Overcoming Divides in Your Organization

It is natural for employees to be most comfortable with the co-workers they work with often. This can create strong teams across your organization, but it may also cause divides between teams or departments. These divides can cause unhealthy competition and can be detrimental to employee productivity, morale, and engagement. Here are some ways to break down those divides and encourage cross-company collaboration:?

Create Proximity?

Having your departments physically work close together can help to promote teamwork?and lessen divides. Whenever possible, keep your teams close to each other, especially if they collaborate on a frequent basis. If you can’t fit everyone in one specific area or if you have remote workers, incorporate technology that allows employees to effectively communicate with their co-workers.?

Have Public Communication?

Address your entire company with news, updates,?goals, successes, and failures. Encourage employees to share and celebrate successes with each other. You can do this through frequent companywide meetings. This will help foster a feeling of community throughout your company and keep everyone working towards the same goals. Once again, be sure to use technology to include individuals who may work away from the main office.?

Promote Cross-Company Teamwork?

When different departments work together, projects are completed faster and more efficiently. Some departments may have experience or skills that will be a project easier to complete. Encourage your employees to work together on difficult projects. This will build trust, empathy, and understanding across your entire company, lessening divides between employees.?

Discourage Unhealthy Competition?

If there’s internal competition in your company, departments might withhold information from other departments to gain a competitive advantage. This makes it hard for anyone to get work done. Make sure your entire company knows that you succeed and fail together and discourage divides over competition.?

Use these tips to eliminate divides and encourage teamwork in your company.?