Benefits for Collaborative Learning in Companies

Big companies like Facebook and Google regularly encourage collaborative learning because it increases the productivity and unity of their workforce.

This improved productivity and unity also translate to higher profits for the company as well. According to WRF, it increases employee engagement by 10% while increasing profits by $2,400 per employee a year.

This article will explore why companies use this learning method, how it benefits them and how companies implement it.

What is Collaborative Learning in Companies?

Collaborative learning in companies refers to the practice of working together to achieve a common goal or purpose.

Departments can collaborate once or twice for a short-term project. While mutual connections between colleagues develop in the long term.

Why do companies use collaborative learning?

It benefits companies in two major ways.

First, when employees interact with each other during these learning sessions, they discover new ideas, gain knowledge, and ultimately grow professionally together.

Secondly, it increases unity between co-workers. As they are better able to understand each other’s perspectives and also benefit from each other's experiences.

For example, when designing a featured image for a blog post, your content department can collaborate with the design team to discuss the factors that help maintain each image’s relevancy to the blog topic.

7 Benefits Companies Gain by Using Collaborative Learning

Let’s talk about some of its benefits for companies.

1. Elevates Employee Engagement

An engaged employee looks for ways to benefit the team they are a part of. When your company has an engaged workforce, it’s likely to boost productivity and customer satisfaction.

And guess what engages an employee? The environment they work in.

Employee Engagement = More Productivity = 21% higher profitability

On the other side, according to Gallup, actively disengaged employees cost around $450 to $550 billion every year in lost productivity.

So, companies must push for higher employee engagement to grow their businesses.

2. Makes Peer Interaction As a Part of Learning

One of the great benefits of collaborative learning is that it focuses on peer engagements and interactions.

Team members can share their learning requirements and when a training program is developed and even create a courses based on their knowledge and expertise.

This knowledge and expertise can be shared within the company to other employee or made accessible to the world as well.

Peer engagement facilitates learning and allows companies to earn a competitive edge.

For example, you can utilize peer learning to drive your collaborative onboarding operation. It may help new employees to rame-up at the earliest.

3. Promotes Problem-Solving Attribute

56% of the entrepreneurs believe that better communication improves productivity in their companies.

If your employees lack problem-solving attitudes or skills, you can try implementing collaborative learning within the departments. This improves communication between the employees and helps to find solutions.

Let’s take a manufacturing company as an example. They find that their supplier struggles to provide the required parts.

With the help of sales representatives, the warehouse manager, and the ordering department, they found another supplier who agreed to fulfill the requirements for the parts under the budget.

4. Facilitates Companies Potential for Change

When your employees collaborate effectively, your company’s chances to adapt to the changes increase.

Take a look at this example to understand this point better. Suppose, your company has decided to launch a new technology. Some employees appreciated the move whereas others were clueless.

In this case, the excited ones can help the clueless ones to embrace the new development by talking about the possible benefits of the technology.

However, you can further clear the misconceptions of the clueless group by providing the required training and support. With the help of knowledge, this group will figure out how the new advancement will facilitate their day-to-day work.

5. Improves Skills and Learning

Your company may have a formal training or upskilling program. But you can also opt for collaborative learning organically.

When teams work together, each member gets an opportunity to learn by giving or receiving feedback and exchanging diverse perspectives.

For example, chances are there might be employees in a department or company who lack speaking skills. When working together in a group, these employees can get an opportunity to learn the correct way to speak and take part in a meaningful conversation.

6. Enhances Employee Well-Being

Did you know lack of collaboration affects an individual’s well-being?

According to a study by Wrike, poor teamwork, such as lack of communication or mediocre performance from the workforce can lead to workplace stress.

Stress in the workplace is unhealthy. It makes employees disengaged and in most cases, people start quitting.

And you don’t want this to happen to your company. That’s why incorporating collaborative learning makes sense. It promotes communications, clears misunderstandings, and distributes workload equally.

7. Boosts Production

Everyone aims to take their idea to completion smoothly. But you cannot ignore delays, unexpected problems, and other problems in the process.

There is no guarantee to eliminate these issues. However, you can limit the time required to solve such problems, if you try to create a collaborative environment.

For example, an employee from any department of your company can develop a problem and struggle to solve it. They might waste work hours without any concrete outcome.

In this case, if they are allowed to have open communication and support from coworkers, they can resolve the issue, finish the project within the given time frame and improve the overall productivity levels.

Make sure each of these things are provided to the employee:-

5 Collaborative Learning Strategies Used By Companies

Here are a few areas where you can implement collaborative learning strategies.

1. Organize Discussion Sessions

Using discussion sessions, you can improve the sales expertise of your workforce, generate more revenue, and open new partner channels by sharing sales, calls, recorded demos, success stories, etc.

For example, you can organize sessions where, as a lead, you can discuss competitors that are doing good. You can even analyze their techniques and see what is working for them that you can use as well.

2. Collaboration Softwares

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Another great way to encourage collaboration between employees is by using softwares. Many softwares are designed with team work at the heart of their operation.

Using softwares encourages discussion between different employees. It also helps to see what everyone is doing and makes coordination much easier.

For example, using Flowdock is a great way to communicate with your coworkers. Different employees can join in a group, chat with each other and look at different tasks that the team is working on. This makes project management more effective.

Similarly, Wondershare Document Cloud is another good way to collaborate on documents with your colleagues. You can leave comments and annotations for your co-workers to look at and even get notifications when any change happens.

This keeps everyone up to date with each other and thus improves the productivity of the whole team.

3. Mentoring and Coaching Executives

To achieve a sense of collaborative community, it’s essential to focus on your executive-level employees as well. These employees can also benefit from learning from others.

Since these people are company leaders, they form a role model for others to follow. This fosters a collaborative environment from top to bottom in the company.

4. HR practices for a Collaborative Environment

No doubt, HR is responsible for hiring the right candidate. However, it’s on them to look for employees who show collaborative nature or tendencies.

HR can also play its role in building a collaborative environment. For example, they can ensure workplace collaboration by holding performance reviews, training, and building a sense of community by organizing group events or celebrating theme days.

5. Flexible and Relationship-Oriented Leadership

Leaders or managers are essential for any department. That’s why leaders need to be flexible, while being task and relationship-oriented.

To achieve it, leaders can promote flexibility in their daily operations, build cordial relationships with their workforce and monitor tasks to ensure their timely completion.

Conclusion

No doubt, collaborative learning can bring potential change to your company. From employee wellbeing to client satisfaction, this approach can be beneficial in various ways.

It promotes communication which is essential to resolve problems, clear misunderstandings, and provide relevant information.

More importantly, you can track and measure the outcome of a collaborative work environment by analyzing the results.