Online collaboration is hard. Not only does it require knowledge of tools to share documents, charts, and other content but it often involves the same individuals to share ideas and work on problems together online. This can pose a series of challenges from finding or sharing content that you want to collaborate with others on to staying in sync when collaborating with people around the world. In order to overcome these challenges, you must also know how your team members think and communicate with one another.
The challenges of online collaboration
We won’t deny it: online collaboration has its challenges, especially when you make the transition suddenly and unexpectedly. Here are a few of the biggest disadvantages of online collaboration.
Feeling disconnected
A rapid shift to digital collaboration can leave team members feeling disconnected from one another and from the business itself.
We don’t often put much thought into the casual interactions that happen among coworkers in a shared physical space, but in a healthy workplace, conversations around the coffee pot and in the hallways add up to create a sense of belonging and camaraderie among team members. The sudden absence of those casual interactions can leave coworkers feeling isolated and out of touch.
The routine of coming in to the office every day provided an anchoring ritual that solidified each person’s identity as a member of the team and part of the company. Working from home with little idea when they’ll be able to return to the office may create a sense that employees are on their own with little support from the organization.
A good manager can foster connections among coworkers and with the company by investing time in team building.
Delayed responses
One of the best things about collaborating in person is that you can usually get answers immediately. If you have a question, you just walk to your coworker’s desk and ask. If a teammate is slow to respond to your email, you can just pop into his office and get a verbal reply. In a recent survey[1] by Slack, remote workers around the world consistently listed communication as one of the most important elements of good collaboration. With online collaboration, you’re dependent on others to respond in a timely manner, and your team has to negotiate strategies for dealing with urgent questions from multiple remote workspaces.
Project management
If your team was accustomed to collaborating in person before the pandemic, you probably didn’t have the tools in place for effective digital project management. Even in many modern offices, project management is a combination of digital tools and physical ones, and there are usually lots of paper files being passed around. Quickly adopting a more comprehensive digital project management tool could be met with resistance and confusion as team members struggle to learn new technology or even to accept the need to make changes in how projects are managed. Though change can be difficult, this can be mitigated by getting employee input before a new system is implemented and by selecting technology that is as intuitive as possible.
The advantages of online collaboration
Though online collaboration can be challenging, there are also many advantages. Once your team gets accustomed to it, they’re likely to embrace online collaboration even when it’s possible to return to the office.
Flexibility
Online collaboration with digital tools provides a degree of flexibility never before thought possible. Many workers have found themselves suddenly responsible for children’s remote schooling and are sharing home office space with another adult. Some have had to temporarily relocate or travel to assist relatives. With online collaboration, your team can work at any time, from anywhere. Mobile apps allow for quick check-ins and responses even when an employee is away from their computer.
Productivity
Online collaboration contributes to productivity, and not only because it allows for increased flexibility in working hours and location. Even before the Coronavirus pandemic, a Deloitte survey[2] suggested workers were both happier and more productive when given effective digital collaboration tools. Good communication tools, an important element of online collaboration, also increase productivity.
Project management
Wait, how can project management be a pro and a con? It all depends on how you go about it. While an office-based team may struggle at first to effectively manage projects online, moving your project management to the digital sphere can improve project management significantly. Deploying a digital workplace tool that’s a good fit for your team can improve visibility and communication on your projects, allowing everyone to do their jobs better.☛ Learn more about How Online Collaboration Helps Teams Succeed
Make online collaboration work to your team’s advantage
Millions of teams around the world are collaborating online, some more effectively than others. As we’ve already suggested, the key to successful online collaboration is choosing the right tools. You can take advantage of all that online collaboration has to offer by adopting a great digital workplace for your team. A digital workplace is a virtual space that allows your team to carry out all the functions of their work without switching among a bunch of apps or monitoring half a dozen communication channels.
One of the most important advantages of a digital workplace is the kind of communication it enables. Everyone on the team can see relevant project details and comment on them in real time, in the context of the project. We think this kind of contextual communication makes Kissflow an ideal digital workplace for online collaboration, and its user-friendly, no-code interface means your team can get to work quickly. While the switch to online collaboration has been challenging for many people, it will continue to shape the future of work long after the pandemic is behind us. By choosing good tools and using them well, you and your team can leverage the advantages of online collaboration while avoiding its dangers.
The Solutions for Seamless Online Collaboration
What’s a team to do? Here are a few tips offered up by the authors of a recent study and our team.
- Create online profiles of team members. Go beyond the CV and ask them to share any personal interests, hobbies, etc. Don’t force it – they should share only information they feel comfortable divulging.
- Establish rules for how the team will communicate, resolve conflict, and make decisions. Create an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas and concerns.
- Carefully monitor when meetings are held to make sure no one team member is constantly working the graveyard shift. Similarly, make sure meetings are absolutely necessary, have a clear agenda with start and end times, and all team members help each other stay on track.
- During meetings, imagine your teammates are in the room with you. When sharing ideas, speak slowly and clearly. Ask someone to reflect back in their own words what you said. Listen actively without interrupting the speaker. Ask questions and offer a summary of what you think you heard for confirmation.
How to overcome 3 common project collaboration challenges
To create this list, we researched common collaboration pitfalls and reached out to project leaders to learn their best practices for overcoming these issues.
1. Poor communication
Miscommunication, misinterpretation, misunderstanding: Every time we collaborate with someone else, there’s potential for one or more of these mishaps to occur.
Here’s why: Similar to how we overestimate our ability to collaborate effectively, we tend to be overconfident in our communication skills as well.
We assume that everyone is on the same page, so we don’t take the time to check for understanding. Or, we presume people have the same knowledge or perspective as we do, so we leave out contextual details. Or, maybe (but hopefully not) we view communication as one-sided and don’t seek buy-in from stakeholders.
In our research, we’ve learned that inadequate or poor communication is the No. 1 challenge faced by project teams. And Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace report found that only 13% of employees strongly agree that leadership communicates effectively with the rest of the organization.
THE SOLUTION:
Check for understanding by engaging in two-way communication. Communication involves listening and adjusting as well as telling.
Breakdowns in communication almost always stem from the sender assuming that the message was received accurately and failing to seek feedback from the receiver. However, responsibility also falls on the receiver to ask questions if they aren’t clear on or if they have concerns about the message they received.
Gartner recommends the following approach for effective communication in the workplace. (Full report available to Gartner clients.)
- Share multiple times through multiple methods (i.e., over-communicate). Convey the “what,” “why,” and “how” in your message.
- Listen. Check for understanding. Ask for feedback, answer questions, and confirm that everyone is on the same page.
- Adapt the plan and/or the approach as needed based on the feedback received.
2. Lack of proper planning
Every work effort, big or small, requires planning. This helps create a shared vision for everyone involved, which is essential for smooth collaboration.
If you skip this step—or if you think you can figure out the details as you go—you’re setting yourself, your team, and the project up for failure.
Lack of proper planning leads to miscommunication, misunderstandings around what people’s roles and responsibilities are, and conflicting priorities (about the project goals, about level of effort, about how to prioritize this initiative alongside other work, etc.).
Particularly if the initiative involves working with other teams or departments, you need to plan accordingly so managers know how to help their employees prioritize this initiative along with other ongoing work.
THE SOLUTION:
Do not start any work effort until you conduct a kickoff meeting to align on the following:
- Objectives/goal: What are we trying to achieve or what problem are we trying to solve?
- Scope, timeline, budget/resources: What tangible or intangible product or service do we expect this to deliver, and what work needs to be done to do so? How long will it take, how much will it cost, and what resources (i.e., people, roles, skills, departments, etc.), are needed?
- Success criteria: How will we measure the success or failure of this work effort?
- Stakeholders: Who are the stakeholders in this work effort? What is their role, level of involvement, level of influence, etc.?
- Standardized process: What process or workflow will this initiative follow? What tool(s) will we use to communicate, collaborate, and track our progress?
- Internal and external dependencies: What conditions or bottlenecks may impact the scope, timeline, and budget/resources of this initiative? For example, other ongoing projects, bandwidth of key resources, upcoming holidays or vacations, working with vendors/clients, etc.
3. Not using the right tools
Email, spreadsheets, carrier pigeons— these are the wrong tools to use for collaboration. For starters, these tools don’t bring people together. Instead, they keep information and individuals extremely siloed.
They also contribute to miscommunication (e.g., long email threads thanks to “reply all,” or forgetting to hit “reply all” and leaving people out of the loop) and they don’t provide workload visibility.
Basically, they’re just messy (pigeons especially).
Consider this: The No. 1 pain point that leads first-time buyers to purchase project management software is the need to improve transparency and accountability, followed closely by the need to improve collaboration and break down silos.
THE SOLUTION:
First, invest in the right tools, then create a communication plan for using them.
Here’s what we recommend to find the right tool:
- Evaluate your needs. What pain points exist with your current tool(s)?
- Identify your must-have versus nice-to-have features.
- Create a short list of products based on functionality and team requirements (you can use our directory and filter the product list by specific features you’re looking for).
- Have end users demo products and score them based on your tool requirements.
- Invest in the solution that best fits your needs.
The second part to this solution is creating (and enforcing) a communication plan and tool hierarchy.
What does this mean? Well, for example, you’re never going to get rid of email. But you can create rules around how it’s used.
This means that if someone emails you about a project, ask that they transfer their question to your shared tool so all project-related communication is stored in the same place. Save email for non-urgent or non-project related communication.
Conclusion
Collaboration is the cornerstone of the digital age. If you think you’re not collaborating online, you’re mistaken. You are collaborating, whether you like it or not.