Collaboration key to competitiveness for ANZ businesses

ANZ business leaders nearly universally agree that technology-enabled workplace collaboration is key to competitive advantage, but few feel satisfied with their current collaboration processes, a survey shows.

The survey from Polycom indicates that 97% of ANZ business leaders believe collaboration is key to competitiveness and 80% believe that collaboration tools can transform their workplace.

But although 89% describe their business as collaborative, four in five believe their current knowledge transfer is suboptimal, and only 24% measure the utilisation of existing collaborative tools.

Polycom Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand Tony Simonsen said the results indicate that most employees are still struggling to transfer knowledge effectively using the tools they currently have available.

“Following the federal government’s pledge to invest almost AU$1.1 billion in the next four years to fund Australia’s ‘ideas boom’ and promote innovation, there has never been a more important time for ANZ businesses to evaluate and invest in the right workplace collaboration strategies,” he said.

“Polycom is passionate about enhancing the productivity and performance of Australian and New Zealand businesses, now and in the future. We strongly believe this can be best achieved through collaboration, bringing in the skills, expertise and knowledge of a diverse workforce.”

The survey shows that Australian employees spend 40% of their time collaborating with people not in their immediate vicinity.

There have been significant increases in the utilisation of global teams and cross-organisational collaboration. In addition, 82% of ANZ employers believe that the labour market is changing, anticipating an increase in the use of freelance and contract workers.

But 54% of Australian employees believe the tools available in their workplace are not adequately optimised to facilitate collaborative working, and 65% feel they would be more productive if they had the right tools.

Image courtesy of thinkpublic under CC