Better Team Collaboration Means Embracing Visual Collaboration

Meeting the needs of today’s employees

For many employees, work is an endless litany of meetings, brainstorms and gatherings that stifle innovation, crush productivity and overwhelm even the most carefully curated to-do lists. The pains associated with traditional meetings are even greater when you factor remote workers into the equation – a growing segment of the nation’s workforce.
 

Fortunately, the way we work together is changing. Although visual communication and the use of simple video technologies are a good start, the rise of social media and applications like Slack and Trello show that we’re moving beyond visual communication into an era of visual collaboration.

We can all agree that traditional meeting formats don’t mesh with the needs of the modern workplace. With 3.9 million Americans now working from home at least half-time, typical workplace meetings find people sitting in a conference room, staring at a video screen. Although meetings sometimes involve video communication, they still follow a traditional meeting format – they’re rife with technology snafus, long introductions and lots of time wasted on things that kill productivity.
 
In the plus column, visual communication is a big step up from faceless conference calls. The ability to see the people you are talking with creates empathy and connection. Just as importantly, visual communication serves as the foundation for a vibrant and supportive company culture.
 
But to meet the needs of today’s workers, your organization needs to move beyond faces on a screen and incorporate visual collaboration processes into your strategy for improved productivity and efficiency. Visual collaboration tools like Slack and Trello enable employees to see what their peers are doing, which creates opportunities for real-time communication and collaboration.
 
For example, let’s say an employee is working on a project in Dropbox or Google Drive. By posting a link in Slack, the employee can share a preview of the content and immediately collaborate with coworkers in-line. Tools like Zoom add the ability to see faces in the mix, empowering workers with what they really need – effectively workflows for real-time collaboration with colleagues located in and out of the office.

Visual collaboration aligns work processes with the way work actually gets done. It gives workers the ability to work remotely without sacrificing the collaborative workflows that drive creativity, innovation and company culture.
 
The implementation of visual collaboration shouldn’t necessarily look the same for every department in your organization. To be effective, visual collaboration tools need to be contextualized to the needs of specific teams and employees. When implementing new visual collaboration technologies into your workplace, consider the following:
 

 
In many ways, visual collaboration is the natural next step in the evolution of the workplace. Faced with the need to increase productivity and the requirements of an increasingly remote workforce, organizations need to facilitate real-time collaboration in a changing work environment. By contextualizing the implementation of visual collaboration tools to the needs of specific teams, you can make work a more productive – and more enjoyable – experience for everyone in your organization.