Future of modern workplace collaboration and strategies to ace modern workplace collaboration

Modern workplace collaboration is being shaped by one-third of the world’s workforce that shifted to remote working during the pandemic. In the pre-pandemic era, most of the brainstorming, workshops, and meetings happened in the office. But during the pandemic, all meetings are carried out remotely. After the pandemic, the single most important challenge for companies will be to bring their diverse workforce working from different parts of the world to work together. This can be achieved only with online collaborative technology that can facilitate teamwork, both in-office and remote.

Online collaborative technology refers to the tools and platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Clariti, Google Hangouts, Fuze, Skype, etc that are used by employees to carry out their day-to-day communication and work.

Attributes of modern workplace collaboration tools

• A cloud-based communication system that will help you to collaborate from anywhere
• Voice calling to reduce the number of emails in your inbox
• Screen sharing to eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings
• Ability to take notes during meetings to remember the context
• Ability to add or remove participants during group conversations
• Direct chat with anyone anytime

Current trends in modern workplace collaboration

A Microsoft study on the impact of the pandemic on workplace collaboration has revealed that

• With the move to remote work, both task-focused and informal communication moved to online platforms.
• Employees had a higher meeting load in the pandemic period.
• Voice and video calls doubled from 7 to 14 hours a week after the transition to remote working.
• Unscheduled calls more than doubled.
• Scheduled meetings were also running longer than usual.
• Employees are holding more short meetings (30 minutes or less).
• Instant message chats also substantially increased during the pandemic.

Strategies to ace modern workplace collaboration

Here are 10 ways to improve your workplace collaboration.

1. Avoid communication silos

Many organizations use multiple apps for their team communications. This creates communication silos and a significant amount of team members' time is spent searching for information rather than doing productive work. Given the level of information being generated on a daily basis, this is highly inefficient. A survey points out that almost 20% of the business time — the equivalent of one day per working week — is wasted by employees searching for information to do their job.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration by removing silos

Clariti is a business productivity app that brings all emails, chats, calls, to-dos, and documents…in one app and automatically links related items in a TopicFolder. TopicFolders add topic-centric organization to all communications, so you are never lost or waste time searching for information.

2. Use cloud-based tools

Companies require cloud-based solutions rather than on-premises tools so that their remote workers can access the tools they would typically use in the office via web browsers.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration by working on the cloud

Clariti is a web-based application that can be accessed from anywhere. All you need is an internet connection. You can sign up with your email id, and invite your colleagues and friends to also use Clariti. Since Clariti is cloud-based, no installation or download is required.

3. Consider better alternatives to Slack and Teams

The common grouse against most of the tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Flock, RocketChat, Google Chat, etc is you can get stuck in long and never-ending group chats that demand your attention 24/7. It puts pressure on you to be online & available all the time. Also, since team members mostly use chat channels and not specific topics, context gets lost and information gets buried. In order to avoid the stress that group chat creates, many team members resort to direct chat, which creates information silos and knowledge opacity. Besides, these tools only focus on chats but the information is shared in many other ways such as emails, online documents, and social media among others. There is no way to bring active conversations from all these other forms in chat channels.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration by being a better alternative for Slack and Teams

Clariti on the other hand supports all communication forms including chat, email, shared documents, calls, social feeds, and to-dos. and uses topic threads to organize related communication in TopicFolders. With Clariti, not only can teams chat but they can also work with all communication forms naturally unlike Slack.

4. Reduce unnecessary emails

Though it is not possible to eliminate emails completely, companies must find ways to reduce them. In 2020, approximately 306 billion e-mails were sent and received every day worldwide. This figure is projected to increase to over 376 billion daily e-mails in 2025. When you use tools like Slack, to replace emails with chat for team communications, you will succeed in reducing the number of emails but you will soon find yourself bombarded with needless chat notifications and stuck in endless group chats.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration by reducing the emails

Clariti naturally supports emails and chats, besides other communication forms such as shared documents and voice calls. While Clariti embraces emails it also effectively reduces needless emails through powerful features like instant share and chat from email. Using instant share, you can instantly share email, images, social feed, and other work artifacts without forwarding them. This removes unnecessary duplication and email chains. Chat from email feature lets you collaborate with multiple stakeholders without needing to forward emails or copy/paste their contents in chats.

5. Share documents securely

Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive are among the most used services to share files easily, as well as store them in the cloud, sync them across multiple devices, and collaborate on them with colleagues and clients.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration by helping you to share documents securely

In Clariti you can configure cloud storage drives like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, pCloud, and MEGA and instantly share files securely with your colleagues and clients.

6. Reduce interruptions to allow deep concentration

When you use applications like Slack or Microsoft Teams you have to create channels to group chat with others. Channels are rigid because once a channel is created and group members are added, all the group members see all the channel chats whether it pertains to them or not. As a result, users are overwhelmed reading a constant stream of messages.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration by reducing interruptions at work

In Clariti, you can start a group chat and add members. However, unlike channels Clariti group chats are not rigid. Group members can be added and removed on the fly. Consequently, group members only get chat alerts on issues that are important to them. This will help you to avoid unwanted interruptions and constant notifications.

7. Include screen sharing for seamless communication

Normally for chatting and screen sharing, you will require two different apps. Using multiple apps in the workplace creates communication silos and team members end up spending most of their time searching for information, rather than doing productive work.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration through screen sharing

In Clariti, you can chat, make a call and share your screen at the same time, all in one app. Not only that, you can also take notes during the call that are saved for future reference.

8. Combine voice calling with other communication mediums

For effective collaboration, the modern workplace needs more than just voice calls. A lot of work gets done through emails, chats, and shared online documents. Unless the voice calling app has all the different forms of communications built-in, using separate apps for each is cumbersome and leads to communication silos. Team members end up spending most of their time in searching for information rather than doing productive work.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration through voice calling

Clariti lets you make and receive unlimited audio calls. You don’t have to install an additional app. You can call anybody or set up group calls without generating any meeting id or passcode. You don’t have to dial in any number, and you can use your desktop speaker and mic for the calls. You will be notified of any missed calls through the ‘Missed Call’ indicator. Along with the calls, there is an option to add call notes during or after the call and other participants can view each other’s call notes.

9. View documents online

While Microsoft Office documents can be viewed online for free, it is a cumbersome process. You need to upload the document to Microsoft’s OneDrive app and open it from the OneDrive website. It will open in Microsoft Word Online, a free web-based version of Word. The problem is documents are part of your work and by having to upload them to a separate website, you end up creating silos of information.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration helping you to view documents online

In Clariti, Microsoft Office documents can be opened in the app itself, without having to leave it and go to a separate website. This keeps all the information together and saves time from having to switch apps. Moreover, all discussions related to the documents such as chats, are linked to the document in Clariti. This makes it easy to understand the context of the discussions and the document at any later time.

10. View engineering CAD files on the web

You cannot view most CAD files on the web for free. You will need a license of the CAD software that authored the file like AutoCAD, CATIA, Creo, SOLIDWORKS etc. These licenses are usually quite expensive and are available as annual subscriptions.

How Clariti helps modern workplace collaboration by helping you view CAD files on the web

When you use Clariti, you will be able to view any file including.jpeg, .png, .bmp, .txt, and .pdf in the app. In Clariti, you can also view and share engineering CAD files without requiring a license of expensive CAD software. Clariti supports all major CAD formats including CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, Creo, NX, and Inventor among others. This makes collaboration between engineers a breeze.

The workplace collaboration landscape has changed for good and there is no going back to the way the things were. Companies must brace for the new digital workplace and empower their staff moving in that direction.