Collaboration

Social Collaboration

What is Social Collaboration?

Social collaboration means the practice of an individual, a group or departments in an organization working together to reach a common goal. This informal collaboration does not just involve communication but also the sharing of ideas, knowledge and resources to make the work environment productive and innovative.

Basically, It involves different teams working together on certain projects or initiatives. If the teams are working remotely or located in different geographical locations, the use of digital tools or platforms is advent. The availability of digital tools has significantly expanded this HR practice and enabled teams to connect from anywhere in the world.

Sometimes, social collaboration is also referred to as enterprise social networking. With this context, the digital platforms used for the collaboration are known as enterprise social networks (ESNs). Although, your organization doesn’t necessarily need to have this network to get a benefit from social collaboration.

The primary idea of these platforms is to give smoother communication to employees who want to collaborate with their department or other departments easily. This, in turn, can lead to enhanced creativity, faster problem-solving, and improved overall productivity within the organization.

Benefits of Social Collaboration

1. Finer Understanding of Projects

When employees work within their department and don’t collaborate with others, they usually only know about their tasks and nothing about other teams' projects.

This approach benefits only one part of the company, not the whole company. Sharing work with the whole company makes employees understand the overall goals better.

For example, if your IT team is making a new webpage, and they don't work with the sales or marketing team, they might make a page that looks nice but doesn't match what the company is known for or attract customers visually. But if the IT team works with the marketing and sales team, they can make a webpage that not only looks good but also attracts customers.

2. Sharing knowledge is simpler

Employees often face questions and problems in their daily work that they can't immediately solve. Sometimes, they don't even know who to ask for help.

For example, imagine the marketing team is using a new report-making tool that the sales team has been using for three months. If someone from the sales team helps the marketing team understand this tool and answers their questions, the marketing team can learn it much faster. The sales team can share what they've learned, making it easier for the marketing team to start using the tool.

A good idea is to set up a special way for teams to ask questions, where any employee from the company can answer. This kind of social collaboration makes sharing knowledge smoother. Plus, when everyone can see this knowledge, it helps when an employee leaves the company, as the information they knew is already shared.

3. Better Productivity

When employees with different skills and backgrounds work together, they bring new ideas that can lead to better outcomes. These fresh ideas help teams think of more creative and effective ways to solve problems.

If your team is stuck on a problem, getting a new perspective can offer a different solution and improve how you develop products. By employees working together, they can deliver their best work and reduce any risks.

4. Improved Company Culture

When employees working on different projects support each other, there is less fear of failure among them because every project essentially becomes a group project. This makes a company’s culture transparent and open.

Also, leaders can encourage employees to be honest about what they know, and what they don’t. This in turn creates a culture of collaboration and improved skilled sets where employees actually want to learn new skills.

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