15 Effective Collaboration Strategies for

the Workplace
By Indeed Editorial Team
April 8, 2021

Teamwork is a key feature of many successful organizations. Working

together with others and sharing ideas can drive innovation, improve
efficiency and lead to increased productivity. Knowing how to motivate your
employees to collaborate is an important skill to help create a cohesive, team-
oriented environment. In this article, we discuss what a collaboration strategy
is and 15 strategies for encouraging collaboration among your team members.

Read more: What Is a Collaborative Leader?

What is a collaboration strategy?

A collaboration strategy is how businesses approach teamwork within their
organization. It refers to the ways in which a company promotes or requires
employees working together to meet goals and complete projects.

Read more: Collaboration Skills: Definition and Examples

15 collaboration strategies
Here are 15 strategies for successful collaboration you can implement in your
organization:

Model the behavior

Showing employees how to work together can be more effective than telling
them. Collaborate with your peers often to model the behavior you want to see
in your team. Ask others for ideas and use their suggestions. Schedule
brainstorming sessions with groups of employees. Request a team to review a
report or proposal you're working on and provide feedback. When your
employees see that you're engaging in these activities, it can help motivate
them to participate.

Read more: How To Demonstrate Collaboration in the Workplace

Review the company's mission and values

Spend time reviewing your company's mission statement and values with
employees. Connect the mission to your objectives so employees understand
the reasoning behind certain activities, such as team projects and peer
reviews. Explain that the company values its employees and wants each
person to be heard and respected, which can set them up to succeed.

Set measurable goals

Set clearly defined goals for each team so that they know their objectives and
how you're evaluating their work. Try to avoid subjectivity and make goals that
are measurable and definitive. For example, rather than giving a team an
assignment to create a marketing strategy, you might ask the team to develop
three digital marketing campaigns and two media marketing strategies.

Your goals should include deadlines for the task or for each phase of longer
projects. Consider creating a project brief with all key information that team
members can sign at the beginning of the project.

Keep groups an appropriate size

Depending on the scope of your projects, try to optimize team sizes. For a
larger project that might take several months and involves a variety of tasks,
you need a larger group. For a small task, such as coming up with a plan to
recognize team member birthdays each month, you may only need two or
three people. You want to provide a variety of perspectives and enough work
for each team member to contribute significantly.

Define team member roles

For large projects, consider defining each team member's role to help define
the group and avoid competition. Or you can provide the roles and allow the
team to assign them. In either case, each team member has a better idea of
their responsibilities, and you know how best to hold each member
accountable based on their role in the group.

Promote creativity

One benefit of collaboration is the innovation that can result from differing
viewpoints coming together. Encourage employees to think creatively and
offer nontraditional ideas. This can help motivate employees to come up with
more efficient, effective solutions and propel your company forward.

Read more: 10 Team-Building Training Exercises

Assign projects that need critical thinking

When problems do not have an easily defined answer, collaborative efforts

can help develop unique and varied strategies to address them. When your
business encounters an issue that requires critical thinking and analysis, ask
several team members to work together to develop strategies. Approaching
the problem from multiple perspectives can help uncover relevant background
information, introduce new components and develop multifaceted solutions.

Organize the process

When you implement collaboration among team members, it's important to

explain exactly what that looks like. Employees can better understand and
participate if you discuss your expectations and the details of the process. For
instance, you might set aside time each week for groups to meet or lead a
workshop on group projects to make sure everyone feels comfortable with the
dynamics.

Use diminishing involvement

Consider using a diminishing involvement strategy in which you play an active

role in group projects at the onset of the assignment. Then as the project
progresses, you begin to ease away from your leadership role, allowing the
team members to manage their roles on their own.

Foster diversity and inclusion

Diverse perspectives can help generate new ideas and innovative

approaches. Make sure your groups are diverse and inclusive. Review
company policies for fair treatment in the workplace to make sure all
employees adhere to your organization's standards when interacting with
others.

Share information and resources

To help facilitate effective collaboration, share any information that your

employees might find helpful. You can create a list of resources, contacts and
important reminders to help teams navigate their planning and organization
stages.

Incorporate technology

Technology can enhance collaboration among colleagues by:

 Connecting people in different locations

 Providing collaborative document creation, storage and management
solutions
 Tracking project duties and status
 Offering messaging services between groups
 Creating ways to share ideas and feedback with clients or other
employees
 Enhancing presentations products

Facilitate open communication

Encourage employees to speak openly and directly with you and their peers.
Create an environment that values honesty, constructive feedback and open
communication. This can help your team avoid misunderstandings and deal
with issues as they arise, rather than letting them become larger problems.
Reiterate the importance of respecting other people's opinions and being
professional, even when managing a disagreement.

Reward successful collaboration

Recognize employees who work well with others and successfully complete
projects as a team. Rewarding the types of behavior that the company
prioritizes can help increase employee motivation and engagement. You can
congratulate employees through:

 A department-wide or company-wide email acknowledging their success

 A sign or banner in the office
 A gift card
 An afternoon of PTO
 A catered lunch celebration

Ask for feedback

Employees can be more likely to engage in activities that they help develop.
Ask your team members to share their preferences about working with their
peers with questions like:

 Do you prefer to work in small (2-5 people) or large (6+ people) groups?
 Do you like having set project directions or would you rather create your
own plan?
 Do you prefer being a team leader or team member?
 What type of leadership style do you prefer?

You can use this information to create teams of like-minded employees who
prefer the same work styles and incorporate strategies that resonate with the
majority of employees.
No matter where you work, you’ll almost certainly encounter instances in
which you’ll need to collaborate to get the job done. Collaboration is a key
aspect of success in the workplace. It’s also an essential job skill. In this
article, we will discuss the benefits of collaboration as well as how to
demonstrate your collaborative skills.

What is collaboration in the workplace?

Collaboration can be defined as a group of two or more people working
together to achieving a common goal by pooling their strengths and insights.
Collaboration is increasingly happening within virtual teams, as cloud-based
conference rooms become more progressively accessible.

Benefits of effective collaboration

Effective collaboration drives a company’s success. When teams work
collaboratively, their members are encouraged to be creative and bring their
best ideas to the table. Other benefits of collaboration include:

Learning from others

Different people have different areas of expertise. By working collaboratively,

you can learn from the other team members’ experiences and backgrounds.
This gives you an understanding of various issues should they arise in the
future, and it increases productivity.

Cross-training

As most companies consist of multiple departments, cross-departmental

collaboration is inevitable. When departments work together, a direct line of
communication between them allows employees to gain an understanding of
what different roles are responsible for.

Increased problem-solving ability

Collaboration allows people with different backgrounds to bring their expertise

to the workplace, creating a larger talent pool and increasing the possibility
that problems will be solved by drawing from these diverse backgrounds.

Increased productivity
Working together allows important projects to be finished more quickly and
with better production value. Each individual working on a project can be in
charge of completing the specific tasks that align with their strengths and
expertise, significantly reducing completion time.

Related: Teamwork Skills: Definition and Examples

How to demonstrate your collaboration skills

Collaboration skills are essential to succeed in the workplace. Employees are
generally expected to work together effectively, which is why employers are
increasingly requiring candidates to prove their skills, rather than rely on a few
buzzwords that the ATS algorithm picked up. This is done through group
interviews, sample projects and detailed explanations of your demonstrated
collaboration in a previous workplace. Follow these tips to effectively convey
your collaboration skills:

1. On your resume

Your resume should mention some sort of recognition or accolades relating to

your exceptional collaboration in a previous workplace. This could be in the
form of acting as a team leader, project coordinator or another liaising role.
You may even have some sort of award or recognition you can include in your
accomplishments section. 

Furthermore, you should mention your collaboration skills in the skills section
of your resume, and put your biggest collaborative project into your work
experience section. Provide examples of successful outcomes in these
projects. Remember to tailor your resume for each job you apply to, but keep
in mind that no matter what job you get, you’ll most likely collaborate with
others at some time.

Related: 10 Best Skills to Include on a Resume

2. In your cover letter

Read through the job expectations/requirements carefully. Find the skills that
you possess that align with the job requirements and write them into your
cover letter in a way that provides an explanation of what you bring to the role
with this skill. For example: “I am prepared to bring collaboration skills to this
role to contribute as much as possible to the success of the company.” You
can also list your various skills and give a brief example of when you put those
skills to use to attain a successful outcome.

3. At your job interview

Whether or not the role you are interviewing for is team-oriented, displaying
your ability to effectively collaborate with others will have the interviewer
paying close attention to you as a strong candidate. Provide solid evidence
that you enjoy and are good at working as part of a team. Describe situations
in which you may have had to resolve disagreements to keep the team
focused and on-task (just make sure to refrain from talking negatively about
former coworkers or bosses). 

Related: Management Skills: Definition and Examples

Examples of collaboration
Mentioning your collaboration skills on your resume doesn’t have to be tricky.
Using an action verb, succinctly state your example and if possible, use hard
numbers to substantiate your story. Refer to the examples below to see how
to describe your collaboration skills.

 Worked on a 12-person team to implement a system that increased

sales by 10%
 Worked cross-departmentally with a total of four departments to
complete major projects ahead of deadline
 Led a team of seven people in raising funds for charity
 Contributed to my team exceeding year-end goals for three consecutive
years

Following the above structure, you can expand on these examples in your
cover letter while continuing to highlight your collaborative skills.

 In my last position, I was part of a large marketing team that worked

closely with the sales team. I helped to create and implement a new
sales method that increased sales by 10% over the previous quarter.
 I led a small group of individuals, each from a different department, to
carry out special projects that required the best available skills from
each respective department. We consistently finished these projects
early and with excellent production value.
  Two years ago, I compiled a hand-picked team of seven individuals to
collectively plan and host a fundraising event to raise funds for the local
humane society. We raised over $800.
 For the past three years, my team has worked together as a single unit
to continually exceed our year-end sales goals.

You can keep these examples in mind, along with some others that you
haven’t mentioned, for when the interviewer asks you a question that
appropriately calls for your collaboration skills to be mentioned.