Collaborative Workspaces: Rethinking Competition at Work

Competition in the workplace is nothing new: several employees may be applying for the same promotion, sales staff might compete to secure clients, and different departments may debate over the allocation of limited resources.

However, in recent decades, some companies and organizations have made intentional efforts to shift from a competitive culture to a more collaborative approach to work. An increasing number of businesses are beginning to see development of a collaborative work environment as a long-term investment and the research certainly seems to support this conclusion.

Benefits of Collaboration

As the old saying goes, a high functioning team is “greater than the sum of its parts.”

This is because good collaboration allows a team to play to each member’s strengths and talents while also covering for any potential deficits. The benefits of collaborative teamwork are numerous and include increased productivity, greater innovation, enhanced problem-solving, and stronger social bonds.

This can also improve employee retention as staff who feel supported by their teammates report being happier at work and are less likely to leave their position.

In addition to improving employee connections and developing workplace culture, having a greater diversity of perspectives, knowledge, and experience when tackling complex problems encourages more efficient and creative solutions. Innovative solutions, new ideas, and constructive feedback are more freely generated when team members trust one another, feel their voice is being heard, and feel their contributions are appreciated.

More than Round Tables

When leadership discusses collaborative classrooms and work- spaces they often end up focusing on physical aspects: round tables, modular furniture, shared office space, and glass walls. While these physical amenities are meant to encourage interaction and openness between staff, they can also remove privacy and do not actually create a collaborative culture by themselves.

Collaboration must also include the sharing of information and responsibility. This can be accomplished through services like SharePoint, Google Drive, or MS Teams. Task management software, such as Asana or Trello, may also be useful. Morning huddles, if used properly, also increase cohesion and can keep staff well-informed of recent changes.

According to Andrew Jennings, CCO for Transcend, a local Huntsville company that specializes in cultural transformation and leadership development: it is vital to center teams around a common purpose so that individual metrics become less important than achieving organizational success.

One strategy for this includes reading the company mission statement and values at the start of important meetings to reaf- firm those common goals. This allows staff to focus on the noble purpose of the organization, which places emphasis on best serving their customers or communities instead of their own personal success or failure.

Competition is Complex

Competition among employees has been shown to elevate motivation, resulting in greater creativity in problem-solving, higher productivity, and increased sales.

However, a highly competitive office culture can easily become a toxic work environment and even lead to unethical behavior. Staff might, for instance, create fake bank and credit card accounts to artificially boost their sales figures. This is because while competition can generate excitement and motivation, it often creates an equal amount of fear and anxiety.

It makes a difference whether the benefits or consequences are being highlighted when a competitive approach is being used. For instance, it is more motivating to say, “if we meet our monthly goals, we will get to keep our sales bonus,” while it is more threatening to state, “if we don’t meet our

By: Alexander Duck II

goals this month, we will lose our sales bonus.”

Research has shown that employees feel more positively about the former statement and more anxious about the latter. Staff who are burdened with such pressure may start to feel desperate and resort to unsafe or unethical practices in order to meet expectations or outperform their colleagues.

Conclusion

From the animal kingdom to human society, both competition and collaboration are natural parts of life. Understanding how these two aspects affect staff is important in building a successful and healthy workplace culture as either can enhance or hinder success.

If developed correctly, a collaborative team environment has many benefits for both the organization and its employees, but efforts must go beyond buying a ping-pong table for the breakroom. Real collaboration is an endeavor that requires time, energy, and a serious commitment to developing a culture that supports it, but companies that have done so have found that investment to be well worth it. w