Digital collaboration: only one in two companies was ready before Corona

Darmstadt University of Technology and the management and technology consultancy Campana & Schott have been conducting an annual social collaboration study since 2016, and also for Switzerland since 2017. This year, 1,079 employees from Switzerland, Austria and Germany were surveyed about their experiences with networked collaboration. More than a quarter (29%) of them work in direct customer contact or manufacturing and thus belong to the firstline workers.

Digital collaboration solutions as an advantage

One result of this year's study: At 53% of the companies in Switzerland, collaboration tools have already been introduced or such projects were already underway before the Corona crisis. "Companies in which digital collaboration was already established before the crisis are currently at an advantage. They were able to change their daily work routine very quickly and with less friction. All those who now have to find ways should learn from the experiences of others," explains Dr. Eric Schott, CEO of Campana & Schott. "In doing so, they can directly improve one thing in particular: the prudent and communicatively well-supported introduction of the tools, because this has often been poor up to now."

"Companies that already rely on social collaboration tools have a clear advantage in the current situation: on the one hand, their IT does not now have to frantically introduce basic services for remote work. On the other hand, their workforce has a higher level of digital fitness, which includes both functional tool usage and a corresponding mindset," says Boris Ovcak, Director Social Collaboration at Campana & Schott. "In addition to work capability and efficiency, social collaboration promotes a digital corporate culture. However, these positive aspects do not come about by themselves; rather, practical use cases and comprehensive change management based on them are the prerequisite."

Higher level of maturity, higher work efficiency

On a scale of 1 to 7, social collaboration maturity has increased almost every year since 2016 (2016: 3.48, 2017: 3.28, 2018: 3.96, 2019: 4.05, 2020: 4.08). A high maturity level means that current digital technologies are frequently used for information and communication, while a low maturity level means largely analog approaches or established technologies such as e-mails. For Switzerland, the social collaboration maturity level is 4.07 and thus just below the overall maturity level.

Just five years ago, social collaboration initiatives played no role at all in 43% of the companies. Even before COVID-19, this situation had changed significantly. At that time, only 29% of the respondents stated that their company was not yet planning or implementing any corresponding projects. Based on the data trend, the study proves that collaboration in companies is becoming increasingly digital. The promotion of a digital corporate culture, the increase in customer satisfaction, the improvement in innovative ability and increased efficiency are the central motives here.

"The correlation between social collaboration maturity and employee work efficiency proves that the introduction of social collaboration tools makes sense for companies," says Boris Ovcak, Director Social Collaboration at Campana & Schott. "A high maturity level is clearly associated with increased efficiency. This correlation has been consistently demonstrated over the past five years. So companies benefit very concretely when employees use social collaboration tools intensively."

Firstline workers remain digital laggards

Currently, employees of companies in Switzerland with a high level of social collaboration maturity are 30% more efficient than employees of companies with a low level of maturity. For firstline workers, this is 23%. Although they would benefit more from social collaboration tools, firstline workers lag significantly behind information workers in terms of their maturity level (3.76) (4.2).

Accordingly, work efficiency in the DACH region is also lower for firstline workers (4.62) than for information workers (4.84). This is primarily due to a lack of equipment. For example, one in six firstline workers does not have a digital device to access social collaboration tools. This makes them around 26% less efficient than colleagues who can use such tools.

Among firstline workers, 30% use a shared computer and just under a quarter use a private device for social collaboration tools. It is therefore not surprising that only around 40% of firstline workers are satisfied with the digital equipment in their workplace. Some 60% see considerable need for improvement here. Among employees without access to social collaboration tools, as many as 86% are dissatisfied with the equipment.

Customer satisfaction and change management increasingly important

As in previous years, improving corporate culture remains the most important goal in the DACH region (16%). The focus here is primarily on interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation orientation, willingness to change, and affinity for technology. Among the goals for the introduction of social collaboration tools, customer satisfaction has reached second place for the first time (15%). This aspect has risen continuously in relevance since 2016, when it was still ranked 7th.

Employees need to accept and use social collaboration tools. Yet around 65% of all companies in Switzerland take no measures at all to achieve this. Those who do change management at all focus on support from company management (31%). Less focus is placed on the concrete requirements of employees (21%) and the time to deal with them (26%). For example, only around a quarter of employees are satisfied with the way the introduction process went. By contrast, companies with comprehensive change management measures achieve higher employee satisfaction and a significant increase in work efficiency.

Digital collaboration supports agile methods and AI

Social collaboration tools already support agile methods, especially Scrum, Kanban and Design Thinking, in almost two-thirds of companies. Almost 70% believe that this increases the efficiency of communication among employees and allows projects to be adapted more quickly.

Just over a quarter of respondents in Switzerland believe AI is still in its infancy. Yet despite the acknowledged high potential, almost three-quarters do not use any business intelligence or analytics tools at all to evaluate business-relevant data. IT security, data protection and the high complexity of the technology are seen as the biggest obstacles. However, this is set to change in the near future - companies see emerging usage scenarios above all in the area of chatbots, automatic image processing and machine translation. This means that they would rather have practical solutions that promise a high benefit with little effort.

Source and further information: Campana & Schott