The Beatles summed it up best in two simple words — come together. When it comes to professional life, that’s especially true. Without workplace collaboration, unclear expectations block reaching milestones, projects go overdue and spending goes over budget.

Collaborative work management helps you reach goals by delegating your workload, collaborating in real time and encouraging teamwork.

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In this guide, we’ll cover how collaborative work management helps efficiently complete projects by making teamwork the focal point, preventing burnout and functionally managing tasks.

What This Guide Covers:

• What Is Collaborative Work Management?
• Importance
• Phases of Collaborative Work Management
• Goals & Outcomes
• Benefits
• Popular Work Management Software
• FAQs
• Next Steps

What Is Collaborative Work Management?

Collaborative work management is a management technique that involves planning tasks, monitoring progress and using collaboration tools to bring teams together to reach goals.

Collaborative work management helps simplify your project process. Here’s how:

• Make changes to assignments in real time.
• Chat with coworkers through dashboards and get all documents gathered with integrations.
• Gain visibility into where an assignment stands, reducing miscommunication and ultimately saving you time and money.

Importance

Collaborative work management gives your employees the tools to work together on larger projects or smaller tasks, whether they’re down the street from each other or across the world.

More companies have employees working from home, which is convenient in many ways but can create a disconnect between coworkers because they don’t interact in person. Additionally, remote workers typically complete tasks independently. Collaborative work management is excellent for pairing up coworkers and alleviating stress from juggling multiple duties.

Ease anxieties over tight deadlines by bringing your team together to delegate responsibilities, finish projects faster and communicate more freely.

Phases of Collaborative Work Management

Outlining Projects

Where would you start if you wanted to build something? You’d have to draw up a blueprint. Likewise, creating a project outline is your first step in running a successful project. Map out your deliverables, set goals, determine a deadline and then you can start assigning tasks.

Creating Shared Dashboards

Before assigning tasks, create a project dashboard where resources live throughout the project’s lifecycle. Dashboards help visualize goals and enhance workflows by allowing employees to collaborate. Highlight priorities, set notification preferences and keep an eye on metrics.

Executing the Tasks

Now that your team has its designated roles, you’re ready to move towards monitoring progress. This is the phase where tasks get completed and closed. Schedule meetings, create breakaway groups and use your collaborative platform to share recognition – these are great ways to boost camaraderie.

Setting Follow-ups

Following up with your team after a project wraps is important because they provide insight on wins, challenges and questions. Evaluating a completed project helps estimate the time needed and determine your budget for future assignments.

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Goals and Outcomes

Allocating Resources and Sharing Documents

Save your team the hassle of searching for the documents they need for hours. Whether your company has in-office, hybrid or remote employees, they can get the information they need wherever, whenever. See your available resources and evenly distribute tasks to prevent employee burnout.

Increase Productivity Through Teamwork

Employees who come together and work as a team are more productive. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when one person is responsible for multiple tasks on a single project. Sharing the workload makes reaching goals more efficient, boosts workplace camaraderie and keeps everyone accountable when completing assignments.

Enhance Your Employee and Customer Experience

Collaborative working reduces stress and helps curate a more positive work environment, which is good for you and great for customers. Without employees taking on every aspect of projects, they instead have more availability for customers.

If your workers don’t directly interact with customers, collaborative work makes sure everyone’s on the same page. You can delegate tasks so no one’s overwhelmed and easily track the status of every step so you and your employees don’t have to keep putting out fires..

Increasing Visibility

You shouldn’t have to wonder who is working on what. Collaborative work management helps you manage and delegate team responsibilities and avoid exceeding deadlines by sharing the workload. Instead of setting up multiple meetings to see what they’re working on, gain peace of mind without leaving your office – employee collaboration keeps everyone accountable.

Benefits of Software

You don’t want your workplace communication to feel like a game of telephone. Fortunately, there are collaborative tools to get messages across smoothly and get things done accurately.

Improved Task Management

Keep your workflow moving smoothly with task management skills. Set recurring team meetings, automate reminders and set custom notifications to help stay on track. Assign multiple duties simultaneously and add as many employees as needed to prevent assignments from falling through the cracks.

Easier Accessibility

Information is distributed and kept accessible for multiple users with different locations (securely, of course). Share reports, make Gantt charts and view dashboards to ease the process of project planning.

Reduced Costs

Projects are more likely to finish on time when everyone works together. Meet deadlines on time and stay within budget. When employees work collaboratively, tasks get done faster, reducing overtime and eliminating burnout.

Better Communication

Say goodbye to endless email chains and voicemail messages. Communicate instead through dashboards, meetings and real-time chats. Opening communication eliminates unanswered questions. Groups working simultaneously on projects are already on the same page. Better communication means better productivity.

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Popular Work Management Software

Implementing a software solution is a great way of taking your content management game to the next level. You need software that’s easy to learn, reliable and accommodating to your staff. Thankfully, there are many choices on the market today. Our trusted research team has compiled a list of the top work management solutions available today (in no specific order).

ClickUp

ClickUp is a cloud-based project management solution for connecting teams, project mapping and customer relationship management. Streamline workflows, chat on dashboards, manage tasks, automate notifications and see what everyone is up to.

Desktop view of ClickUp. Source

Free Trial: Offers a free trial.
Free Version: A free version is available with up to five spaces.

Wrike

Wrike is a cloud-based project management software for collaborating, managing assignments and setting priorities to drive results. Create boards and charts for project planning, view analytics and streamline workflows.

Wrike using custom workflows dashboard view. Source

Free Trial: Offers a free trial.

Free Version: Free version is available for up to five users.

Teamwork

Teamwork is a web-based work management solution for project planning and collaborating across departments. Manage multiple projects, track time and increase visibility to stay within your budget and timeframe.

Teamwork desktop dashboard view. Source

Free Trial: Offers a free trial.

Free Version: Free version is available for up to five users.

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FAQs

What exactly is collaborative work management?

Collaborative work management helps complete projects by having employees work closely together.
Utilizing collective, collaborative tools opens communication, boosts efficiency and reduces errors. It improves productivity by delegating tasks.
A collaborative workspace brings supervisors, managers, teams and other departments together instead of directing assignments to one person. It’s great for promoting a sense of workplace camaraderie and preventing employees from feeling overwhelmed.

How do I know if I need a new work management style?

Here are a few key signs your business might benefit from implementing a new collaborative management style:

• Missed project deadlines
• Overdue tasks
• Over-budget projects
• Miscommunication between departments
• Lack of organization
• Missing project resources

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Next Steps

Having individuals work hard on assignments daily is great, but you can reach milestones more efficiently when everyone works together. Teamwork is key for you, your staff and your clients.

Collaboration tools help make the magic happen. When selecting a system, consider your task management needs, number of users and budget. These elements help narrow down what vendor will be the best option for you. Like buying a sweater, what fits you might not be best for someone else.

It’s okay to feel overwhelmed when choosing a new software. The good news is you don’t have to do it alone! We at SelectHub have created an easy-to-use requirements template so you know what features to look for before you waste time shopping around.

Which collaborative work management outcome stood out to you the most? Let us know in the comments!