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How To Create a Collaborative Work Environment
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Business New Haven
11/10/2003
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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Move over, Ms. Do-It-Yourself - Collaborative Teamwork is taking your place.
By creating a collaborative work dynamic, businesses create an environment in which people are not only capable of doing the jobs that they have traditionally been assigned, but are also capable of being cross-trained. They also are ready and able to share other talents and strengths that may not be fully engaged in their current job. A most important factor of a collaborative work environment involves willingness to take part.
A business owner or manager can foster such an environment by creating a desire or eliciting a willingness of people to share more than what they are asked to do in their job description. That's especially important in an area and a time when resources are scarce.
On any given business day, a particular function in an operation might be overloaded because the operations are cyclical and team members are not able - or willing - to jump in. For example, the pen manufacturing industry is cyclical because as soon as school is about to begin in September, all the back-to-school product has to be out in front of the marketplace so potential buyers can purchase the product. The focus is on production at that time and the greater the collaboration, the smoother the process.
An operation can be cyclical for a day, as in the restaurant business. Serving staff use the expression, "We've been slammed" for a busy hour or two on a Saturday evening. If the wait staff have been taught the collaborative concept, customers won't be any the wiser.
While working in a collaborative environment, you know that during a day, a week or some period of time, certain members of the group are going to be under enhanced pressure. It's critical, especially with scarce resources, to have an ultimate collaborative environment so that people can work together to get the tasks done.
A collaborative work environment in a task-oriented business may operate differently than in a design or research business, where the concept is even more important.
A four-step program can be designed to break down barriers to communication. In a research industry like the pharmaceutical industry, "silos" are created and researchers protect their own information for a couple of reasons: pride of authorship, it may mean additional funding, and they don't want the outside world to get a handle on the information. But if researchers close the door and end up limiting the number of people who can know what's going on in the environment and thus contribute to the environment, they are limiting creativity.
A program is designed to break down those barriers and get people to understand that if a certain team member is going to get all the credit for the program, at some point, he is going to have to recognize the contributors.
Many large pharmaceutical companies - Pfizer, for example - have initiated collaborative work environments, but the concept is not unique to large companies. In a six-month post-program assessment, Pfizer reported satisfaction with the newly instituted concept.
Such a working environment may be equally desirable in a smaller company that typically has few employees and more job overlap.
Government agencies such as the state's Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD) have also benefited from creating collaborative work relationships. About seven years ago, the department wanted to hold a program that would train people at different levels about what economic development was.
At first, department heads were targeted and about 25 of interested people were expected. At the program's culmination, 200 people including Realtors, mortgage lenders, state agency employees graduated. The program was designed specifically to teach people to work together to understand that Connecticut has so much greatness going for it. Out of that initiative, the Connecticut Economic Resource Center (CERC) was born.
From a task standpoint, if you need to complete a task in a cyclical environment, it's good to have cross-trained people who are willing to collaborate and get the task done. From a research standpoint, it's good to have people who are not creating individual silos and protecting their own turf.
If you go beyond a single organization and we do not create collaborative relationships and partnerships outside of the organization, we miss general opportunities that are available to the community and the culture itself.
Businesses need to prepare for the time when the economy ramps up. People and skills will need to be in place, ready for increases in business.
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