If you search for online collaboration tools in any search engine, one look at the results is enough to give you an idea of the growing popularity of these tools. Businesses all across the globe are turning to these and other tools for enhancing productivity in their teams or departments; however, project managers or leaders must also seriously consider on how the other employees in the business will react and adapt to these changes.

Tools that offer online collaboration and instant communication from the same application have indeed proven to be extremely beneficial, and many experts believe them to be pillars that can promise future growth of any organization. However, before you deploy any such software for use by your company employees, take into account individual differences and learning curves since these play an imperative role in deciding and implementing the kind of online collaboration system that your organization will use. The article here aims to present before you a detailed explanation of this situation.

Online Collaboration Tools – Employee Management

In the broadest view, employees in any organization can be classified into two in terms of their technical skills. These are – regular users and the experts. Below we examine each of them briefly.

• Regular users – Regular users comprise of most of the non-technical users in workplaces all around the world. They are not very active in their online activities, and are certainly not very skilled in using the most advanced online tools. Precisely for this reason, this lot should be prioritized when choosing an online collaborative system for your business.
• Expert users – Needless to say, this is the computer-savvy group in your business. They are very comfortable working online, and most probably have already used some collaborative tool.

When choosing the ideal online collaboration tools for your company, it is recommended that you primarily see the need of your regular workforce. The reason behind this is that since they have an average knowledge about these tools, giving them software applications that are highly functional and consist of numerous features will only lead to confusion and this may eventually lead to employee dissatisfaction in worst cases. Letting software experts conduct extensive training sessions for use of these tools will also help in help in enhancing team collaboration and collective effort towards goal achievements.

In general, deployment of new software that promises improved functionality and better productivity, or even an upgrade to the existing system is a big move for a business. Nevertheless, this may lead to some concerns, both for the management as well as the users of the system. Slow adherence, and in some cases, non-compliance are general problems that are encountered when businesses switch to newer technologies, however, this can be easily addressed by either offering reward programs or other initiatives to increase learning and adaptation.

Online collaboration tools comprise of various features, and choosing one such system that offers all these features does not necessarily make it the best choice. Instead, it is better to go with a service that offers the features required by your business. These will be limited, and your employees will spend lesser time learning the new process and techniques. Furthermore, if the interface is simpler, people in your business will adapt to it more quickly.