Driving workforce sustainability through smarter collaboration

Embracing smarter collaboration enhances immediate business outcomes and lays the foundation for a sustainable and prosperous future, writes Harvard professor Heidi Gardner.

Workforce sustainability is about more than keeping the lights on. It's about fostering an environment where employees are routinely engaged and motivated, contributing their best to the organisation's success. Our extensive research at Harvard University, involving hundreds of companies and over 10,000 executives worldwide, has shown that effectively integrating employees into the core work of the organisation creates long-term benefits for the whole ecosystem.

This work centres on the principles of smarter collaboration: when people are consulted for their specific strengths and backgrounds, everyone thrives – employees, customers/clients, and the entire business. At the same time, successful collaboration depends on trust, strong leadership, and embracing one’s strengths. Together, these practices contribute to workforce sustainability.

Building trust

Creating a culture of smarter collaboration does not mean throwing a team at every problem. It requires building a foundation of trust where employees feel safe to share ideas and take risks together. You cannot assume that collaboration will occur in a low-trust environment. This was the belief in a life sciences company we worked with; “collaboration” was little more than collegiality masking distrust in others’ competencies and good intentions.

To build trust, leaders created opportunities for people across silos to work together – on low-stakes projects, to prove their abilities and character. Little by little trust was formed, and collaboration became more natural.

Leading by example

To maintain a collaborative culture – and the resultant benefits – leaders must apply smarter collaboration every day: with subordinates, with clients/customers, with outside partners, and perhaps most importantly, with one another. This contributes to the trust mentioned earlier, and helps people understand what effective collaboration looks like.

Leaders must also incentivise people to balance short-term collaborative wins with long-term, collaboration-fueled goals. This can be achieved through financial rewards as well as non-monetary prizes such as recognition at company-wide meetings or retreats.

Focusing on strengths

A core tenet of smarter collaboration is: you don’t have to know and do everything. This is where technology, particularly AI, is incredibly powerful. By supplementing knowledge with these tools, individuals can focus on their core strengths, passions, and career aims – while still achieving stellar outcomes through deliberate, goal-focused collaboration. And this sets them up for continued success in the organisation.

At the same time, companies that offer regular upskilling opportunities (in core and stretch areas) are more likely to see their employees feel fulfilled, stay, and succeed at the organisation – driving workforce sustainability.