There are three reasons interdepartmental communication and collaboration break down in an organization: lack of awareness, departmental silos, and poor delegation strategies. This article explores all three and offers strategies for improvement. Most importantly, you’ll learn to communicate more effectively across departments and increase productivity.
Why Interdepartmental Communication and Collaboration Are Critical
Companies of all sizes thrive on collaboration. Without it, employees work in silos and aren't as productive. Communication is key, but many companies struggle with effective cross-departmental collaboration and communication. To tackle this challenge, departments must align in goals, objectives, and internal communication strategies. Failure to align departmental operations leads to a breakdown in communication, which results in poor efficiency, missed deadlines, and lower-quality work. To avoid this common issue, have clearly defined expectations for each department and structure them accordingly by creating a plan of organization for your company.
Dividing Tasks
While collaboration is crucial, it’s also important to divide tasks. For example, one department could focus on design while another focuses on programming. This way, you avoid overworking certain team members and ensure each task receives enough attention from its respective department. Dividing tasks can be difficult in smaller companies where you might be working with fewer people, but always keep communication clear between departments, and ensure everyone understands the expectations.
Technology Tools
Learn about Slack, an online collaboration tool used by many large businesses and multiple departments within these organizations. Tools such as Slack are good for communicating across teams and locations because they facilitate communication through several channels (i.e., public, private, chatrooms) and add documents directly from your computer. You can share videos, photos, and files with other team members in real-time.
Team-Building Exercises
Offices are great places for growing relationships and fostering a sense of team spirit. Make an afternoon out of it by coming up with fun, challenging team-building exercises for your employees. Involve everyone, from entry-level hires to senior management, and get them interacting on a personal level. From quizzes to team sports, team-building events can be some of your best options for fostering workplace camaraderie. The more comfortable you are together, the more productive you’ll be at work, and a happy workforce is a productive workforce.
Another way to grow a sense of teamwork is by conducting staff meetings or daily check-ins so everyone is on the same page. Schedule routine face-to-face meetings with your employees to discuss goals and progress. Teams should attend meetings regularly or stay up-to-date through emails and contribute when appropriate.
Collaboration and Productivity
Strengthen employee collaboration by requesting regular interdepartmental reports to leadership or staff. If you have numerous independent documents, graphics, or charts you'd like to include in your presentation, you can easily maintain everything in one PDF file using an online PDF tool to reorder, delete, and rotate pages. You can also add pages to PDF online which will keep all the important information together. In the end, effective communication between departments is a crucial aspect of any organization. Information must travel between departments in a timely manner and appropriately to increase collaboration and productivity.
Join your local chamber of commerce today, and explore business opportunities for your company.
This Hot Deal is promoted by Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce.
