Many entrepreneurs start as a team of one because they have to. But the moment they start building teams in business, they never look back. This is because each department contributes greatly to overall success.
It is important that teams within each department work well together, and particularly that departments can collaborate and communicate with each other. A startup without silos and seamless teamwork across departments is most impactful.
7 Strategies for Seamless Interdepartmental Collaboration
These strategies for interdepartmental collaboration will help you create a harmonious work environment that facilitates cross-departmental communication and collaboration across teams.
1. Establish a Strong Company Culture
Seamless collaboration with other departments is more likely to happen when your business culture is set up for it.
For example, a workplace environment without modern technology may limit communication across departments. Or, a workplace comprised of remote and in-person teams may have a hard time collaborating if the teams aren’t introduced properly and given the resources they need to work regardless of location.
On the other hand, let’s say your company prides itself on a culture that champions the use of modern tech tools to simplify operational processes, has a thorough onboarding process for new employees, and communication flow freely through the workplace.
This is a company culture in which cross-departmental collaboration can thrive. Establish a strong company culture by first defining what values and practices are at the core of your business.
For example, honest communication and creativity could be core values. Treating everyone with respect and providing high-quality customer service could be practices that govern how workers are to behave.
Once you have your core values and practices established, communicate them to your employees. Make sure they can access this information whenever they need it. After that, allow your company culture to unfold and make adjustments if elements of business don’t align with it.
2. Set the Expectations for Collaboration Between Departments
Your employees may not know how important cross-departmental collaboration is or how to proceed with it. So, setting expectations for collaboration between departments may be necessary to ensure it happens.
Meet with each department to discuss their roles in your company and how they contribute to the success of other departments. Also, talk about how collaborating with other departments will be a normal part of everyday operations. Then, demonstrate what this looks like.
For instance, when select departments work on a single project together, each person should have the opportunity to contribute to discussions and tasks.
Employees would visit each other in their respective departments. They would also use messaging tools to communicate with team members in different departments and receive answers in real time.
Make sure your expectations for collaboration and communication between departments are clear and that you show your employees exactly what this looks like.
3. Create Clear Project Outlines
Anytime multiple departments are working on a project together everyone needs to be on the same page. Otherwise, things can get disorganized quickly, leading to a low-quality project, if it gets finished at all.
Clear project outlines ensure each department knows its role in a project and each person understands the tasks assigned to them. In addition, goals and deadlines in the outline ensure teams are making progress.
Everyone should be able to read the project outline and know exactly what they’re responsible for, why, and when it’s due. Create a project outline template to save you time.
4. Assign Tasks and Roles Based on Strengths
Every department does something specific, whether marketing, sales, finance, or another business branch. Aside from this, each person working in these departments has their own unique strengths.
If departments are collaborating on a project, it is best to assign tasks and roles based on the strengths of each department and person. This helps the project get done to the highest quality — but it also makes it more likely for employees to enjoy what they’re doing and those they’re working with, improving teamwork.
For example, let’s say your marketing and sales departments are working on a new campaign together.
Marketing can work on content creation while the sales department finetunes the messages. Give your top content creators your most important visuals and written content, and make sure other experts are assigned where their strengths are needed most.
There will be many more tasks to assign than this. So, be sure you know your teams’ strengths and weaknesses so that you can delegate tasks productively.
5. Use Technology that Eases Interdepartmental Collaboration
Startups that have mastered interdepartmental collaboration would agree that technology plays a part in their mastery. The right tech tools can support collaboration between departments in a business because they can ease communication and information sharing, and streamline processes.
You can drive communication and collaboration across departments with these tech tools:
- Video conferencing tool: Allows for video communication between departments in real-time, regardless of the location of the participants.
- Messaging tool: Gives departments the ability to message anyone in the company and receive a response in real-time.
- Project management software: Allows you to organize and track all projects in a central system that all employees have access to.
- Cloud software: Provides secure document storage and access to those documents regardless of where a team member is located
This is by no means an exhaustive list of technology that facilitates interdepartmental collaboration. Consider the specifics of your business and each department’s abilities and needs when determining what other tools to implement.
6. Open Up the Lines of Communication
Seamless departmental collaboration can’t happen without open communication. It’s what breaks down silos and ensures everyone has access to the information they need when they need it. Open communication also makes it easier to solve problems and work as a team.
The communication technology you’ve implemented in your business will help facilitate open communication, such as messaging tools and project management software.
But more important is each person’s ability to connect with the people in their and other departments. Encourage employees to take advantage of short conversations in passing as well as group meetings and shared projects to develop open communication.
7. Work on Team Morale
High team morale is important because it means people are happy with their roles. They enjoy working with their team members and people in other departments. They are optimistic, excited, and engaged in whatever it is that they are doing. This leads to high productivity levels and, ultimately, consistent business results.
You can start to improve morale across all of your departments by hosting team-building activities. Doing this will help employees from all teams get to know each other and form respectful working relationships.
Think big and small when it comes to team-building activities. For example, you could do a short meeting every morning with your entire company. Put together a different small team each morning with people from various departments and let them lead the meeting. A more significant team-building activity might be a team camping trip or an awards event.
You could also try the following to improve team morale in your business:
- Put together as many cross-departmental projects as possible.
- Invest in the professional development of your employees.
- Recognize and reward even the smallest efforts of your teams.
- Ask departments for feedback on how you can improve the workplace environment.
When everyone is uplifted, they’ll be more willing to work well together, thus resulting in quality work and results for your business.
Conclusion
So many projects require the efforts of multiple teams to complete. It is wise to ensure each department in your business is comfortable working with teams in other departments so that the above can happen without issue.
Rely on these interdepartmental collaboration strategies to drive the synergy and seamless collaboration between departments.
Ainsley Lawrence is a writer who loves to talk about good health, balanced life, and better living through technology. She is frequently lost in a good book.
