What Are Collaborative Work Groups?

What Are Collaborative Work Groups?

If you’ve been working on a project independently and having a difficult time, you might be wondering whether a collaborative work group could help you achieve your end goals. Collaborative work groups are groups of people working together on a project or task. Collaborative work groups are particularly helpful as individuals often have narrow areas of expertise and can benefit from others’ input. 

Collaborative work groups can be beneficial to an organization for a number of reasons. Collaborative work groups can increase a group's ability to problem solve because they bring together a range of different perspectives. Additionally, collaboration can help break down silos and bring teams or departments closer together as they work toward solving a common problem. This, in turn, can build trust between departments, increase morale across the organization, and help boost retention rates across companies. 

Collaborative work groups can also help improve communication between team members, as well as overall efficiency. Where an individual might run into a dead-end, when another teammate collaborates to find a solution, they can offer ideas to eliminate roadblocks when they arise. 

Collaborative work groups can avail of a range of collaborative methods and techniques to work on a single project. Establishing goals and expectations at the start of the collaborative work session is one such method, as is using collaboration software to facilitate collaboration sessions.