Businesses have started to become more flexible ever since the pandemic happened; they’ve learned to adapt and continue doing work even if their employees are not together in one office space.

Some companies have decided to go back to the office again, while others have chosen to stay remote, creating a collaborative workspace instead.

What is a collaborative workspace? This is a digital work environment that allows employees to access the files that they need, no matter where they are located.

And this modern approach provides a great batch of business advantages.

Benefits Of A Collaborative Workspace 

The benefits that a company can gain by becoming remote depend on how well the workspace is designed.

Below are some of the key improvements that can be achieved:

• Business speed will increase. Businesses need to move fast to achieve more in this fast-paced world. Since data can be easily accessed, people can also work as soon as possible.
• Setting up can be easier to do. There is no need to bring tables and chairs just to have a place to start working.
• Companies will have the ability to hire people that will otherwise not consider the company because of the location. A remote development team will be able to work digitally, so you can hire the best talents from different parts of the world.

The Importance Of Meeting The Needs Of Your Website Development Team

A remote workspace will only be fully functional if it can meet all the needs of your website development team. You need to provide the right tools so that the different members of the team can work on their tasks effectively.

Pay attention to the following things:

• Carefully organize a web development team structure. Each member of offshore development teams will have needs you must take care of. For example, you may need to hire more than one developer to prevent the person from becoming too overwhelmed with all the workspace demands.
• Determine the urgency of the different needs. You can devise a list of the required things and provide them depending on the priority.
• Be familiar with the primary tasks that the team has to work on. You need to know what resources your web development team needs and how they can access them.

Choosing The Right Workspace For Your Team

The pandemic has allowed different businesses to adapt to varying types of workspaces. These types can be categorized into three major ones:

1. Physical
2. Virtual
3. Hybrid

The physical workspace is the type of workspace that people are used to pre-pandemic. People go to the office every day and spend more than 8 hours working on their tasks. They do their meetings in person. They try to complete their work before going back home. This is the costliest out of all the three types of workspaces.

The virtual workspace allows people to collaborate digitally. They can meet through a website or a web platform that has been designed for their company. They can hold meetings there and continue working wherever they are located. Composing development teams coming from different countries can take a long time and effort. The ultimate goal is to ensure they will be collaborating in one digital workplace conveniently.

Keep in mind that Cisco Webex streamlines this process by providing a comprehensive virtual workspace solution that facilitates efficient communication among diverse development teams.

Also, in the realm of creating collaborative workspaces for website development teams, the utilization of virtual machine hosting can enhance agility and efficiency, fostering seamless cooperation and resource sharing.

The hybrid workspace is a combination of the two above models. The company can have a physical office space where the employees can work some days of the week. They can also work remotely sometimes. For example, they may need to go to the physical workspace every MWF, but they can work remotely on TTH.

Some companies only require employees living near the physical workplace to go to the office. Those that are working from other countries can stay as a part of the remote squad, which means that they will only work on the virtual workspace.

You can decide on what workspace to offer your employees depending on your team’s preferences. Some employees work best in a physical workspace, while others say they can work better remotely. So choose the workspace type based on mutually beneficial terms. To facilitate this flexibility, consider utilizing the best coworking software to manage both physical and virtual workspaces effectively.

How To Design The Collaborative Workspace

The most important thing to remember is to come up with a work environment that will encourage the employees to collaborate. Some of the things to consider are the following:

• Come up with a communication channel where people will be encouraged to speak to each other.
• The company culture should be improved so that people will not be scared to speak up. Learn how to hire a community manager to help encourage the rest of the employees to cooperate. 
• Research the right tools for remote teams that can make the collaboration of employees easier. There are applications that people can use to communicate faster and more effectively. The toolkit can vary for each company so make sure to create your own based on your actual team’s needs.

Tips for implementing the collaborative workspace

Let’s say that you have finalized the right tools and resources that your team needs. The only thing that is left to do is to implement the collaborative workspace.

Make the team test the workspace so that they can give suggestions on how to improve it. 

1. Allow the employees to transition smoothly. There are probably a few things that they do not understand yet.
2. Remember to ask questions because some employees may not be very vocal about their concerns. You want dev teams to be comfortable. This will only happen if you can provide what they need.
3. Always take note of your employees’ mental health. People who have healthy minds will be very productive.
4. Provide training to help employees understand and transition in the workspace better. The more well-adjusted employees feel, the better that they will work.
5. Encourage employees to communicate with each other. This will help them air out their concerns more.

Tips for maintaining the collaborative workspace

This is also the right time to invest in AWS automation services to simplify common maintenance tasks that may otherwise take a long time to complete. Also, set up Desktop as a Service (DaaS) to swiftly establish digital workspaces for remote work and device flexibility.

You can establish a work culture wherein employees know they are free from judgment. They may appreciate that regardless of their position, they will be listened to and understood.

The more that you take time and effort to make your team feel special, the more that they can feel at ease with the workspace that you have built.

Conclusion

The more transparent the workplace is, the better that remote teams will work together. Some can even cross-collaborate with other departments to become more effective. If collaboration never stops, the company culture and work will also improve significantly.

Author Bio

Kateryna Boiko is a Marketing Director at Mobilunity, Provider of Dedicated Development Teams with 9 years of hands-on experience in digital marketing. Kateryna managed to work with diverse industries and markets and now is keen on sharing unique cases with the world and coach on topics relevant to Web Analytics and Search Engine Optimization.