You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘collaboration in the workplace’ many times during meetings, in strategy decks or in lists of company values. However, a survey has discovered that two-thirds of respondents (64%) claim that poor collaboration is costing them at least 3 hours a week in productivity, with 20% claiming they are wasting as many as 6 hours per week.
For those organisations that collaborate well, a study by Stanford University found that employees are 50% more effective at completing tasks, boosting their intrinsic motivation and helping them become more engaged with their work.
Building a collaborative workplace culture requires the right strategies and tools. In collaboration with our partner Synergy Learning, this article draws on Totara’s experience in supporting organisations to develop effective learning environments and explores practical approaches to collaborative learning that drive productivity and engagement.
What is collaborative learning in the workplace?
Collaborative learning means building environments where people actively learn both from each other and with each other, whether that’s through peer discussions, shared digital spaces or co-created content. A strong collaborative learning culture promotes knowledge-sharing, innovation, and collective problem-solving.
According to social learning theory, people tend to learn faster and retain more when they solve problems together, share experiences, and reflect as a group. In other words, employees learn best by watching others, trying things out with support, and getting real-time feedback – especially when learning is embedded in day-to-day work.
In the workplace, this might look like watching a colleague solve a tricky customer problem, modelling how a manager gives constructive feedback or engaging in a discussion thread to discuss a shared learning topic.
Key benefits of collaborative learning in the workplace
Done well, collaborative learning is a catalyst for performance, innovation, and culture change. According to a study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, businesses promoting collaboration were found to be five times more likely to be considered high-performing. Here are three high-impact benefits of collaborative learning in the workplace for your organisation.
Increased performance and productivity
When employees learn in isolation, valuable insights often stay siloed. Collaborative learning encourages team members to share expertise, co-create resources, and solve problems together, making institutional knowledge more visible and accessible.
One study by Stanford University revealed that working as a team can significantly boost performance. Participants who were encouraged to work collaboratively continued with their task 64% longer than those working alone. They also experienced greater engagement, reduced fatigue and higher success rates – benefits that persisted for several weeks. This highlights how collaborative learning helps to bridge the gap between learning and performance.
Your LMS should allow organisations to create collaborative workspaces – areas where teams, job functions, project teams, locations or those with specific interests or skills can gather online to share knowledge and collaborate on projects.
Improved knowledge retention
Social constructivist theory tells us that learning is most effective when it happens in a social context, where learners engage in dialogue, co-construct meaning and apply knowledge to real-world scenarios. In workplace terms, this simply means that employees learn better when they’re discussing challenges, applying new knowledge together and learning from each other’s experiences.
There’s a sweet spot between what a learner can do independently and what they can achieve with support. It’s within this zone that learning really takes hold.
When teams collaborate through peer discussions or group workshops, they naturally engage in the kind of shared learning experiences that drive better outcomes. Working memory only has a limited amount of space. Collaborative learning distributes cognitive processing across the group, reducing the burden on any one individual. Learners benefit from seeing how others break down complex tasks, offering different ways to approach and simplify problems.
Your LMS should support group activities and structured peer discussions to help teams chunk information, clarify misunderstandings early, and avoid overwhelm, especially when tackling complex topics or compliance-heavy content.
Creates a culture of trust and continuous improvement
When people feel safe to ask questions, share ideas and admit when they don’t know something, learning becomes part of the culture. This is known as psychological safety, a term first coined by Harvard researcher Dr. Amy Edmunson, who defines it as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes”.
When employees feel safe, they’re more willing to experiment, give feedback and embrace challenges. High levels of psychological safety are positively associated with learning behaviour can promote creativity, and create an environment where team members provide feedback to each other. Google’s Project Aristotle – a multi-year study into what makes teams successful – found that psychological safety was the number one predictor of high performance.
Collaborative learning in the workplace helps build this safety for the following reasons:
- It normalises learning as a shared experience, not something done in isolation.
- It creates opportunities for healthy vulnerability, like asking questions or being unafraid to make mistakes in front of others (an accepted ‘falling forward’ approach).
- It encourages reciprocal feedback, where learners support each other’s growth in a non-hierarchical way.
Using technology to create collaborative learning programs
While learning technologies – such as learning management systems – aren’t a silver bullet for collaborative learning, they can structure social learning and bring people together in meaningful ways. The right technology can transform collaborative learning from a buzzword to a daily, scalable habit that strengthens both performance and culture.
Here’s how you can use technology to support and scale collaborative learning in the workplace.
Choose your collaboration tools wisely
If your workforce is dispersed or remote, collaboration tools are a must. While many workplaces use communication and collaboration tools such as instant messaging or Google Drive, you need to be sure that the tools you choose are aligned with your organisation’s specific needs. You’ll also want to ensure seamless integration within your digital ecosystem.
You can certainly have too much of a good thing. If employees have too many communication outlets with unclear purposes, things can become quickly overwhelming. Should they collaborate via Teams? Slack? Email? Their learning management system? A task management board? In person?
It’s good to keep all communications centralised within your LMS. It shifts employee perceptions – rather than viewing it as a platform they log into once a year for compliance training,
Totara, for example, offers a range of features designed to keep the conversation flowing and make collaboration natural:
- Like, comment and discuss learning resources in real-time, just like on social media.
- Create and share playlists of useful content, making it easy for colleagues to find the best resources on key topics.
- Tag and recommend content to individuals, teams or workspaces, ensuring knowledge flows to the right people at the right time.
- Engage in Totara’s workspaces – dedicated spaces for teams, job functions and interest groups to collaborate dynamically rather than just passively consume learning materials.
These features move beyond traditional discussion forums by embedding knowledge sharing within the learning journey. This ensures collaboration happens in context, when and where it’s needed.
For more structured discussions, Totara’s forums provide a more formal space for discussion:
- Read-only forums for posting important announcements.
- Interactive discussion areas for learners to discuss key learning topics.
- Q&A forums where managers can create scenario-based discussions, with learners only seeing peer responses after posting their own.
With formal, informal and social learning working together in one platform, employees have a single place to collaborate, making it a natural part of daily work rather than an isolated activity.
Foster psychological safety
Do people in the workplace feel comfortable sharing ideas, asking questions and admitting mistakes? We mentioned psychological safety earlier and we’ll mention it again here – it’s such a key part of building a learning culture that’s unafraid of a “falling forward” approach. It’s in cultures like these that innovation truly thrives.
Some things you can do to foster psychological safety include:
- Fostering open communication – Encourage employees to share their thoughts in meetings without interruptions. Managers can model openness by sharing their own learning experiences and challenges as examples.
- Reframing failures – This might initially feel uncomfortable, but start the conversation by highlighting a time when you learned from failure and how it helped you succeed.
- Normalise constructive feedback – Implement a culture of continuous feedback where employees regularly exchange ideas without fear of negative consequences. Instead of “Why did you fail?”, ask “What did you learn from it?”.
Shift from individual to collective learning
Traditional learning models often focus on individual achievement, but collaborative learning shifts the focus to team-based knowledge sharing. This involves breaking down silos and encouraging employees to learn together, share insights and solve problems as a team.
This is where collaborative learning in the workplace shows its true value: shared experiences that lead to faster upskilling, stronger engagement and more resilient teams.
Data from Linkedin’s Workplace Learning report demonstrates the value of collaborative learning: 91% of teams develop new skills effectively together, learner engagement increases by 30% and collaboration is among the top five drivers of a great workplace culture.
Many organisations face the challenge of ‘knowledge hoarding’, where information stays within departments rather than being shared across teams. To combat this encourage different teams to collaborate through cross-functional projects, interdepartmental learning initiatives and shared digital workspaces.
Reward any instances of collaborative learning and make it part of your company culture – your employees will naturally turn to others for help rather than push through tasks alone.
With Totara, informal learning can give you insights into who’s posting most frequently, what resources are being accessed and engaged with the most, and helps you proactively plan formal learning to support what your learners are getting value from.
What’s more, machine learning recommendations mean that AI is used to enhance personalisation based on what people with similar learning interests are engaging with.
These collaborative learning tools mean learning is pulled into the flow of work and weaved seamlessly into people’s day-to-day routines.
Ready to boost performance through the power of collaborative learning?
In this article, we’ve seen how collaborative learning blends the natural human instinct to learn socially with the structure and intention needed to drive performance. From boosting productivity and knowledge retention to fostering psychological safety and trust, these benefits impact both the individual and the organisation. With the right tools, such as those offered by Totara, collaborative learning goes beyond just a concept and becomes a habit that’s integrated into the way your people work, solve problems and grow together.
To turn these ideas into action, download our free eBook, The Six Biggest Challenges Keeping L&D Professionals Up at Night. Inside, you’ll discover the biggest barriers facing L&D teams today and how forward-thinking organisations are overcoming them through stronger strategic alignment, meaningful measurement and a culture of continuous, collaborative learning in the workplace.
