5 Ways to Get New Employees to Collaborate

Apr 5, 2011

Tips for Increasing Employee Collaboration

"1. Foster a culture of collaboration
— If you want to make collaborating a reflex rather than a reaction, place high value on encouraging new employees to share and get involved. This should be backed up by a top-down approach in which collaboration is a company-wide mandate embraced by everyone, from high-level managers to individual contributors.

2. Know thy tools
— Google Docs or Zoho Writer? Yammer or Basecamp? Campfire or Skype? Typepad or Wordpress? Learning about a company requires more than knowing about its products or values,. New employees should also be given a tool "roadmap" so they understand what collaboration technologies are in use and whether these are specific to a particular team or deployed throughout the company.

3. To tweet or not to tweet
— Establish a company-wide strategy around tweeting, blogging, Facebook habits and what is considered "acceptable" content. Many new employees assume that these communication vehicles are reserved for only seasoned employees.

4. Make it part of a routine
— Integrate collaboration into the daily routine by making some tasks dependent upon collaboration. This could be anything from conducting a daily team meeting via chat to having new employees take ownership and contribute to a company wiki.

5. Follow through
– Many teams will adopt and drop collaboration tools, leaving information fragmented. Create a collaboration task force that helps teams (and new employees) learn how to use collaboration tools, evangelize their adoption, and evaluate new options.

Whether you’re a new employee or an old-timer, we can all benefit from becoming better collaborators. And, regardless of whether the collaboration tools you currently use are here to stay, the habits developed through their use will endure." Read more at cmswire.com