In your business, there are times when you purposefully gather your team together, and times when they find themselves chatting and planning on the spur of the moment. These are called “workplace collisions” and are the centerpoint for all effective planning and processing inside your office.

Aside from the standard team meetings or even one-on-one meetings between an employee and their supervisor, workplace collisions can happen in offices, in cubes, in the hallway, and of course at the watercooler. So, how can you facilitate these collisions, and make sure they are as productive and effective as possible? Here are a couple tips to help your team connect and collaborate better.

Break Down the Walls
Hiding teammates from each other in a vast maze of cubes or in offices with closed doors is no way to enhance collaboration. Remove cubes, or lower cube walls. Move everyone out of the office and into an open floor plan. At the very least, institute a mandatory open door policy to make the office feel more inviting. And start changing up the layout of your office. If all members of the development team or the creative team work together in one space, they can build off of each other and ask questions as needed to achieve greater results, faster.

Create Collaboration Spaces
Creative ideas and innovation does not come from stuffy, boring offices, gray walls and cubicles. Get your team together to generate these ideas, and make their collaboration area fun. Whether it’s an entire room dedicated solely to collaboration or just a corner of your office filled with brightly-colored beanbag chairs, make sure it is conducive to teamwork and keeping your employees productive together.

Mandate Department Meetings
Meetings don’t need to be dull and boring, but they do need to happen. Make sure you have a regular department meeting each week or every other week to keep everyone connected and aware as to what has been going on lately. But try to keep these meetings active, and be sure to have each member give an update on their work to keep them contributing. These organized collisions can be productive if run correctly.

Ask For and Review Notes from Collisions
Each time teammates get together, have them document notes and action items. Then, ask to see these notes after each meeting, brainstorm or teamwork session. It will keep them honest in their next steps. and keep you aware of what’s been going on.

When working with your team to make their collisions more productive, your business plans and processes can flourish. Effective communication can build a business up from nothing into a thriving enterprise which respects its employees and encourages teamwork for greater success.