Effective collaboration is key to driving workplace productivity

What exactly do we mean by “workplace productivity”? It’s not the same thing as efficiency, which is simply the output generated versus the resources used. Productivity, on the other hands, refers to both the amount of work completed and the value of that work. Two hours spent cleaning out your email inbox isn’t as productive as two hours spent working on an important project or nurturing a customer relationship. By Samier Sequeira – Account Executive, Rahi Systems.

Thursday, 23rd April 2020 Posted 4 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Of course, nobody works in total isolation. Advancing that important project may require ideas and input from a number of colleagues and specialists. Nurturing that customer relationship may involve complex business processes that span multiple departments and individuals.

The term “workstream” has been used to describe the progress of a business process across these various groups. A workstream isn’t the same as a workflow, which is a means of making a process more efficient. Workstreams focus on the human interaction needed to drive a business process forward.

Trouble is, the people involved in a particular process or project may be scattered around the world. Companies are hiring outside their region to obtain needed skill sets, gain cost-efficiencies and support around-the-clock business requirements. The workplace is global. To be productive, workers may need to collaborate with team members in different locations, in different time zones and on different schedules.

That’s why many businesses are looking to enhance their workstreams with communication and collaboration tools. They’re supplementing email with chat and presence, and making video conferencing more accessible to users. Video conferencing enables greater collaboration and productivity than traditional audio conferencing.

Forward-thinking companies are taking video conferencing to the next level with interactive “whiteboard” displays. After all, you can’t beat a whiteboard when it comes to brainstorming, capturing ideas, and building energy and support for a project. With traditional dry-erase whiteboards and easel pads, however, teams have to snap photos in order to preserve the information. Interactive whiteboards integrate with video conferencing systems, enabling users in any location to scribble notes and drawings in real time and capture all of the information electronically.

When selecting collaboration tools, organizations should focus on reliability and ease of use. Workers should be able to start a meeting with a few simple clicks. If it takes 10 minutes to set up a meeting, and there are six people on the team, that’s an entire hour lost. The productivity enabled by collaboration can easily be offset by overly complex technology.

Ideally, the solution should be consistent across the environment. Workers should be able to move from a huddle room to a conference room to an all-hands space and intuitively understand the user interface. Consistency also makes it easier to scale the environment to support more users and locations.

Rahi’s team of audio and video experts can design meeting spaces and recommend communication and collaboration solutions that will support the workstyles of your team. Our team will also ensure that your audio and video systems are easy to use and deliver the highest audio and video quality to maximize user adoption. Let us help you drive workplace productivity through the strategic application of audio and video technologies.