Read this if: You are searching for ways to increase your staff’s productivity
Gain: Open the door for innovation, cooperation and out-of-the-box thinking of employees
Cost: Assign part of the budget and the necessary time to space planning and optimization, changes in operational execution, reviewing the hiring practices in your company and establishing a collaborative culture
Investing time, money and perseverance in fostering collaboration in your organization is definitely worthy if you want to achieve the lowest possible likelihood for mistakes, positive working atmosphere, efficiency of employees in solving tasks and accomplishing projects and last but not least – high creativity and innovation in your company.
Goldman Sachs’s fostering collaboration practice: Employ collaborative people
Goldman Sachs have recognized the importance of the personality factor for achieving high productivity and they ensure collaborative culture starting from the very beginning – the hiring process. The interviews don’t just measure the intelligence and competencies related to the job but also the ability of applicants to work in a team, deal with conflict, and share knowledge.
In a hiring process that is legion across business-school campuses, candidates interview with as many as 60 senior members of the firm. Rejection by just one scuttles an interviewee’s candidacy and they are politely told to apply to other investment banks.
Research has shown that like-mindedness determines who you approve of and who you don’t and even seemingly objective managers are likely to recruit candidates who are pretty similar to themselves. If you want collaborative people to be hired, put collaborative people in charge of hiring.
Nokia’s fostering collaboration practice: Networking between employees starts from the first day at the company
Few people are 100% collaborative or entirely competitive. Employees’ 
behavior depends not only on which of these features is dominant in their personality but also on the working environment since people try to adapt to it and they either enhance or subdue their cooperativeness. It’s the company’s responsibility to create a workplace atmosphere in favor of collaboration.
In a newcomer’s first days and weeks on the job at Nokia, their supervisor formally introduces them to at least six members of their team. This is more than simply a handshake and a three-minute chat. Newcomers are encouraged to talk in details about their background, work habits, and competencies, and to ask their new colleagues about their own.
At Nokia, it is understood that while collaborating within the team is important, collaborating with colleagues outside the team is even more crucial. For this company cross-boundary collaboration is the main driver of innovation. It’s the supervisor’s responsibility to introduce the newcomer to six people outside their team as well.
It’s important to determine the people who the newcomer should meet and talk to first. Since the new employee needs to adapt to the company by learning the written and unwritten rules at the company as well as get enough support during the acclimatization period, they should be introduced and seated next to highly collaborative members of the staff.
BP’s fostering collaboration practice: Create clear criteria for measuring collaboration and rewarding it
BP’s Peer Challenge program includes meetings between business-unit heads in each group to discuss how they did in the previous assessment period. Those who exceeded their targets share with their peers what policies or actions allowed the unit to accomplish the excellent performance. Then they turn into coaches or mentors to the colleagues in the group who had the lowest results. The vertical boss-subordinate conversation about performance is replaced with peer-to-peer collaborative conversations. They prove to be crucial to real learning and performance improvement.
Essential part of BP’s culture is that managers and employees throughout the company devote considerable time and energy to helping colleagues who contact them for guidance. The effort and time they spent on collaborating with other members of the organization is highly appreciated in the assessment report they get as each business unit is measured not only on its own performance but also that of the other units in its peer group. A significant proportion of each business-unit head’s bonus depends on the performance of the other business units in her peer group.
IBM’s fostering collaboration practice: The vital role of team leaders for monitoring and regulating team work
Take a look at an employee’s point of view on ways to encourage collaboration.
My sister works in the procurement department of IBM and these are her observations on the company’s practices to stimulate cooperativeness:
Pros
- Regular staff meetings for discussing problems and searching for solutions
- Getting points in the assessment report for collaboration which are taken into consideration when determining which employees should be promoted
- Asking questions is encouraged if a member of the staff feels unsure how to proceed in a particular case
- The workload is monitored by team leaders and when the members of a team happen to have less work in a certain period are encouraged to take on some of the work of a busier team
- Strong leadership of team leaders in cases of conflict which prevents opponents from taking the law into their own hands. Being aware of the clear rules and action plans if adverse situations occur and knowing that leaders won’t let things slide fosters the feeling of security in employees and they are more willing to collaborate.
- Team-building activities outside the office
Cons:
- Employees have to change their seats in order to communicate with members from other teams so that they can exchange knowledge and teach new skills each other. The negative side of this practice is that employees lose proximity with their own team which hinders collaboration.
- When an employee takes days off, they have one backup which according to my sister often proves to be insufficient as the workload for the backup is too much and a lot of tasks remain unfinished. My sister shares that the first days after going back to work is very stressful due to the many old tasks she has to do whose deadline is either overdue or too close. She suggests two backups to share the work of the absent colleague.
Further suggestions regarding office design
Researchers have found that the following factors should be considered when creating the office space:
* Proximity.
Organizational psychology professor Thomas Allen discovered that the 
frequency of workers’ interactions in an R&D complex he studied declined exponentially with the distance between their offices. Even when they were in the same building, researchers on different floors almost never interacted informally.
The new trend in office design removes physical barriers like cubicles between employees to facilitate cooperation.
* Privacy
Privacy can be provided with places where people can talk without feeling interrupted and overheard. This gives workers the freedom to speak freely, creating an atmosphere of expression and trust.
* Permission
This means providing comfortable chairs in secluded areas, small lounge areas, 
and other comfortable spaces that fosters team communication in a less formal atmosphere to boost creativity. Even staircases can be designed in a manner that permits easy flow of conversation. The director of interior design for HOK, Tom Polucci, says that some studies show people are more productive and innovative when in motion.
* Natural light
The European model of office design allows exposure to natural light of all people even these on interior. Studies have shown this makes for a happier, more productive workforce, especially if employees are sitting in front of a computer all day long.