The past five years have seen a rapid proliferation of collaboration technologies as companies have sought to improve information flow and employee productivity.
Despite good intentions, many jobs remain stuck in the past. Consider that labour productivity growth in Australia has collapsed to 3.7 per cent in 2023. While there is a desire to increase productivity and encourage innovation, the results suggest otherwise.
One factor holding back productivity growth is a lack of consideration of how technology can adequately support collaboration efforts.
Interrupted processes and interrupting employees
According to the State of Work Innovation: Australia 2024 According to a report by work management platform company Asana, inefficiencies such as flawed meeting processes, outdated collaboration practices, fragmented technology and a lack of AI foundations are preventing companies from becoming more innovative and productive.
These problems were identified in many ways. One of them was that employees and managers dreaded two-thirds of their meetings because they lacked clear purpose, relevance and actionable outcomes.
The report also found that while many companies had implemented tools to streamline collaboration processes, these also did not meet expectations: 40 percent of employees felt they lacked clarity in how to use them.
These and other challenges resulted in 89 percent of respondents feeling exhausted due to the time wasted and effort involved in switching between tools.
Show a path to innovation
One area where there is hope to boost productivity and collaboration is the use of AI: 63 percent of executives are enthusiastic about their employees using AI at work.
An example of this would be Asana’s AI Teammates, which provides a set of customizable AI workers designed to handle complex workflows and improve teamwork.
Currently available in beta, AI Teammates can advise on priorities, support workflows, and even take action. Their customizability allows them to adapt to the unique work styles of individuals and teams.
In addition, Asana’s proprietary data model, The Work Graph, enables AI team members to connect work and workflows to strategic business goals, enabling them to collaborate with humans and act in the context and rules of engagement.
For example, an advertising agency can use AI team members to transform the creative process by prioritizing incoming requests, proactively capturing missing information, assigning jobs to specific people based on context, assisting with initial client research, and improving reporting quality with consistent data, freeing employees to focus on tasks like creative flow and design.
This feature is supported by a recently released AI chat interface that provides intelligent conversational support to help people solve problems and complete tasks faster.
Solving challenges today
We’ve already mentioned that improving workflows and collaboration is a widespread challenge. And the good news? There are a number of approaches to addressing these challenges.
Asana State of Work Innovation: Australia 2024 The report suggests a number of approaches that can be implemented today, such as setting clearer goals for meetings and adopting a systematic approach to collecting and evaluating feedback.
Similarly, collaboration tools can be improved by clarifying roles, identifying bottlenecks, highlighting efficient practices, and identifying and documenting collaboration behaviors that could become best practices.
Tool usage can be further improved by examining the redundancies, gaps and opportunities within existing tool sets. This lays the foundation for an organization-wide tech stack tailored to the practical needs of employees.
Many organizations are already combatting productivity issues by improving workflows and collaboration with Asana. For example, cloud-based accounting software provider Xero uses Asana to centralize communication and adapt to all teams and work styles, effectively managing both project execution and the setting of high-level goals.
At German meal kit provider HelloFresh, Asana has now increased the productivity of more than half of its team members by 33 percent while reducing friction in cross-departmental team collaboration, allowing the company to develop new recipes faster.
And at spend management company Coupa, implementing Asana in its project management office in 2020 saved 135 workdays per year by eliminating silos and merging work across teams. Coupa now has an organizational roadmap that accelerates projects from request to delivery, supporting its business growth goals.
Asana helps companies discover the benefits of work management by providing a Solution testIf you want to learn more about how to improve broken workflows or drive innovation and productivity, Speak to an Asana sales representative today.
