Team collaboration is key to any successful company. Only when talented workers come together can smart, innovative ideas bounce off. Only when everyone is working towards a common goal – your success – can you see mountains move. To achieve this level of symbiosis amongst your employees, however, you need to recruit well and do all you can to encourage team collaboration from the ground up. People don’t always automatically gravitate towards each other, but there is a lot you can personally do as their employer to encourage collaboration and teamwork amongst your employees.

Improve the Working Environment

Try working in a dark, dreary basement with a yellow-tinged light and a cold draft. It’s practically impossible. The darkness will close in on you and make working seem like the biggest struggle in the world. Though your current office space is likely not so dire, even a simple, uninspired environment can take its toll on your employees. That is why you should instead aim to save yourself money and rent out a coworking space for you and your employees. You can find these in every major city around the world. For example, if you want to rent out working space London, all you need to do is choose the right package that fits your company’s needs and enjoy incredibly low rents for as long as you need.

Streamline Admin Processes

Just as the environment can cause a headache and strain amongst your employees, so too can bothersome communication methods and admin processes. Invest in the right software that makes working together a breeze that requires minimal verbal confirmation.

Improve Collaboration in Meetings and Beyond

Once you have improved the environment and the actual work your employees do, next on the list will be to start bringing them closer together. Depending on the size of your company, for example, you might want to rotate who attends meetings so that you can get a full representation of ideas on the table. Alternatively, you could structure what each session will be about beforehand, and encourage every one of your employees to come up with five points to bring with them before it starts. This will help dialogue along and improve the chances of innovative ideas being born.

Encourage Socialisation Outside of Work

Encourage socialisation outside of work to make your employees into true friends who know how to communicate with one another. You can do this by setting up clubs outside of work. For example, have someone be head of an after-work running club that helps your employees stay healthy and bond in a productive way. By sponsoring these activities, you can offer employees great benefits that help them love your company and want to work hard for you.

Don’t Pit Your Employees Against Each Other

Never pit your employees against each other with an employee of the month type of system. This encourages strong competition that can hurt collaboration amongst your top performing employees and can encourage lower performing employees to put even less effort in. Instead, try to reward each employee based on their own progress and when they complete milestones.

Never underestimate how important a strong working culture is in your company. It is what will help your employees love their jobs and, in turn, what will help them work better together. Loving who you work with and enjoying being in work every day is one of the best benefits that you can give, so work on building that sort of environment in your company today.