Written by HRCap, Inc.
October 27, 2022
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller, American author & disability rights advocate
How a team works together is vital to the company’s success. Although individual employees may bring great talent to a team, their output of success will be limited if they do not work well with others. With the rise of hybrid and remote work settings, it is becoming more important for companies to invest time in fostering a collaborative environment and training managers on how to develop stronger teamwork.
Gartner found that “teams of knowledge workers who collaborate intentionally are nearly three times more likely to achieve high team innovation than teams that do not use an intentional approach." Research from Zippia echoes by sharing that companies that promote collaboration and communication have reduced employee turnover rates by 50%, and employees are 17% more satisfied with their job when they engage in collaboration at work. Increased job satisfaction also leads to higher performance and productivity. Even back in 2017, figures showed that companies that encouraged cooperative work were 5 times as likely to be high-performing.
In our fifth “Leadership Table Talk,” we ask our CEO Andrew Sungsoo Kim about his thoughts on why collaboration is key, in what ways leaders are preventing collaboration from happening, how leaders can encourage collaboration, and how he is fostering collaboration at HRCap.
1. Why do you believe collaboration is key?
Collaboration is paramount and critical to success in a world with rapidly evolving skills and heavy market competition. I strongly believe that nothing beats a strong team. I have witnessed collaboration driving collective skills growth, employee engagement, and team alignment, further accelerating innovation and boosting morale.
2. What are some ways that leaders prevent collaboration from happening?
There can be various barriers to collaboration, including a lack of respect and empathy. Another barrier is that the organization may lack goal alignment and have silos that drive competition instead of collaboration.
3. How can leaders encourage collaboration?
It is important for leaders to build a sense of trust with their employees. By creating a work culture of trust, teams will be more connected, aware, and willing to work with one another to build upon each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Leaders can also create alignment by clearly communicating the goal with very clear steps and helping the team to understand their role in achieving it.
4. How are you fostering collaboration at HRCap?
HRCap is very unique from other recruiting agencies and headhunting firms in that we are driven by team performance, not individual play. Our Total HR Solutions offerings require that we heavily collaborate internally across teams and functions to share expertise and experiences. The complexity of our retained search, technical sourcing, and multilingual recruiting calls for each member to work closely with each other to meet critical deadlines, cover all grounds, and double and triple quality check for the highest quality service.
In addition, our clients are heavily globalized and localized, meaning that our teams offer global services with a local approach. Our 24-7 operating model requires trust-based communication and alignment across teams, with ongoing knowledge sharing, proactive support, and full alignment.
Lastly, our global Digital Transformation (DX) team is a centralized function launched in 2020 (in immediate response to combatting Covid-19) to drive agile projects for data-driven strategy, process optimization, and employee engagement. The goal of the DX team is to develop tools to encourage greater collaboration among teams and strengthen the corporate brand and employee experiences by responding to client and employee survey feedback. We have definitely seen the fruits of their labor (and collaboration) in our employee engagement surveys, client retention rates, and global brand standing as a Top Total HR Solutions Company.
Conclusion
Companies should consider what is preventing the organization from collaborative work and implement and train leaders that can encourage greater teamwork. By building greater trust and providing clear alignment and communication, organizations will see greater innovation and growth that individual effort cannot produce.
Source: HRCap, Zippia, Forbes
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