All about collaboration and the future of work

How do you prevent employee burnout? Improve hybrid team collaboration? Measure and benchmark employee deep work time?

The answer: Decision Intelligence

Over the years, business decision making has evolved into a continuous, comprehensive process, more recently this process is being improved with data-driven technology empowering companies to make faster and more accurate decisions.

In this article we will explore how decision intelligence and team productivity analytics go a long way to keeping your business in check and improving your bottom line.

Since Covid-19 first emerged, organisations have faced a barrage of new challenges. From hybrid workplace transformation to increasing levels of employee disengagement.

This begs the question: Can decision intelligence provide the solution?

Let’s find out...

Every day organizations face an increasing number of different challenges, from ‘The Great Resignation’ to ‘Metaverse’, from ‘Remote team collaboration’ to ‘Workplace culture’, from ‘How to boost team productivity’ to ‘Why is employee disengagement increasing’.

Research suggests that these challenges, whether they current or future thinking for your business, aren’t going away anytime soon. With the rise of the borderless economy and the future work, companies need to be more agile than ever before, more employees now desire remote or hybrid workplace opportunities meaning companies need to ensure that teams can work together productively and efficiently from anywhere and at any time.

To encourage collaboration among teams in different locations, organizations need to provide employees with the right tools so they can communicate efficient and collaborate effectively.

Deep Work vs Shallow work, how can you identify symptoms of shallow work and create a deep work routine to increase productivity, let's take look by asking ourselves a few quick questions first...

How many times per day do you check your inbox?

How many pointless meetings have you attended in the last month?

How many chat notifications have you received in the past hour?

How long did it take you to get focused again on important work after a distraction or interruption?

Workplace distractions statistics show that with the rise of digital technology, remote and hybrid working; productivity is suffering and burn out is on the rise.

Research also shows that most employees and teams get their best work done during ‘deep work time’. In this article we will cover 7 common symptoms of shallow work and take an extended view on 5 strategies to improve deep work time:

1. PRIORITIZE DEEP WORK TASKS AND OBJECTIVES

2. MAKE SURE YOUR PROJECT TASK HANDOVER IS FLUID

3. SCHEDULE DEEP WORK TIME ON MOST IMPORTANT TASKS WHEN YOU FEEL ENERGIZED 

4. TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS WHEN YOU ARE IN YOUR DEEP WORK SCHEDULE

5. ASK FOR HELP WHEN YOU NEED IT

Every day during any given work week, we are continually bombarded with notifications and unproductive interruptions. In this article we will explore how leaders can help to make workplace and team productivity more efficient and effective.

First off, if you’ve never thought “what is the difference between team efficiency and team effectiveness", you’re not alone.

You will find in most organisations across the globe, efficiency and effectiveness are used out of context, with many mangers using one term to explain the other.

However, actually understanding the difference between team efficiency and team effectiveness can help your teams get work done faster.

Peter Drucker, in his book, The Effective Executive, probably gives one the best and clearest explanations between the difference in efficiency and effectiveness

“Efficiency is doing things right, Effectiveness is doing the right thing.”

This article is looking to answer what exactly is the metaverse and what could define the age of metaverse, and has the age of metaverse already dawned? We are also taking a look into possible Kafkaesque world in which corporate overlords (Meta.com et all) control how we conduct ourselves.

To get started I want to give you the definition of the word metaverse, and by its narrow definition we conclude it means a virtual-reality space, or in other words, a virtual universe. I know I'm taking a risk of using this word that might not be relevant in a couple of months' or years' time. However the concepts, and thinking, is timeless no matter how you view them.

For the purpose of this article, we are envisioning the metaverse definition is extended to include all online communities, enabled by the internet and augmented with any types of extended reality, or their communities within.

This posting will assess what the metaverse is, where are we now, what it could look like in the future and what possibilities the 'Age of metaverse' may present.

This article is not about the immediately recognizable parts of the metaverse like consumer app's such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and all.

Instead, I want to take a look into the world of business and what the metaverse looks like from this context. Throughout this article, I focus on the current trends, economic opportunities of the metaverse, how to conduct business and how to interact within.

Flowtrace is the world's first self-service Team Collaboration analytics software tool for high growth tech companies.

“Meetings at our company are so productive, every meeting has an agenda and a clear purpose. I look forward to every company meeting”.

When was the last time you heard that statement? Honestly, I don’t think I ever have.

Poor quality company meetings has been a topic of debate for a long time, but still it seems business has not been able to turn the tide of poor quality company meetings into productive meeting best practices, that become part of company culture and positively drive employee productivity and engagement.

Most organisations rely on meetings as an essential component of coordinating projects, work and teams, but inefficiencies in meeting best practice point towards massively growing sunk costs which now equates to nearly $500 billion globally in relation to the ‘lost productivity cost impact of poor quality meetings”.

“Meetings are a symptom of bad organisation. The fewer meetings the better” (Peter Drucker)

We have all sat through pointless internal meetings (which could have been summarized in a Slack thread or Email).

But meetings needn't be pointless. Successful internal meetings bring everyone together to check-in with one another and communicate challenges, actions and needs.

We have all seen it many times how information gets lost between Slack, email, and other collaboration tools we use daily basis. It's frustrating, wasteful, and in the worst case, causes issues to our clients. This is highlighted further when studies reveal that 89% of people believe effective collaboration is extremely important, and meanwhile 8 out of 10 people rate their own business' communication as an average, or poor. (Communication Statistics by Project.co)

Despite the emergence of some amazing software products for team collaboration, better team communication, hybrid working and employee productivity, all designed to align employees and employers in more ways than ever before, the threat of organizational silos for business growth is increasing.

Some recent research shows that on average 40 percent of company employees report that they feel siloed because "different departments have their own agendas" (commonly known as The Silo Mentality). 

While organizational silos negatively impact employee communication and team collaboration — both of which are critical success factors for delivering the best customer experiences and ensuring you have the right product/market-fit — the increasing problem is becoming more linked to the impact on revenue growth.

After all, just because you have the best online collaboration tools in place, it doesn’t automatically guarantee your team collaboration effectiveness. If you don’t combine a culture of information transparency with team collaboration software tools and bast practices; the negative impact of organizational silos will quickly become apparent.

If you are active on social media, you will have seen the term 'The Great Resignation'.

Is it a flash in the pan or should you be concerned by how it will impact you, and your company?

We conducted some analysis within our client network, the results showed "an 89% employee retention rate (based on voluntary turnover) throughout the pandemic, compared to the market average (UK, Europe and US combined) which averages 71%.

The 3rd party external analysis paints a similar picture, and overall impact begins to form when you look closer at organizational behavior, workplace culture and cross-functional alignment.

Our view is that people and organizations who are being impacted by 'The Great Resignation' have a combination of alignment and culture issues, which could, and should have been fixed before the impacts on our working lives created by the pandemic.

If you care about your employees, the environment you create for them to work in and focus on creating and maintaining a positive workplace culture, then you should have nothing to worry.

On the other hand, if you are part of a company which have neglected your organizational culture and cross-functional alignment for too long, you might be facing the cliff of 'employee disengagement' or worse still, your team are already completely disengaged.