Teamwork has taken a dent during the recession as UK workers show a natural reaction to protect their own jobs in the downturn, shows new independent research released by BT Business today.
Just 19 per cent say they prefer to work with colleagues and are looking to safeguard their own projects and contacts. The findings come just when employers need collaboration and maximum productivity.
More than one in ten employees (12 per cent) interviewed for the independent ‘New Workplace’ study Survey of 3473 respondents carried out by YouGov in December 2008 admit to becoming more insular and more than a quarter (27 per cent) are putting in longer hours.
The findings, says BT Business, show employees instinctively protecting their own work-stacks in tougher economic conditions. By creating business processes to make sharing unavoidable, individuals and workgroups are able to access common project and customer information.
These operating norms can be supported using unified communications to automatically combine the information held across multiple devices and channels like email, voicemail and instant messaging.
John Dovey, IT services director at BT Business says:
“Although we can’t change human nature, business practices can be enabled to make employees collaborate as a matter of course. When a company integrates its communications channels it automates information sharing, allowing every employee to answer a customer enquiry or respond quickly to new opportunities. The approach helps firms to operate more effectively in the current climate and to be in better shape for the upturn when it comes.”
Mike Bourne, professor of Business Performance at Cranfield University School of Management said:
“Team collaboration and knowledge sharing is essential to help businesses chart a way through the current climate. However, while some employees are understandably worried about job security, firms with business processes to automate teamwork are able to reconcile both workforce productivity and personal performance.”
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