Communication between departments: How to improve it?

One of those areas is the company's internal communication. Today, we will talk about communication between the different departments and we will give you some tips on how to improve it permanently and what tools you can use.

The interesting thing about internal communication is that many people agree that it is broken and intuitively feel that it should be improved. This is bad, but the good news is that there are things you can do to fix it. To begin with, let's see what are the main problems or causes of poor internal communication within a team or a company.

1. Broken information flow. Probably the only area of life where we need more communication is internal communication in the workplace. While everyone is busy carrying out their tasks, a lot of information leaks out and isn't shared internally, which negatively impacts productivity.

2. Personal conflicts between department managers. Even if there are only two people involved in a direct disagreement, their dispute will affect processes within the company and disrupt the entire workflow.

3. Physical separation of different departments. Many teams are working remotely.

4. Office tribalism. The anthropological fact is that people are identifying with the group to which they belong. If employees focus only on their department (modern tribe), they cannot collaborate effectively with others.

5. Industry stereotypes. You've probably heard a story that developers are those quiet guys who don't know anything but their code; or that designers should be hipsters to be good. These stories make communication between departments quite difficult.

These are some common problems that are present in most companies today. The management of the company must find a mechanism to prevent these problems from occurring and becoming a major difficulty that blocks or slows down the entire workflow of the company.

The implications of poor communication between departments will affect everyone: the company's employees (who will be much less productive) and the customers (who will suffer from poor customer service and leave).

To prevent your business from going down, you need to take some steps and improve communication between departments.

Fortunately, there are internal communication tools that can help you mitigate those problems and permanently improve internal communication in your company.

Here's how you can use a simple communication tool to make things better:

• Identify the information needed by each department. Such information may be a report on the supplies available in storage, the number of orders placed by customers, or a log of errors from the quality control team. After identifying key information, use your chosen tool to share this essential information across departments easily and transparently.

  This archives company knowledge in one place and gives everyone the information they need to make faster, smarter decisions.

• Open a transparent and two-way communication channel within the company. An internal blog provides an open channel for employee feedback, encouraging them to share ideas and suggestions to increase productivity within the company.
  
  Regularly post open-ended questions on real topics and ask employees to provide their thoughts and opinions in the comments. And it's not enough to just ask for feedback – acting on employee suggestions keeps them engaged and eager to provide more information, as well as being able to find ways to reward employees with your ideas.

• Overcome the communication gap between different departments. Gaps are often due to a lack of transparency and communication. Encourage each department to share news and updates about the work they're doing regularly. This will keep everyone up to date on what's going on in the company and how their work fits into the bigger picture. It will also help everyone to better understand and appreciate the work done by others.

• Include communication in the work process. If you haven't already done so, do so immediately. Communication should be one of the most important procedures of your company. Explain to people how they can communicate, when they can do it, and in what way. Be a good example and others will follow.

A good tool can help you improve communication between the different departments of your company, enjoy the benefits of greater commitment from your employees and obtain an effective internal organization with a mechanism to prevent conflicts.

In addition to that, your customers will be much happier because they will receive better care and treatment.

What methods have you used to establish quality communication in your company?
Do you use any online tools or have other methods?