Breaking down organizational silos is essential for functioning as a collaborative workplace. Siloed organizations generally have less innovation, efficiency, and poor decision-making. That’s why it’s vital for organizations to evaluate where and how silos are appearing between their employees. The good news is that with intention and organizational silo busting, silos can be broken down—helping your organization become successful.
What Are Organizational Silos?
Organizational silos occur when groups of people are not sharing information, goals, tools, priorities or processes with other groups.
Silos commonly develop between functional teams and can be exacerbated by the increase in hybrid and remote work, as employee interaction outside of functional teams is reduced with less face-to-face time. A recent PwC survey found that 55% of organizations work in silos, and they are costly to companies of all sizes in terms of time, money, and disconnection from the company as a whole. Organizational silo busting is essential to address these issues, as silos result in duplicated efforts, unsynced and repetitive workflows, limited innovation and decreased morale.
How Organizational Silos Hinder Success
As employee interactions become more and more siloed to their functional teams, they lose touch with the ‘why’ behind their work and the organization. Silos also reinforce ways of working that tend to be rigid and simplistic. A person or team who thinks in terms of silos might struggle to see beyond established ways of doing things.
Siloed workflows are not just inefficient, they also waste employees’ emotional energy, contributing to the overall energy crisis that we’ve seen in the last several years. Employees may be doing double duty across the organization, and not even realize it due to lack of communication between teams. PwC estimated that inefficiencies due to silos cost companies 350 hours per year – in other words, one day out of each work week is lost to silos.
“Folks weren’t talking and sharing about their successes or their learning if things weren’t working well. And so you were getting this sort of overwork and limited functioning.” – Megan Gage, Director of Global Talent Management at Intuitive
How Silos Negatively Impact Employee Experience
Silos work in direct opposition to employees’ need for connection at work, and the longer companies allow them to build, the more disconnected employees may feel from the organization’s vision, goals, and community. Organizational silo busting is essential, as silos prevent employees from forming enriching and fulfilling relationships across the organization. Research supports this, highlighting unmet needs that employees currently feel in their workplace relationships due to disconnection:
- People who help me solve problems and explore new ideas
- People who bring different perspectives
- People who add a sense of purpose to my work
People are craving productive relationships—beyond transactional or watercooler interactions. Providing employees with intentional, consistent ways to form relationships across functional silos not only improves employee experience, it creates the opportunity for employees to diversify thought, undo roadblocks and create new, innovative solutions.
How to Breakdown Silos
Thankfully, with the right steps, silos can be broken down, connecting organizations to realize their full potential for productivity, innovation, development and growth. These steps are key to busting organizational silos:
1. Intentionally Connect People
Truly eradicating silos starts by creating an intentional plan of connecting the right teams, departments, or groups of employees together. Rob Cross, organizational network analysis expert, has proven through over 20 years of research the value of creating “bridging ties” within your company, compared to the more common and naturally occurring “bonding ties.”
“Strategically leveraging these bridging relationships allows you to see the big picture, generate innovative solutions by integrating the expertise of those with unique backgrounds, bypass bureaucratic gridlock and obtain resources and support.”
Mentoring is a powerful tool to connect people across departments and teams. Leading organizations use mentorship programs because they match peers, providing the development and learning opportunities essential for company growth.
2. Go Beyond Surface Level
Slack conversations or sporadic coffee chats are examples of functional connections between employees, which can help in maintaining relationships but aren’t enough to create the fundamental shift we’re talking about here. To bust silos that build real connections and rapport across your company, employees need conversations that inspire genuine connection to each other, their work and the company’s purpose.
3. Create Momentum
Momentum in this context has two sides:
Because organizations are in a near-constant state of change, silos can also continually be created. Having an “always-on” strategy regarding silo-busting is the key way to stay effective.
Intentionally connecting the right employees and creating an environment for them to truly connect are the first two elements, but to realize the tangible benefits of silo-busting (innovation, and increased efficiency, to name a few) we need to create a framework that translates this potential into action. Have employees actively brainstorm or problem-solve together or set goals for innovative thinking. Whatever it is, create action and accountability out of these silo-busting connections and you’ll soon start to see amazing results.
Case Study: Intuitive’s Challenges with Silos
The Challenge
Over 12 years, Intuitive grew from 1,500 employees to over 12,000. As they grew, their functional silos grew with them. Intuitive identified 4 key challenges that silos were creating across the organization:
- Lack of connection
- Limited development opportunities
- Lack of business acumen
- Limited innovation
As Intuitive increased in size and teams became more specialized, the familiarity that employees once had from visiting with their desk-neighbor began to decrease—employees worked in different buildings, and others across the world, or on different communication platforms. Additionally, functions began to develop different communication norms, goal-setting standards, and workflow processes. As silos increased, employees lost workplace friendships and felt disconnected from the company’s purpose.
The Solution
To reduce the challenges brought on by silos, Intuitive’s Director of Global Talent Management, Megan Gage, was looking for a solution that provided development and employee engagement opportunities for employees that was also a low lift on the administrative side, due to tight resourcing.
Megan identified the need for a solution that could scale with the company without requiring a greater input of time and money. With a small L&D (learning and development) team supporting thousands of employees, simplicity and effectiveness were key to success. Another key factor was equity—Megan needed a solution that provided help to employees in any and every function, seniority level, and geographic location. To secure stakeholder buy-in at Intuitive, Megan emphasized how Imperative by Chronus supported organizational silo busting and highlighted the key strengths it provided:
- Proof of concept
- Low-risk testing to find something that worked
- Appealed to employees
- Immediate access to data
The Results
After partnering with Imperative by Chronus, Intuitive has found that participants have created connections, felt supported in their success, and have increased their business acumen. Of the conversations, Intuitive employees have had:
- 97% percent of people found them helpful or very helpful, within that, 11% described the conversations as “breakthrough.”
- 81% percent completed an action that enhanced their impact or growth at work.
- 90% intend to have an ongoing relationship with their conversation partner.
Intuitive employees formed relationships across functions, the three most common bridging relationships being across business development and operations, communications and operations, and engineering and operations.
Conclusion
In hybrid or remote environments, silos can worsen due to a lack of human connection and social isolation. For a collaborative and innovative workforce to thrive, employees need to feel connected not only with their colleagues but to their work. This can be achieved with mentoring and employee resource group software.
Chronus accelerates trust and organizational silo busting with mentoring and employee resource group software, all while maintaining purpose alignment. Implementing this can lead to better cross-functional interaction, increased innovation and improved decision-making, ultimately driving employee connectivity and organizational success.
