Tip of the Week: Your Company Wins When Different Departments Collaborate

Business owners can understand that managing a workforce can be a challenge, especially when that workforce is divided into departments. Despite all employees working for the same business, the goals of the each department sometimes don’t seem to line up with the goals of the rest as much as they should.

To promote a cohesive and cooperative office environment, try some of the following communication strategies to keep employees happy when interacting between departments.

While the concept of teams collaborating to complete tasks may seem to be a no-brainer, a lack of interdepartmental communication is an alarmingly common problem that appears in many, many businesses. One department simply doesn’t consider that the other could benefit from information the one has collected and therefore doesn’t pass it along until much later. As this is happening, other departments may be struggling to find this same information, or need it to move forward themselves in their task, either way, halting progress towards their goals.

Additionally, there will almost certainly be a discrepancy in the goals held by each department that the others don’t consider as they strive to complete their own, potentially creating resource deficits and conflicts of interest within the business as individual departments fail to grasp the considerations of others.

Endorsing communication between the teams can help to resolve these issues. Some businesses have found that pairing off staff members from each team for brief orientations into each other's daily tasks can lead to more complete and considerate communications, in turn leading to a more informed and efficient workplace. As a result, each team will be more cognizant of the needs that the business has as a whole, and will be able to better prioritize their internal projects to meet those needs.

While maintaining open lines of communication between teams is important, it is also important to clearly define the responsibilities of each team. Otherwise, boundaries can become blurred, creating more problems for everyone. For example, team members from the business half of your operation could attempt to put new IT solutions in place independently, leading to all sorts of issues involving shadow IT, compliance, and functionality. However, with clearly established roles, team members will be able to focus on their own duties while passing along those tasks that do not fall under their specialty to the appropriate resource.

Ultimately, improved communications allow your teams to complete their tasks with greater efficiency, permitting them more time to focus on business-building activities.

SCW can help you implement the solutions to encourage collaborative communication among your departments. To find out more, reach out to us at (509) 534-1530.