Poor collaboration tools result in lost revenue

Corel has published additional results from its Collaboration Survey, which found that 54% of office workers believe poor employee collaboration within hybrid and remote work environments is costing organizations revenue, and nearly two-thirds (61%) of employees agree that poor collaboration tools stunt overall business growth.

The survey, which polled 2,027 office workers from the US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Australia, found that the main cause of this perceived lack of growth was due to a decrease in productivity, with 7-in-10 (70%) employees agreeing that poor collaboration is limiting their productivity and wasting their time. When pressed on what was causing this collaboration crisis, the respondents gave a range of answers:

27% claim that businesses aren’t investing in the right tools.

25% agree that collaboration tools have poor functionality.

22% of employees say they aren’t using the tools at their disposal.

21% of employees state they aren’t trained to use the tools.

“Over the past two years, we’ve learned that hybrid and remote work environments can be incredibly productive so long as businesses are investing in tools that empower employees to do their jobs well,” said Scott Day, Chief People Officer at Corel. “This survey underscores the alarming cost of inadequate collaboration tools and highlights that organizations of all sizes are limited by the quick fix solutions that were implemented at the beginning of the pandemic. Rather than improving employees’ ability to be productive, these stop-gap solutions are frequently a barrier to getting work done and can significantly impair hybrid and remote workers’ overall productivity. Listening to employees, creating an environment in which people want to work, and investing in simple and intuitive collaboration tools is what will set businesses up for success in 2022.”

Collaboration tools have found a renewed importance in the wake of the pandemic, thanks to their role in empowering hybrid and remote teams to be productive and work from anywhere. When asked what makes a collaboration tool successful, respondents identified two main characteristics:

39% agree that collaboration tools should enable multiple team members to seamlessly work on the same project at the same time

32% of employees favor collaboration tools that allow you to work and collaborate on any device

“We are living in an age where employees expect businesses to provide them with the tools they need to effectively work how and where they want, yet we see that many businesses are falling short on this front. The pandemic has changed the landscape of work permanently, and the impact of poor collaboration tools on an organization’s growth and bottom line is something businesses can’t afford to ignore,” Day added.