Effective interdepartmental communication can lead to smoother workflows, improved team alignment, and enhanced collaboration. But organizational silos and ineffective communication systems often stand in the way. In this article, we’ll explore everything you need to know to improve interdepartmental communication in your organization, including the key benefits, challenges, and 13 strategies to try.
What is interdepartmental communication?
Interdepartmental communication refers to the flow of information between different teams, departments, or units within a business. When a company promotes effective interdepartmental communication, employees freely share information with colleagues in different departments and work together to solve common problems.
Organizations that care about interdepartmental communication prioritize collaboration and teamwork. They also encourage casual, social interactions between employees in every part of the business, which helps to foster trust and build strong relationships. Over time, this can both boost employee engagement and connection and drive business outcomes by enabling effective collaboration.
The critical role of interdepartmental communication in an organization
In businesses without effective interdepartmental communication, each team or department effectively works in its own bubble. Employees are primarily focused on their own tasks and objectives and don’t feel much of a connection to the organization as a whole.
This siloed approach causes a number of problems. First, it means that knowledge ends up sitting within particular departments and isn’t accessible to the rest of the organization. Inevitably, this leads to duplication of work, since employees don’t know what resources or information already exists. In this type of organization, company culture often suffers, because everyone is too focused on doing their own thing to pay much attention to the bigger picture.
Strong interdepartmental communication is essential for creating a collaborative environment, where everyone works together to achieve shared objectives. Improving communication between departments can help to optimize the spread of information, create stronger working relationships, and facilitate effective teamwork. It can also have a major impact on employee morale since it allows each employee to feel part of something bigger.
Common barriers to effective interdepartmental communication
Effective interdepartmental communication is critical for business success — but it won’t happen overnight. Here are some of the main barriers you’re likely to face as you try to improve cross-team communications within your organization.
- Physical distance: In large organizations, employees may be spread across multiple locations. And these days, many people work at least partially from home. Finding ways to help employees communicate and connect even when they’re not in the same place is one of the biggest barriers to effective interdepartmental communication.
- Organizational silos: In many organizations, each team or department works in isolation from the rest of the company. Employees rarely have contact with members of other departments, and spend their time focusing on their own tasks without considering the overall needs of the business. This setup can cause important communication barriers, which can be difficult to overcome.
- Siloed systems: In addition to working in organizational silos, many teams or departments have their own preferred systems and processes for communication and collaboration — which can make communication between departments challenging. Businesses that want to improve interdepartmental communication may have to introduce new systems and software to enable communication across different business functions.
- Language and cultural barriers: In large, multinational organizations, there’s often one simple reason why employees don’t communicate with each other: they don’t speak the same language. Using software with a built-in translation capability can help bridge the gap. However, there may still be cultural differences between employees in different countries, which can be trickier to overcome.
- Resistance to change: If your organization has always operated in this siloed fashion, you may face some internal resistance if you try to change things. For example, managers might be concerned about their reports being pulled off to work on projects that aren’t directly related to their roles. And, if you don’t emphasize the benefits of effective communication between departments, employees may fear it will just mean more work.
How to improve interdepartmental communications in your organization: 13 strategies to implement
Effective interdepartmental communication is not something you can achieve with a quick intervention. Instead, it requires constant encouragement and nourishment. Your ultimate aim should be to build a company culture that celebrates individual employee contributions while facilitating effective collaboration between colleagues in all parts of the organization. Here are a few strategies you could put in place to help you achieve that goal.
1. Share key updates from each department on your company intranet
One of the biggest barriers to effective interdepartmental communication is that employees often simply don’t know what other departments are doing. Sharing regular updates on each department’s key projects, challenges, and achievements can break down organizational silos and help employees to see the bigger picture.
You may choose to share department-level updates in a regular company meeting or email newsletter. However, it’s also a good idea to share them somewhere where employees from other departments can comment and interact with the content — like on your company intranet.
2. Establish common goals for multiple departments
When goals and targets are only set at the department level, there’s no incentive for employees to connect with others outside of their team. To encourage collaboration across different functions, consider setting goals that can only be achieved through collective effort from two or more departments.
For example, a company’s marketing department may be responsible for passing on leads to sales, but they have no responsibility for whether or not those leads are converted. And, while the sales department will work on converting those leads, they also have leads from other sources. Setting a goal for both departments to close marketing leads at a higher rate than other leads could encourage both teams to work together.
3. Build a collaborative culture
To improve interdepartmental communication, you need to build a company culture that values collaboration and encourages employees to form strong relationships with their peers in other departments. This isn’t something that happens overnight — but you can make a start by organizing team-building events that facilitate cross-functional relationships and using your internal communications to emphasize the power of collaboration.
If you do it right, you could go from a company where employees jealously guard information and rarely interact with colleagues outside of their teams, to one where they freely share information across departments, help out on projects where their expertise is valuable, and give their input on important decisions. This allows for a more effective flow of knowledge throughout the organization, improving efficiency and productivity.
4. Hold regular interdepartmental meetings
One of the simplest ways to encourage interdepartmental communication is to promote ongoing dialogue between different teams through regular interdepartmental meetings. These meetings are an opportunity for employees from different teams to discuss ongoing projects, share ideas, and ultimately work together to help the organization achieve its objectives.
To avoid these cross-departmental meetings getting out of hand, it’s important to create a detailed agenda and ensure you stick to it. You should also think carefully about which departments you need to invite to each meeting. For example, you might hold an all-hands meeting with key updates from every department once a month. However, some departments, whose work overlaps to some extent (like sales and marketing, for example), may benefit from more regular meetings.
5. Create opportunities for casual interactions
Interdepartmental communications is not just about employees collaborating on important cross-functional projects — it’s also about building strong relationships with colleagues across the organization. Providing employees with opportunities and spaces for casual, personal interactions can foster trust and understanding, creating a healthier environment for collaboration.
If your teams work in person, this may involve setting up your physical workspace in a way that encourages socialization. For example, you could build breakout spaces and shared facilities where employees can connect. But you can also achieve this sense of community with an internal communication tool — just look for one that comes with features for connection and peer-to-peer engagement.
6. Celebrate individual and team achievements
Recognizing and rewarding employees’ achievements can increase motivation and morale, boost productivity, and even improve retention rates. And it can also help to facilitate better interdepartmental communication.
The key is to share shout-outs publicly within your organization — for example on your company intranet or employee app. This way, employees from other departments will be able to share in celebrating employees when they achieve something great. It’s also a good idea to celebrate team successes as well as individual ones since this can help to build trust across departments and enable more effective collaboration.
7. Don’t neglect remote employees
When we talk about interdepartmental communications, it’s important to remember that we’re not just referring to those employees who work from the company HQ. While engaging remote employees and encouraging them to connect with colleagues in other departments is trickier, it is possible with the right tools and strategies.
For example, using a modern intranet platform allows remote employees to stay informed about company news, keep track of shared projects, and connect with employees across the organization. It’s also a good idea to organize in-person or virtual team-building events and social activities, which can foster a sense of camaraderie and community, even among remote employees.
8. Seek feedback and input from employees
If you want to improve communication across your organization, you need to build a culture where everyone feels able to communicate openly and honestly. Team members should be comfortable sharing their concerns, ideas, and opinions with everyone from their peers to the company’s leadership. In return, employees should be willing to hear and implement constructive feedback from colleagues, managers, and leaders.
Building this type of feedback culture takes a lot of work, but the results can be significant. First, it can facilitate better decision-making by inviting employees from different backgrounds to share their expertise. It will also help employees feel more connected to the organization and lead to more effective collaboration and communication across different business functions.
9. Organize regular team-building events
If you want to encourage strong interdepartmental communication, you need employees to see themselves as part of a larger team. Organizing team-building events and activities can help employees interact with colleagues from other departments, working together while getting to know each other on a personal level.
There are a lot of different ideas for team-building activities you could try, including baking classes, quiz nights, workshops, or improv classes. If your teams are remote or widely distributed, you could even organize a virtual team-building event that employees can attend from home.
10. Encourage leadership to lead by example
Employees in all departments look to your company’s leadership for an example of the behaviors that are valued within your organization. That’s why it’s crucial to have your leaders demonstrate the importance of effective interdepartmental communication through their own work.
For example, leaders should communicate openly, invite feedback from employees across the organization, and make themselves available for informal and work-based discussions. Leaders should also engage in interdepartmental projects and give shout-outs to teams or individuals when they do a great job. Effective leadership communication that emphasizes the organization’s goals and objectives is also important.
11. Use employee spotlights
Simply introducing employees to their colleagues in other departments is one of the first steps toward effective interdepartmental communication. And one of the best ways to do that is by using employee spotlights. This is an internal marketing technique that involves highlighting individual employees with a video or short blog post showcasing their personal stories, unique skills, career trajectory, and key achievements.
Employee spotlights are an effective way of recognizing and rewarding certain employees while allowing others to get to know their colleagues a little better. This helps to foster a positive work culture and promotes a sense of community and collaboration. By showcasing what each individual brings to the organization, you can encourage employees to think outside of their own department.
12. Encourage empathy and understanding
Interdepartmental communication becomes much easier and more effective when employees in different departments seek to understand and empathize with each other. Building this into your culture isn’t something you can achieve overnight — but incorporating it into your company values is a good place to start.
If you’re successful, employees will feel safe and supported in sharing their views, challenges, and perspectives without fear of punishment. They’ll welcome feedback from others and be happy to provide it in return — which can lead to more effective problem-solving and decision-making. Over time, employees in this type of culture form strong relationships with colleagues in other departments, fostering a culture of trust, well-being, and collaboration.
13. Emphasize organizational goals
When each employee is only working towards their own goals and objectives, they typically don’t feel a strong sense of connection to the organization. And they’re also not likely to communicate with people outside of their team, because they’re too busy concentrating on their own work.
Instead of simply focusing on team- or department-level targets, you should encourage managers to talk about how these fit into the company’s overall objectives. This allows employees to see their work in a wider context, helping them to understand their value to the company. It can also encourage interdepartmental communication by showing employees how their work interplays with other departments.
The benefits of strong interdepartmental communication
There’s no denying it: optimizing your company’s cross-functional communication will take a lot of time, work, and resources. So, is it worth it? Here are some of the main benefits that improved interdepartmental communication could bring to your organization.
Reduced work duplication
When no one knows what any other team is working on, employees will inevitably end up duplicating work. For example, a company’s sales team might initiate a customer satisfaction survey to gather feedback on customer needs, without realizing that the customer support team has already distributed a similar survey. Enhanced interdepartmental communication could allow these two teams to pool their resources and work together to gather the insights that both departments need.
Effective problem-solving and decision-making
When employees from different departments work together, they bring a wide range of skills, knowledge, and experience to the table. This allows for better problem-solving and empowers them to make stronger, more data-driven decisions. Plus, bringing in an outside perspective can sometimes help teams spot problems or solutions that they’re otherwise unable to see.
Improved customer service
When a customer has a problem, they often end up interacting with employees from various different departments. And a lack of communication in the workplace can create a frustrating and disjointed solution for the customer. On the other hand, strong relationships enable organizations to respond to problems more quickly and effectively. A recent study confirms this, finding that collaboration can improve customer satisfaction ratings by 41%.
Stronger relationships and improved teamwork
At its core, communication is all about building relationships. When employees connect with colleagues in other departments, they begin building trust and understanding, which can help to enhance collaboration later on. This makes for more effective teamwork, which could positively impact your company’s productivity and performance.
Improved employee satisfaction and morale
When teams communicate effectively, employees are more likely to feel connected to their organization as a whole, instead of isolated in their own silo. This gives them a sense of purpose, which is one of the key drivers of engagement, according to Gallup. Put simply, strong interdepartmental communications can lead to happier, more satisfied employees.
Common mistakes to avoid in interdepartmental communication
Improving your company’s interdepartmental communications isn’t easy — and it won’t happen overnight. You should think of your strategy as an ongoing process, and be willing to adjust it if something isn’t working. While no company gets things 100% right, you can save some time by avoiding these common mistakes.
- Using too many communication tools: Employees are often overloaded with tools and software. Instead of asking them to download a whole new program to collaborate with other teams, look for all-in-one tools that facilitate peer-to-peer, top-down, and interdepartmental communication.
- Not providing space for informal connections: Collaboration between employees in different departments is more effective if those employees already have a relationship. Remember to leave room for casual interactions by choosing a tool that offers features like social walls, chats, and employee communities.
- Overloading employees with meetings: While organizing meetings between different departments can help facilitate interdepartmental communication, be wary of putting too much extra work on your employees’ plates. Before organizing a meeting, think carefully about who actually needs to be there.
- Using jargon: Every department within a business uses its own niche vocabulary to talk about work. But trying to use those same words with colleagues outside of the department can be confusing. To help employees communicate clearly and effectively, consider including guidelines in your employee handbook that discourage the use of jargon when communicating with employees from other departments.
- Letting conflicts fester: The more different departments interact with each other, the more conflicts are bound to arise. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing: conflict can lead to innovations, creative ideas, and new perspectives. However, it’s important to manage conflicts quickly and effectively so they don’t get out of hand and damage morale.
Best practices for seamless interdepartmental communications
In this article, we’ve shared some key strategies you could adopt to improve communication between departments in your organization. But the truth is, none of these ideas will work on its own. If you truly value interdepartmental communication, you need to make it a core part of your company values and work to build it into your company culture.
That means creating a transparent, trusting environment where everyone feels safe to share their ideas, thoughts, and opinions. You’ll need to create feedback loops so employees can share their valuable expertise across different departments, enabling everyone to work together towards common goals.
And of course, you’ll also need the right tools to enable effective, constructive, and fruitful communication. Tools such as intranet platforms and employee apps help employees build connections across different departments, whether they’re in the office, working remotely, or out on the road. Remember that the strength of communication relies on the ability of all members of a workforce to be connected, which means connecting all workers regardless of location.