Building collaborative communities

Shape a workforce that is mobile, engaged and inspired to produce work that drives productivity, growth and innovation. It’s possible to achieve this and more through the adoption and use of collaborative technologies specifically designed to enhance employees work life whilst inspiring teams to grow and share ideas.

What are collaborative spaces?

Collaborative workspaces have the potential to build and strengthen the inner dynamics of the workforce. There are numerous variations of the concept in the wider workforce, the one we would like to focus on is the kind carried out by individuals and groups within an organisation for the purpose of achieving a higher level of productivity and efficiency.

In today’s modern workplace creative spaces and technology have a synergistic relationship where when combined they are more effective in establishing collaboration. These are referred to as collaborative spaces within work environments. With increasing demands on organisations to become more innovative, leadership teams are expecting employees to think big and act fast, and this is where collaborative spaces become an indispensable tool, not a nice to have.

Building blocks of collaborative communities

Who doesn’t want their workspace buzzing with energy and brimming with the power of collective imagination? To get it all rolling organisations will first need to address the following building blocks:

• How employees work with information
  Employees should be requested to give their feedback on the challenges they face when trying to collaborate, their goals in group settings, what level of engagement they are comfortable with, and changes they feel are essential in order to enhance their productivity.
• Understanding employees response to change
  Before embarking on trying to plant the seed for collaboration, organisations will need to understand how receptive their employees are to a change in their work environments. This exercise will also help identify resources that are available within the organisation to facilitate the process of implementing change.
• Creative spaces make a difference
  A creative space has to be more than just aesthetics, it must be a space that actively fosters creativity and innovation. The whole concept of building collaborative communities is rooted in design merging with technology to provide a space that helps inspire and capture innovative ideas.
• Endorsing a new culture
  An organisations culture is the amalgamation of repetitive habits and its people’s interpersonal work relationships. This abstract concept is constantly evolving as people change how they feel, what their objectives are and how they interact with their environment. So it’s not implausible to believe that if you change how people work you will end up changing what they produce.

Let's huddle

It all comes together with ‘The Huddle Room’, a concept of a creative workspace designed by Ricoh to address the need for creative spaces in organisations that are trying to blend traditional workplaces with collaborative workplaces of the future.

Ricoh’s huddle rooms are equipped with Ricoh’s Interactive Whiteboards (IWB), Unified Communication Systems (UCSA), projectors, mobile applications, and related cloud-based services.

To help organisations create spaces that foster collaborative communities Ricoh offers the facility of purpose-built ‘Huddle Rooms’ fitted with technology that is specific to your organisational needs.

Ricoh’s huddle rooms have been crafted to help bring your people together so they can collaborate more and bring innovation and productivity into their daily work routines. If you can change the way people work you will change what they produce.