Kiwi company creates cross-company collaboration app

New Zealand tech and consulting company FutureWork Studio has developed an app that enables cross-company collaboration.

Established by Vincent Vuillard and Joanne Fair, FutureWork Studio aims to help some of New Zealand's major companies navigate the changing work-scape.

To achieve this FutureWork Studio has developed Hive, an app which creates an internal talent marketplace within an organisation.

The app has been taken up by organisations across a range of sectors in New Zealand, including energy and infrastructure.

"Globally and in New Zealand companies are beginning to recognise that cross-company collaboration yields better results than traditional hierarchical models. They're breaking down not just team barriers, but also organisational barriers, by setting up systems that enable employees to work on projects right across the business" says Fair.

Employees with relevant skill-sets can work on projects outside the scope of their day to day jobs, filling critical resource needs while taking part in experiential learning.

Hive enables organisations to refocus on their customers' needs, develop more efficient and effective practices, and capitalise on their workforce's skills.

This facilitates rapid rebalancing of workloads and builds individual and organisational resilience.

COVID-19 has brought about change to many facets of life, the global workforce learned how to work remotely, education shifted to online learning and healthcare adopted telehealth.

"Prior to COVID-19 it was almost impossible to imagine the seismic shifts that would change the way we work and the speed with which this occurred. For thousands of office-based workers the traditional 9-5 job, the 40-hour week spent in an office and the daily commute are no longer the norm. Work as we know it no longer exists," Vuillard says.

According to the Hive website, it enables:

• Internal mobility: Employees can apply their skills across the entire organisation, not just their business area.
• Experiential learning: Creates opportunities for employees to upskill while collaborating with different teams on real projects.
• Engagement: Employees select projects that best fit professional growth or where they can make a meaningful contribution.
• Workloads: Helps to identify where in demand skills sit in your organisation and deploy employees to where they're most needed.

"Hive facilitates a mindset of agility, collaboration, and learning - the essential building blocks of organisational resilience … as more and more parts of roles are automated or augmented with technology, capacity will be released within organisations, creating the opportunity for individuals and teams to move into more value-added work. Upskilling becomes key in this scenario," the website states.