Cooperation and collaboration are important to the success of any business and are without a doubt essential in the fast-moving and complex world of hospitality. They are what keep the operations running smoothly and help them to evolve to meet the continuously changing demands on the business.
We often use these two words interchangeably but there is an important difference, so it’s worth taking a moment to define them.
Cooperation is when we work together to support another’s goals, be it an operational need or assistance with a report or project.
Collaboration, meanwhile, is when we work together to achieve a shared goal, often making changes and improvements to the business.
A simple example is a hotel in which the Front Desk is facing an unhappy guest and urgently needs a room to for check in. They communicate with Housekeeping and Engineering, who cooperate to turn the room over quickly. Later, they recognise a trend in such complaints and the three departments collaborate to come up with a new procedure to improve room turnover times and increase satisfaction.
True collaboration comes with many benefits, including:
- Increased creativity and innovation: When people work together, they bring different perspectives and ideas to the table, which can lead to new and creative solutions.
- Greater efficiency and productivity: Collaboration allows individuals to divide and conquer tasks, which can lead to faster completion of projects and increased productivity.
- Shared knowledge and skills: Collaboration enables individuals to share their knowledge and skills with others, which can lead to personal and professional growth for all involved.
- Better decision-making: Collaboration allows for the collection of diverse opinions and ideas, which can lead to better decision-making and problem-solving.
- Increased job satisfaction: Collaboration can lead to a sense of belonging and shared purpose, which can increase job satisfaction and employee engagement.
Within our individual organisations, high-performing teams are often collaborative ones, and often successful partnerships are formed across businesses as well. However, there are missed opportunities to collaborate more as an industry, some of which in the past have stemmed from a lack of a venue in which we can communicate.
Through Hospo.life we now offer a dedicated place where conversations and collaboration can take place. In Hospo Friends, individuals and businesses from all over the world can come together to share knowledge and ideas, celebrate successes and find solutions for challenges both large and small.
As an industry, we have an enormous amount of knowledge and creativity and a wealth of perspectives. We also have similar challenges, no matter the size of our business or the location. There is much more we can do to join forces and potentially create real change and real benefits for all.